THE CANALE DI S. MARCO AND S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE
Busy water--The lantern concerts--Venice and modern
inventions--Fireworks in perfection--S. Giorgio Maggiore--Palladian
architecture--Two Tintorettos--The Life of S. Benedict--Realistic
wood-carving--A Giudecca garden--The Redentore--A bridge of boats--A
regatta--The view from the Giudecca--House-hunting in Venice.
Strictly speaking, the Grand Canal and the Canal of the Guidecca unite
in the lagoon; but the stretch of water between the Molo and S. Giorgio
is called the Canale di San Marco. It is the busiest water of all. Every
little steamer crosses it; motor-boats here are always at full speed;
most of the gondolas which are hired start from here; the great
mercantile boats cross it on their way in and out of harbours; and the
daily invaders from Trieste disembark and embark again in the very
middle. Hence it is always a scene of gay and sparkling movement and
always more like a Guardi than any other spot in Venice.
It is just off the Custom House point, at night, that in the summer the
concert barges are moored, each with its little party of musicians, its
cluster of Venetian lanterns, arranged rather like paper travesties of
the golden balls over S. Mark's domes, and its crowded circle of
gondolas, each like a dark private box for two. Now what more can
honeymooners ask? For it is chiefly for honeymooners that this is done,
since Venetians do not spend money to sit in stationary boats. These
concerts are popular, but they are too self-conscious. Moreover, the
songs are from all countries, even America; whereas purely Venetian, or
at any rate Italian, operatic music should, I think, be given. The stray
snatches of song which one hears at night from the hotel window;
gondoliers trolling out folk choruses; the notes of a distant mandolin,
brought down on the water--these make the true music of Venice.
But just as the motor-launch has invaded the lagoon, so has other
machinery forced its way into this city--peculiarly the one place in the
world which ought to have been meticulously safeguarded against every
mechanical invention. When I was living near S. Sebastiano, on my way
home at night the gondolier used to take me up the Grand Canal as far as
the Foscari lantern and then to the left. In time we came to the campo
of S. Pantaleone, where, outside a café, a little group was always
seated, over its wine and beer, listening raptly to the music of--what?
A gramophone. This means that while the motor is ousting the gondolier,
the Venetian minstrel is also under death sentence.
It was the same if I chose to walk part of the way, for then I took the
steamer to S. Toma and passed through the campo of S. Margherita, which
does for the poor of its neighbourhood very much what the Piazza of S.
Mark does for the centre of the city and the élite of the world. This
campo is one of the largest in Venice, and at night it is very gay.
There is a church at one end which, having lost its sanctity, is now a
cinema theatre, with luridities pasted on the walls. There is another
ancient building converted into a cinema at the opposite end. Between
these alluring extremities are various cafés, each with its chairs and
tables, and each with a gramophone that pours its notes into the night.
The panting of Caruso mingles with Tetrazzini's shrill exultation.
In summer there are occasional firework displays on the water between S.
Giorgio and the Riva, supplied by the Municipality. The Riva is then
crowded, while gondolas put out in great numbers, and myriad overloaded
crafts full of poorer sightseers enter the lagoon by all the small
canals. Having seen Venetian pyrotechny, one realizes that all fireworks
should be ignited over water. It is the only way. A rocket can climb as
fiercely and dazzlingly into any sky, no doubt, but over land the
falling stars and sparks have but one existence; over water, like the
swan "on St. Mary's lake," they have two. The displays last for nearly
an hour, and consist almost entirely of rockets. Every kind of rocket is
there: rockets which simply soar with a rush, burst into stars and fall;
rockets which when they reach the highest point of their trajectory
explode with a report that shakes the city and must make some of the
campanili very nervous; rockets which burst into a million sparks;
rockets which burst into a thousand streamers; rockets whose stars
change colour as they fall; rockets whose stars do not fall at once but
hang and hover in the air. All Venice is watching, either from the land
or the water, and the band plays to a deserted Piazza, but directly the
display is over every one hastens back to hear its strains.
