SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO
A noble statue--Bartolommeo Colleoni--Verrocchio--A Dominican
church--Mocenigo Doges--The tortured Bragadino--The Valier
monument--Leonardo Loredano--Sebastian Venier--The Chapel of the
Rosary--Sansovino--An American eulogy--Michele Steno--Tommaso
Mocenigo--A brave re-builder--The Scuola di S. Marco.
It is important to reach SS. Giovanni e Paolo by gondola, because the
canals are particularly fascinating between this point and, say, the
Molo. If one embarks at the Molo (which is the habit of most visitors),
the gondolier takes you up the Rio Palazzo, under the Ponte di Paglia
and the Bridge of Sighs, past the superb side walls of the Ducal Palace;
then to the right, with relics of fine architecture on either side, up
the winding Rio di S. Maria Formosa, and then to the right again into
the Rio di S. Marina and the Rio dei Mendicanti (where a dyer makes the
water all kinds of colours). A few yards up this canal you pass the
Fondamenta Dandolo on the right, at the corner of which the most
commanding equestrian statue in the world breaks on your vision, behind
it rising the vast bulk of the church. All these little canals have
palaces of their own, not less beautiful than those of the Grand Canal
but more difficult to see.
Before entering the church--and again after coming from it--let us look
at the Colleoni. It is generally agreed that this is the finest horse
and horseman ever cast in bronze; and it is a surprise to me that South
Kensington has no reproduction of it, as the Trocadero in Paris has.
Warrior and steed equally are splendid; they are magnificent and they
are war. The only really competitive statue is that of Gattamalata (who
was Colleoni's commander) by Donatello at Padua; but personally I think
this the finer.
Bartolommeo Colleoni was born in 1400, at Bergamo, of fighting stock,
and his early years were stained with blood. The boy was still very
young when he saw his father's castle besieged by Filippo Maria
Visconti, Duke of Milan, and his father killed. On becoming himself a
condottiere, he joined the Venetians, who were then busy in the field,
and against the Milanese naturally fought with peculiar ardour. But on
the declaration of peace in 1441 he forgot his ancient hostility, and in
the desire for more battle assisted the Milanese in their campaigns.
Fighting was meat and drink to him. Seven years later he returned to the
Venetians, expecting to be appointed Captain-General of the Republic's
forces, but failing in this wish he put his arm again at the service of
the Milanese. A little later, however, Venice afforded him the coveted
honour, and for the rest of his life he was true to her, although when
she was miserably at peace he did not refrain from a little strife on
his own account, to keep his hand in. Venice gave him not only honours
and money but much land, and he divided his old age between agriculture
and--thus becoming still more the darling of the populace--almsgiving.
Colleoni died in 1475 and left a large part of his fortune to the
Republic to be spent in the war with the Turks, and a little for a
statue in the Piazza of S. Mark. But the rules against statues being
erected there being adamant, the site was changed to the campo of SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, and Andrea Verrocchio was brought from Florence to
prepare the group. He began it in 1479 and died while still working on
it, leaving word that his pupil, Lorenzo di Credi, should complete it.
Di Credi, however, was discouraged by the authorities, and the task was
given to Alessandro Leopardi (who made the sockets for the three
flagstaffs opposite S. Mark's), and it is his name which is inscribed on
the statue. But to Verrocchio the real honour.
Among the Colleoni statue's great admirers was Robert Browning, who
never tired of telling the story of the hero to those unacquainted with
it.
The vast church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo does for the Dominicans what the
Frari does for the Franciscans; the two churches being the Venetian
equivalents of Florence's S. Maria Novella and Santa Croce. Like too
many of the church façades of Venice, this one is unfinished and
probably ever will be. Unlike the Frari, to which it has a general
resemblance, the church of John and Paul is domed; or rather it
possesses a dome, with golden balls upon its cupola like those of S.
Mark. Within, it is light and immense but far inferior in charm to its
great red rival. It may contain no Titian's ashes, but both Giovanni and
Gentile Bellini lie here; and its forty-six Doges give it a cachet. We
come at once to two of them, for on the outside wall are the tombs of
Doge Jacopo Tiepolo, who gave the land for the church, and of his son,
Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo.
