ISLAND AFTERNOONS' ENTERTAINMENTS. I: MURANO, BURANO AND TORCELLO
The Campo Santo--The Vivarini--The glass-blowers--An artist at work--S.
Pietro--A good Bellini--A keen sacristan--S. Donato--A foreign
church--An enthusiast--Signor "Rooskin"--The blue Madonna--The voyage to
Burano--The importunate boatman--A squalid town--The pretty lace
workers--Torcello--A Christian exodus--Deserted temples--The bishop's
throne--The Last Judgment--The stone shutters--The Porto di Lido.
The cheap way to Murano is by the little penny steamer from the
Fondamenta Nuova. This side of Venice is poor and squalid, but there is
more fun here than anywhere else, for on Sundays the boys borrow any
kind of craft that can be obtained and hold merry little regattas, which
even those sardonic officials, the captains of the steamboats, respect:
stopping or easing down so as to interfere with no event. But one should
go to Murano by gondola, and go in the afternoon.
Starting anywhere near the Molo, this means that the route will be by
the Rio del Palazzo, under the Ponte di Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs,
between the Doges' Palace and the prison; up the winding Rio di S. Maria
Formosa, and then into the Rio dei Mendicanti with a glimpse of the
superb Colleoni statue and SS. Giovanni e Paoli and the lions on the
Scuola of S. Mark; under the bridge with a pretty Madonna on it; and so
up the Rio dei Mendicanti, passing on the left a wineyard with two
graceful round arches in it and then a pleasant garden with a pergola,
and then a busy squero with men always at work on gondolas new or old.
And so beneath a high bridge to the open lagoon, with the gay walls and
sombre cypresses of the cemetery immediately in front and the island of
Murano beyond.
Many persons stop at the Campo Santo, but there is not much profit in so
doing unless one is a Blair or an Ashton. Its cypresses are more
beautiful from the water than close at hand, and the Venetian tombstones
dazzle. Moreover, there are no seats, and the custodian insists upon
abstracting one's walking-stick. I made fruitless efforts to be directed
to the English section, where among many graves of our countrymen is
that of the historical novelist, G.P.R. James.
[Illustration: THE RIO TORRESELLE AND BACK OF THE PALAZZO DARIO]
Murano is interesting in art as being the home of that early school of
painting in which the Vivarini were the greatest names, which supplied
altar-pieces for all the Venetian churches until the Bellini arrived
from Padua with more acceptable methods. The invaders brought in an
element of worldly splendour hitherto lacking. From the concentrated
saintliness of the Vivarini to the sumptuous assurance of Titian is a
far cry, yet how few the years that intervened! To-day there are no
painters in Murano; nothing indeed but gardeners and glass-blowers, and
the island is associated purely with the glass industry. Which is the
most interesting furnace, I know not, for I have always fallen to the
first of all, close to the landing stage, and spent there several
amusing half-hours, albeit hotter than the innermost pit. Nothing ever
changes there: one sees the same artificers and the same routine; the
same flames rage; glass is the same mystery, beyond all conjuring, so
ductile and malleable here, so brittle and rigid everywhere else. There
you sit, or stand, some score of visitors, while the wizards round the
furnace busily and incredibly convert molten blobs of anything (you
would have said) but glass into delicate carafes and sparkling vases.
Meanwhile the sweat streams from them in rivulets, a small Aquarius ever
and anon fetches tumblers of water from a tap outside or glasses of red
wine, and a soft voice at your ear, in whatever language you happen to
be, supplies a commentary on the proceedings. Beware of listening to it
with too much interest, for it is this voice which, when the
glass-blowing flags, is proposing to sell you something. The "entrance"
may be "free," but the exit rarely is so.
Let me describe a particular feat. After a few minutes, in sauntered a
little lean detached man with a pointed beard and a long cigar, who
casually took from a workman in the foreground a hollow iron rod, at the
end of which was a more than commonly large lump of the glowing mass.