To get to the beautiful island of S. Giorgio it is almost necessary to
take a gondola; for although there is the Giudecca steamer every half
hour, it is an erratic boat, and you may be left stranded too long
waiting to return. The island is military, save for the church, and that
is chiefly a show-place to-day. It is large and light, but it has no
charm, for that was not Palladio's gift. That he was a great man, every
visitor to Vicenza knows; but it is both easy and permissible to dislike
the architecture to which he gives his name. Not that any fault can be
found with S. Giorgio Maggiore as a detail in the landscape: to me it
will always be the perfect disposition of buildings in the perfect
place; but then, on the other hand, the campanile was not Palladio's,
nor was the façade, while the principal attraction of his dome is its
green copper. The church of the Redentore, on the Giudecca, is much more
thoroughly Palladian.
Andrea Palladio was born in Vicenza in 1518. In Venice he built S.
Giorgio Maggiore (all but the façade), the façade of S. Francesco della
Vigna, the Redentore, Le Zitelle and S. Lucia. Such was Palladio's
influence that for centuries he practically governed European
architecture. Our own St. Paul's would be very different but for him. He
died in 1580 and was buried at Vicenza. By the merest chance, but very
fortunately, he was prevented from bedevilling the Ducal Palace after
the fire in 1576. He had the plans all ready, but a wiser than he, one
Da Ponte, undertook to make the structure good without rebuilding, and
carried out his word. Terrible to think of what the Vicenza classicist
would have done with that gentle, gay, and human façade!
[Illustration: TRAGHETTO OF S. ZOBENIGO, GRAND CANAL]
S. Giorgio has a few pictures, chief of which are the two great
Tintorettos in the choir. These are, however, very difficult to see. My
own efforts once led me myself to open the gates and enter, so that I
might be nearer and in better light: a proceeding which turned the
sacristan from a servant of God into an ugly brawler. A gift of money,
however, returned him to his rightful status; but he is a churlish
fellow. I mention the circumstance because it is isolated in my
Venetian wanderings. No other sacristan ever suggested that the whole
church was not equally free or resented any unaccompanied exploration.
The Tintorettos belong to his most spacious and dramatic style. One,
"The Last Supper," is a busy scene of conviviality. The company is all
at one side of the table and the two ends, except the wretched
foredoomed Judas. There is plenty to eat. Attendants bustle about
bringing more food. A girl, superbly drawn and painted, washes plates,
with a cat beside her. A dog steals a bone. The disciples seem restless
and the air is filled with angels. Compared with the intensity and
single-mindedness of Leonardo, this is a commonplace rendering; but as
an illustration to the Venetian Bible, it is fine; and as a work of art
by a mighty and original genius glorying in difficulties of light and
shade, it is tremendous. Opposite is a quieter representation of the
miracle of the manna, which has very charming details of a domestic
character in it, the women who wash and sew and carry on other
employments being done with splendid ease and naturalness. The manna
lies about like little buttons; Moses discourses in the foreground; in
the distance is the Israelite host. All that the picture lacks is light:
a double portion: light to fall on it, and its own light to be allowed
to shine through the grime of ages.
Tintoretto also has two altar-pieces here, one an "Entombment," in the
Mortuary Chapel--very rich and grave and painful, in which Christ's
mother is seen swooning in the background; and the other a death of S.
Stephen, a subject rare with the Old Masters, but one which, were there
occasion to paint it, they must have enjoyed. Tintoretto has covered the
ground with stones.
The choir is famous for its series of forty-six carved panels,
representing scenes in the life of S. Benedict; but some vandal having
recently injured one or two, the visitor is no longer allowed to
approach near enough to examine them with the thoroughness that they
demand and deserve. They are the work of a carver named Albert de Brule,
of whose life I have been able to discover nothing. Since before
studying them it is well to know something of the Saint's career, I tell
the story here, from _The Golden Legend_, but not all the incidents
which the artist fixed upon are to be found in that biography.