[Illustration: BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI FROM THE STATUE BY ANDREA
VERROCCHIO]
Just within we find Alvise Mocenigo (1570-1577) who was on the throne
when Venice was swept by the plague in which Titian died, and who
offered the church of the Redentore on the Guidecca as a bribe to
Heaven to stop the pestilence. Close by lie his predecessors and
ancestors, Pietro Mocenigo, the admiral, and Giovanni Mocenigo, his
brother, whose reign (1478-1485) was peculiarly belligerent and
witnessed the great fire which destroyed so many treasures in the Ducal
Palace. What he was like you may see in the picture numbered 750 in our
National Gallery, once given to Carpaccio, then to Lorenzo Bastiani, and
now to the school of Gentile Bellini. In this work the Doge kneels to
the Virgin and implores intercession for the plague-stricken city.
Pietro's monument is the most splendid, with a number of statues by
Pietro Lombardi, architect of the Ducal Palace after the same fire. S.
Christopher is among these figures, with a nice little Christ holding on
to his ear.
In the right aisle we find the monument of Bragadino, a Venetian
commander who, on the fall of Cyprus, which he had been defending
against the Turks, was flayed alive. But this was not all the punishment
put upon him by the Turks for daring to hold out so long. First his nose
and ears were cut off; then for some days he was made to work like the
lowest labourer. Then came the flaying, after which his skin was stuffed
with straw and fastened as a figure-head to the Turkish admiral's prow
on his triumphant return to Constantinople. For years the trophy was
kept in the arsenal of that city, but it was removed by some means or
other, purchase or theft, and now reposes in the tomb at which we are
looking. This monument greatly affected old Coryat. "Truly," he says, "I
could not read it with dry eyes."
Farther on is the pretentious Valier monument, a triumph of bad taste.
Here we see Doge Bertucci Valier (1656-1658) with his courtly abundant
dame, and Doge Silvestro Valier (1694-1700), all proud and foolish in
death, as I feel sure they must have been in life to have commissioned
such a memorial. In the choir are more Doges, some of sterner stuff:
Michele Morosini (1382), who after only a few months was killed by a
visitation of the plague, which carried off also twenty thousand more
ordinary Venetians, but who has a tomb of great distinction worthy of
commemorating a full and sagacious reign; Leonardo Loredan (1501-1521)
whose features we know so well by reason of Bellini's portrait in the
National Gallery, the Doge on the throne when the League of Cambray was
formed by the Powers to crush the Republic; and Andrea Vendramini
(1476-1478) who has the most beautiful monument of all, the work of
Tullio and Antonio Lombardi. Vendramini, who came between Pietro and
Giovanni Mocenigo, had a brief and bellicose reign. Lastly here lies
Doge Marco Corner (1365-1368), who made little history, but was a fine
character.
In the left transept we find warlike metal, for here is the modern
statue of the great Sebastian Venier whom we have already seen in the
Ducal Palace as the hero of the battle of Lepanto in 1571, and it is
peculiarly fitting that he should be honoured in the same church as the
luckless Bragadino, for it was at Lepanto that the Turks who had
triumphed at Cyprus and behaved so vilely were for the moment utterly
defeated. On the death of Alvise Mocenigo, Venier was made Doge, at the
age of eighty, but he occupied the throne only for a year and his end
was hastened by grief at another of those disastrous fires, in 1576,
which destroyed some of the finest pictures that the world then
contained. This statue is vigorous, and one feels that it is true to
life, but for the old admiral at his finest and most vivid you must go
to Vienna, where Tintoretto's superb and magnificent portrait of him is
preserved. There he stands, the old sea dog, in his armour, but
bare-headed, and through a window you see the Venetian fleet riding on a
blue sea. It is one of the greatest portraits in the world and it ought
to be in Venice.
The chapel of the Rosary, which is entered just by the statue of Venier,
was built in honour of his Lepanto victory. It was largely destroyed by
fire in 1867, and is shown by an abrupt white-moustached domineering
guide who claims to remember it before that time. Such wood carving as
was saved ("Saved! Saved!" he raps out in tones like a pistol shot) is
in the church proper, in the left aisle. Not to be rescued were Titian's
great "Death of S. Peter, Martyr" a copy of which, presented by King
Victor Emmanuel, is in the church, and a priceless altar-piece by
Giovanni Bellini. The beautiful stone reliefs by Sansovino are in their
original places, and remain to-day as they were mutilated by the flames.