This he whirled a little, by a rotatory movement of the rod between the
palms of his hands, and then again dipped it into the heart of the
flames, fetching it out more fiery than ever and much augmented. This
too he whirled, blowing down the pipe first (but without taking his
cigar from his mouth) again and again, until the solid lump was a great
glistening globe. The artist--for if ever there was an artist it is
he--carried on this exhausting task with perfect nonchalance, talking
and joking with the others the while, but never relaxing the
concentration of his hands, until there came a moment when the globe was
broken from the original rod and fixed in some magical way to another.
Again it went into the furnace, now merely for heat and not for any
accretion of glass, and coming out, behold it was a bowl; and so, with
repeated visits to the flames, on each return wider and shallower, it
eventually was finished as an exact replica of the beautiful greeny-blue
flower-dish on a neighbouring table. The artist, still smoking, then
sauntered out again for fresh air, and was seen no more for a while.
But one should not be satisfied with the sight of the fashioning of a
bowl or goblet, however interesting the process may be; but entering the
gondola again should insist upon visiting both S. Pietro Martire and S.
Donato, even if the gondolier, as is most probable, will affirm that
both are closed.
The first named is on the left of the canal by which we enter Murano,
and which for a while is bordered by glass factories as close together
as doctors in Harley Street. The church architecturally is nothing; its
value is in its pictures, especially a Bellini and a Basaiti, and its
sacristan.
This sacristan has that simple keenness which is a rarity in Venice. He
rejoices in his church and in your pleasure in it. He displays first the
Bellini--a Madonna with the strong protective Bellini hands about the
child, above them bodiless cherubim flying, and on the right a
delectable city with square towers. The Basaiti is chiefly notable for
what, were it cleaned, would be a lovely landscape. Before both the
sacristan is ecstatic, but on his native heath, in the sacristy itself,
he is even more contented. It is an odd room, with carvings all around
it in which sacred and profane subjects are most curiously mingled: here
John the Baptist in the chief scenes of his life, even to imprisonment
in a wooden cage, into which the sacristan slips a delighted expository
hand, and there Nero, Prometheus, Bacchus, and Seneca without a nose.
Re-entering the gondola, escorted to it by hordes of young Muranese, we
move on to the Grand Canal of the island, a noble expanse of water.
After turning first to the right and then to the left, and resisting an
invitation to enter the glass museum, we disembark, beside a beautiful
bridge, at the cathedral, which rises serenely from the soil of its
spacious campo.
The exterior of S. Donato is almost more foreign looking than that of S.
Mark's, although within S. Mark's is the more exotic. The outside wall
of S. Donato's apse, which is the first thing that the traveller sees,
is its most beautiful architectural possession and utterly different
from anything in Venice: an upper and a lower series of lovely, lonely
arches, empty and meaningless in this Saharan campo, the fire of
enthusiasm which flamed in their original builders having died away, and
this corner of the island being almost depopulated, for Murano gathers
now about its glass-works on the other side of its Grand Canal. Hence
the impression of desertion is even less complete than at Torcello,
where one almost necessarily visits the cathedral in companies twenty to
fifty strong.
At the door, to which we are guided by a boy or so who know that
cigarettes are thrown away at sacred portals, is the sacristan, an aged
gentleman in a velvet cap who has a fuller and truer pride in his fane
than any of his brothers in Venice yonder. With reason too, for this
basilica is so old as to make many Venetian churches mere mushrooms, and
even S. Mark's itself an imitation in the matter of inlaid pavement.
Speaking slowly, with the perfection of enunciation, and burgeoning with
satisfaction, the old fellow moves about the floor as he has done so
many thousand times, pointing out this beauty and that, above and below,
without the faintest trace of mechanism. In course of time, when he is
fully persuaded that we are not only English but worthy of his secret,
it comes out that he had the priceless privilege of knowing Signor
"Rooskin" in the flesh, and from his pocket he draws a copy of _The
Stones of Venice_, once the property of one Constance Boyle, but now his
own. This he fondles, for though the only words in his own chapters that
he can understand are "Murano" and "Donato," yet did not his friend the
great Signor Rooskin write it, and what is more, spend many, many days
in careful examination of everything here before he wrote it? For that
is what most appeals to the old gentleman: the recognition of his S.