Benedict as a child was sent to Rome to be educated, but he preferred
the desert. Hither his nurse accompanied him, and his first token of
signal holiness was his answered prayer that a pitcher which she had
broken might be made whole again. Leaving his nurse, he associated with
a hermit who lived in a pit to which food was lowered by a rope. Near by
dwelt a priest, who one day made a great meal for himself, but before he
could eat it he received a supernatural intimation that Benedict was
hungry in a pit, and he therefore took his dinner to him and they ate it
together. A blackbird once assailing Benedict's face was repelled by the
sign of the cross. Being tempted by a woman, Benedict crawled about
among briars and nettles to maintain his Spartan spirit. He now became
the abbot of a monastery, but the monks were so worldly that he had to
correct them. In retaliation they poisoned his wine, but the saint
making the sign of the cross over it, the glass broke in pieces and the
wine was innocuously spilt. Thereupon Benedict left the monastery and
returned to the desert, where he founded two abbeys and drove the devil
out of a monk who could not endure long prayers, his method being to
beat the monk. Here also, and in the other abbeys which he founded, he
worked many miracles: making iron swim, restoring life to the dead, and
so forth. Another attempt to poison him, this time with bread, was made,
but the deadly stuff was carried away from him by a pet raven. For the
rest of the saint's many wonderful deeds of piety you must seek _The
Golden Legend_: an agreeable task. He died in the year 518.
The best or most entertaining panels seem to me the first, in which the
little bald baby saint is being washed and his mother is being coaxed to
eat something; the fourth, where we see the saint, now a youth, on his
knees; the sixth, where he occupies the hermit's cell and the hermit
lets down food; the seventh, where the hermit and Benedict occupy the
cell together and a huntsman and dog pursue their game above; the tenth,
in the monastery; the twelfth, where the whip is being laid on; the
fourteenth, with an especially good figure of Benedict; the sixteenth,
where the meal is spread; the twentieth, with the devil on the tree
trunk; the twenty-first, when the fire is being extinguished; the
twenty-fifth, with soldiers in the distance; the twenty-seventh, with a
fine cloaked figure; the twenty-eighth, where there is a struggle for a
staff; the thirtieth, showing the dormitory and a cat and mouse; the
thirty-second, a burial scene; the thirty-third, with its monsters; the
thirty-sixth, in which the beggar is very good; the thirty-ninth, where
the soldiers kiss the saint's feet; and the forty-fourth, showing the
service in the church and the soldiers' arms piled up.
One would like to know more of this Albert de Brule and his work: how
long it took; why he did it; how it came to Venice; and so forth. The
date, which applies, I suppose, to the installation of the carvings, is
1598.
The other carvings are by other hands: the S. George and dragon on the
lectern in the choir, and the little courageous boys driving Behemoths
on the stalls.
As one leaves the church by the central aisle the Dogana is seen framed
by the doorway. With each step more of Venice comes into view. The
Campanile is worth climbing for its lovely prospect.
From the little island of S. Giorgio it is but a stone's throw to the
larger island of the Giudecca, with its factories and warehouses and
stevedores, and tiny cafés each with a bowling alley at the back. The
Giudecca, which looks so populous, is however only skin deep; almost
immediately behind the long busy façade of the island are gardens, and
then the shallow lagoon stretching for miles, where fishermen are
mysteriously employed, day and night. The gardens are restful rather
than beautiful--at least that one, open to visitors, on the Rio della
Croce, may be thus described, for it is formal in its parallelograms
divided by gritty paths, and its flowers are crudely coloured. But it
has fine old twisted mulberry trees, and a long walk beside the water,
where lizards dart among the stones on the land side and on the other
crabs may be seen creeping.
On the way to this garden I stopped to watch a family of gossiping
bead-workers. The old woman who sat in the door did not thread the beads
as the girl does in one of Whistler's Venetian etchings, but stabbed a
basketful with a wire, each time gathering a few more.
The great outstanding buildings of the Giudecca are Palladio's massive
Redentore and S. Eufemia, and at the west end the modern Gothic polenta
mill of Signor or Herr Stucky, beyond which is the lagoon once more. In
Turner's picture in the National Gallery entitled "San Benedetto,
looking towards Fusina" there is a ruined tower where Stucky's mill now
stands.