Their unharmed portions prove their exquisite workmanship, and
fortunately photography has preserved for us their unimpaired form. An
American gentleman who followed me into the church, after having
considered for some time as to whether or not he (who had "seen ten
thousand churches") would risk the necessary fifty centimes, expressed
himself, before these Sansovino masterpieces, as glad he came. "These
reliefs," he said to me, "seem to be of a high order of merit." The
restoration of the chapel is being carried out thoroughly but slowly.
Modern Sansovinos, in caps made from the daily paper, are stone-cutting
all day long, and will be for many years to come.
Returning to the church proper, we find more Doges. An earlier Venier
Doge, Antonio (1382-1400), is here. In the left aisle is another fine
Ducal monument, that of Pasquale Malipiero (1457-1462), who succeeded
Foscari on his deposal and was the first Doge to be present at the
funeral of another, for Foscari died only ten days after his fall. Here
also lie Doge Michele Steno (1400-1413), who succeeded Antonio Venier,
and who as a young man is credited with the insult which may be said to
have led to all Marino Faliero's troubles. For Steno having annoyed the
Doge by falling in love with a maid of honour, Faliero forbade him the
palace, and in retaliation Steno scribbled on the throne itself a
scurrilous commentary on the Doge's wife. Faliero's inability to induce
the judges to punish Steno sufficiently was the beginning of that rage
against the State which led to his ruin. It was during Steno's reign
that Carlo Zeno was so foolishly arrested and imprisoned, to the loss of
the Republic of one of its finest patriots.
[Illustration: MADONNA WITH THE MAGDALEN AND S. CATHERINE
FROM THE PAINTING BY GIOVANNI BELLINI
_In the Accademia_]
The next Ducal tomb is the imposing one of the illustrious Tommaso
Mocenigo (1413-1423) who succeeded Steno and brought really great
qualities to his office. Had his counsels been followed the whole
history of Venice might have changed, for he was firm against the
Republic's land campaigns, holding that she had territory enough and
should concentrate on sea power: a sound and sagacious policy which
found its principal opponent in Francesco Foscari, Mocenigo's successor,
and its justification years later in the calamitous League of Cambray,
to which I have referred elsewhere. Mocenigo was not only wise for
Venice abroad, but at home too. A fine of a thousand ducats had been
fixed as the punishment of anyone who, in those days of expenses
connected with so many campaigns, chiefly against the Genoese, dared to
mention the rebuilding or beautifying of the Ducal Palace. But Mocenigo
was not to be deterred, and rising in his place with his thousand ducat
penalty in his hand, he urged with such force upon the Council the
necessity of rebuilding that he carried his point, and the lovely
building much as we now know it was begun. That was in 1422. In 1423
Mocenigo died, his last words being a warning against the election of
Foscari as his successor. But Foscari was elected, and the downfall of
Venice dates from that moment.
The last Ducal monument is that of Niccolò Marcello (1473-1474) in whose
reign the great Colleoni died. Pietro Mocenigo was his successor.
In pictures this great church is not very rich, but there is a Cima in
the right transept, a "Coronation of the Virgin," which is sweet and
mellow. The end wall of this transept is pierced by one of the gayest
and pleasantest windows in the city, from a design of Bartolommeo
Vivarini. It has passages of the intensest blue, thus making it a
perfect thing for a poor congregation to delight in as well as a joy to
the more instructed eye. In the sacristy is an Alvise Vivarini--"Christ
bearing the Cross"--which has good colour, but carrying such a cross
would be an impossibility. Finally let me mention the bronze reliefs of
the life of S. Dominic in the Cappella of that saint in the right aisle.
The one representing his death, though perhaps a little on the florid
side, has some pretty and distinguished touches.
The building which adjoins the great church at right angles is the
Scuola di S. Marco, for which Tintoretto painted his "Miracle of S.
Mark," now in the Accademia, and thus made his reputation. It is to-day
a hospital. The two jolly lions on the façade are by Tullio Lombardi,
the reliefs being famous for the perspective of the steps, and here,
too, are reliefs of S. Mark's miracles. S. Mark is above the door, with
the brotherhood around him.
And now let us look again and again at the Colleoni, from every angle.
But he is noblest from the extreme corner on the Fondamenta Dandolo.