Donato as being worthy of such a study.
The floor is very beautiful, and there is a faded series of saints by
one of the Vivarini of Murano, behind the altar, on which the eye rests
very comfortably--chiefly perhaps on the panels which are only painted
curtains; but the most memorable feature of the cathedral is the ancient
Byzantine mosaic of the Madonna--a Greek Madonna--in the hollow of the
apse: a long slender figure in blue against a gold background who holds
her hands rather in protest than welcome, and is fascinating rather for
the piety which set her there with such care and thought to her glory
than for her beauty. Signor Rooskin, it is true, saw her as a symbol of
sadness, and some of the most exquisite sentences of "The Stones of
Venice" belong to her; but had her robe been of less lovely hues it is
possible that he might have written differently.
When the church was built, probably in the tenth century, the Virgin was
its patron saint. S. Donato's body being brought hither by Doge Domenico
Michiel (1118-1130), the church was known as Santa Maria, or San Donato;
and to-day it is called S. Donato. And when the time comes for the old
sacristan to die, I hope (no matter what kind of a muddle his life has
been) that S. Donato will be at hand, near the gate, to pull him
through, for sheer faithfulness to his church.
The gondola returns by the same route, and as we pass the Campo Santo
the rays of the afternoon sun seem so to saturate its ruddy walls that
they give out light of their own. It is in order to pass slowly beneath
these walls and cypresses that I recommend the gondola as the medium for
a visit to Murano. But the penny steamers go to a pier close to S.
Donato and are frequent.
Murano is within every visitor's range, no matter how brief his stay,
but Burano is another matter. The steamer which sails from the pier
opposite Danieli's on all fine afternoons except Sundays and holidays
requires four hours; but if the day be fine they are four hours not to
be forgotten. The way out is round the green island of S. Elena,
skirting the Arsenal, the vastness of which is apparent from the water,
and under the north wall of Murano, where its pleasant gardens spread,
once so gay with the Venetian aristocracy but now the property of market
gardeners and lizards. Then through the channels among the shallows,
north, towards the two tall minarets in the distance, the one of Burano,
the other of Torcello. Far away may be seen the Tyrolean Alps, with, if
it is spring, their snow-clad peaks poised in the air; nearer, between
us and the islands, is a military or naval station, and here and there
yellow and red sail which we are to catch and pass. Venice has nothing
more beautiful than her coloured sails, both upon the water and
reflected in it.
The entrance to Burano is by a long winding canal, which at the Campo
Santo, with its battered campanile and sentinel cypress at the corner,
branches to left and right--left to Torcello and right to Burano. Here
the steamer is surrounded by boatmen calling seductively in their soft
rich voices "Goon-dola! Goon-dola!" their aim, being to take the visitor
either to the cypress-covered island of S. Francesco in Deserto where S.
Francis is believed to have taken refuge, or to Torcello, to allow of a
longer stay there than this steamer permits; and unless one is enamoured
of such foul canals and importunate children as Burano possesses it is
well to listen to this lure. But Burano has charms, notwithstanding its
dirt. Its squalid houses are painted every hue that the prism knows, and
through the open doors are such arrays of copper and brass utensils as
one associates with Holland. Every husband is a fisherman; every wife a
mother and a lace maker, as the doorways bear testimony, for both the
pillow and the baby in arms are punctually there for the procession of
visitors to witness. Whether they would be there did not the word go
round that the steamer approached, I cannot say, but here and there the
display seems a thought theatrical. Meanwhile in their boats in the
canals, or on the pavement mending nets, are the Burano men.
Everybody is dirty. If Venice is the bride of the Adriatic, Burano is
the kitchen slut.