The steps of the Redentore are noble, but within it is vast and cold and
inhuman, and the statues in its niches are painted on the flat.
Tintoretto's "Descent from the Cross" in the church proper is very
vivid. In the sacristy, however, the chilled visitor will be restored to
life by a truly delightful Madonna and Child, with two little celestial
musicians playing a lullaby, said to be by Bellini, but more probably by
Alvise Vivarini, and two companion pictures of much charm. Like the
Salute, the Redentore was a votive offering to heaven for stopping a
plague. Every year, on the third Sunday in July, a bridge of boats
crosses the Grand Canal at the Campo S. Zobenigo, and then from the
Zattere it crosses the Giudecca canal to this church. That day and night
the island is _en fête_. Originally these bridges were constructed in
order that the Doges might attend a solemn service; but to-day the
occasion is chiefly one of high spirits. In the gallery of the Palazzo
Pesaro is a painting representing the event at a recent date; in the
Querini Stampalia gallery a more ancient procession may be seen.
There, too, are many views of regattas which of old were held on the
Grand Canal but now belong to the canal of the Giudecca. The Venetians,
who love these races, assemble in great numbers, both on the water, in
every variety of craft, and on the quay. The winning-post is off the end
of the island of S. Giorgio; the races start from varying points towards
the harbour. In April I saw races for six oars, four oars, two oars, and
men-of-war's boats. The ordinary rowers were dull, but the powerful
bending gondoliers urging their frail craft along with tremendous
strokes in unison were a magnificent spectacle. The excitement was
intense towards the end, but there was no close finish. Between the
races the exchange of chaff among the spectators was continuous.
The question of where to live in Venice must, I think, be a difficult
one to solve. I mean by live, to make one's home, as so many English and
Americans have done. At the first blush, of course, one would say on the
Grand Canal; but there are objections to this. It is noisy with
steamboat whistles and motor horns, and will become noisier every day
and night, as the motor gains increasing popularity. On the other hand,
one must not forget that so fine a Venetian taster as Mr. Howells has
written, "for myself I must count as half lost the year spent in Venice
before I took a house upon the Grand Canal."
Personally, I think, I should seek my home elsewhere. There is a house
on this Giudecca--a little way along from the S. Giorgio end--which
should make a charming abode; for it has good windows over the water,
immediately facing, first, the little forest of masts by the Custom
House, and then the Molo and the Ducal Palace, and upon it in the
evening would fall the sinking sun, while behind it is a pleasant
garden. The drawbacks are the blasts of the big steamers entering and
leaving the harbour, the contiguity of some rather noisy works, and the
infrequency of steamboats to the mainland.
Ruskin was fond of this view. Writing to old Samuel Rogers, he said:
"There was only one place in Venice which I never lost the feeling of
joy in--at least the pleasure which is better than joy; and that was
just half way between the end of the Giudecca and St. George of the
Seaweed, at sunset. If you tie your boat to one of the posts there you
can see the Euganeans where the sun goes down, and all the Alps and
Venice behind you by the rosy sunlight: there is no other spot so
beautiful. Near the Armenian convent is, however, very good too also;
the city is handsomer, but the place is not so simple and lovely. I have
got all the right feeling back now, however; and hope to write a word or
two about Venice yet, when I have got the mouldings well out of my
head--and the mud. For the fact is, with reverence be it spoken, that
whereas Rogers says: 'There is a glorious city in the Sea,' a truthful
person must say, 'There is a glorious city in the mud'. It is startling
at first to say so, but it goes well enough with marble. 'Oh, Queen of
Marble and of Mud.'"
Another delectable house is that one, on the island of S. Giorgio
Maggiore; which looks right up the Giudecca canal and in the late
afternoon flings back the sun's rays. But that is the property of the
army. Another is at the corner of the Rio di S. Trovaso and the
Fondamenta delle Zaterre, with wistaria on it, looking over to the
Redentore; but every one, I find, wants this.