[Illustration: VENUS, RULER OF THE WORLD
FROM THE PAINTING BY GIOVANNI BELLINI
_In the Accademia_]
Yet there is an oasis of smiling cleanliness, and that is the chief
sight of the place--the Scuola Merletti, under the patronage of Queen
Margherita, the centre of the lace-making industry. This building, which
is by the church, is, outside, merely one more decayed habitation. You
pass within, past the little glass box of the custodian, whose small
daughter is steering four inactive snails over the open page of a
ledger, and ascend a flight of stairs, and behold you are in the midst
of what seem to be thousands of girls in rows, each nursing her baby. On
closer inspection the babies are revealed to be pillows held much as
babies are held, and every hand is busy with a bobbin (or whatever it
is), and every mouth seems to be munching. Passing on, you enter another
room--if the first has not abashed you--and here are thousands more.
Pretty girls too, some of them, with their black massed hair and olive
skins, and all so neat and happy. Specimens of their work, some of it of
miraculous delicacy, may be bought and kept as a souvenir of a most
delightful experience.
For the rest, the interest of Burano is in Burano itself in the
aggregate; for the church is a poor gaudy thing and there is no
architecture of mark. And so, fighting one's way through small boys who
turn indifferent somersaults, and little girls whose accomplishment is
to rattle clogged feet and who equally were born with an extended hand,
you rejoin the steamer.
Torcello is of a different quality. Burano is intensely and rather
shockingly living; Torcello is nobly dead. It is in fact nothing but
market gardens, a few houses where Venetian sportsmen stay when they
shoot duck and are royally fed by kitcheners whose brass and copper make
the mouth water, and a great forlorn solitary cathedral.
History tells us that in the sixth century, a hundred and more years
after the flight of the mainlanders to Rialto and Malamocco, another
exodus occurred, under fear of Alboin and the invading Lombards, this
time to Torcello. The way was led by the clergy, and quickly a church
was built to hearten the emigrants. Of this church there remain the
deserted buildings before us, springing from the weeds, but on a scale
which makes simple realization of the populousness of the ancient
colony.
The charming octagonal little building on the right with its encircling
arcade is the church of S. Fosca, now undergoing very thorough repair:
in fact everything that a church can ask is being restored to it, save
religion. No sea cave could be less human than these deserted temples,
given over now to sightseers and to custodians who demand admittance
money. The pit railed in on the left before the cathedral's west wall is
in the ancient baptistery, where complete immersion was practised. The
cathedral within is remarkable chiefly for its marble throne high up in
the apse, where the bishop sat with his clergy about him on
semi-circular seats gained by steps. Above them are mosaics, the Virgin
again, as at S. Donato, in the place of honour, but here she is given
her Son and instantly becomes more tender. The twelve apostles attend.
On the opposite wall is a quaint mosaic of the Last Judgment with the
usual sharp division of parties. The floor is very beautiful in places,
and I have a mental picture of an ancient and attractive carved marble
pulpit.
The vigorous climb the campanile, from which, as Signor Rooskin says,
may be seen Torcello and Venice--"Mother and Daughter ... in their
widowhood." Looking down, it is strange indeed to think that here once
were populous streets.
On the way to the campanile do not forget to notice the great stone
shutters of the windows of the cathedral; which suggest a security
impossible to be conveyed by iron. No easy task setting these in their
place and hinging them. What purpose the stone arm-chair in the grass
between the baptistery and S. Fosca served is not known. One guide will
have it the throne of Attila; another, a seat of justice. Be that as it
may, tired ladies can find it very consoling in this our twentieth
century.
For antiquaries there is a museum of excavated relics of Torcello; but
with time so short it is better to wander a little, seeking for those
wild flowers which in England are objects of solicitude to gardeners, or
watching butterflies that are seen in our country only when pinned on
cork.
The return voyage leaves S. Francesco in Deserto on the right, with
the long low Lido straight ahead. Then we turn to the right and the Lido
is on the left for most of the way to Venice. After a mile or so the
mouth of the Adriatic is passed, where the Doge dropped his ring from
the Bucintoro and thus renewed the espousals. On the day which I have in
mind two airships were circling the city, and now and then the rays of
the sun caught their envelopes and turned them to silver. Beneath, the
lagoon was still as a pond; a few fishing boats with yellow sails lay at
anchor near the Porto di Lido, like brimstone butterflies on a hot
stone; and far away the snow of the Tyrolean alps still hung between
heaven and earth.