CHURCHES HERE AND THERE
S. Maria dei Miracoli--An exquisite casket--S. Maria Formosa--Pictures
of old Venice--The Misericordia--Tintoretto's house--The Madonna
dell'Orto--Tintoretto's "Presentation"--"The Last Judgment"--A
Bellini--Titian's "Tobias"--S. Giobbe--Il Moro--Venetian by-ways--A few
minor beauties.
Among the smaller beauties of Venice--its cabinet architectural gems, so
to speak--S. Maria dei Miracoli comes first. This little church, so
small as to be almost a casket, is tucked away among old houses on a
canal off the Rio di S. Marina, and it might be visited after SS.
Giovanni e Paolo as a contrast to the vastness of that "Pathéon de
Venise," as the sacristan likes to call it. S. Maria dei Miracoli, so
named from a picture of the Madonna over the altar which has performed
many miracles, is a monument to the genius of the Lombardo family:
Pietro and his sons having made it, in the fifteenth century, for the
Amadi. To call the little church perfect is a natural impulse, although
no doubt fault could be found with it: Ruskin, for example, finds some,
but try as he will to be cross he cannot avoid conveying an impression
of pleasure in it. For you and me, however, it is a joy unalloyed: a
jewel of Byzantine Renaissance architecture, made more beautiful by gay
and thoughtful detail. It is all of marble, white and coloured, with a
massive wooden ceiling enriched and lightened by paint. Venice has
nothing else at all like it. Fancy, in this city of aisles and columns
and side chapels and wall tombs, a church with no interruptions or
impediments whatever. The floor has its chairs (such poor cane-bottomed
things too, just waiting for a rich patron to put in something good of
rare wood, well carved and possibly a little gilded), and nothing else.
The walls are unvexed. At the end is a flight of steps leading to the
altar, and that is all, except that there is not an inch of the church
which does not bear traces of a loving care. Every piece of the marble
carving is worth study--the flowers and foliations, the birds and cupids
and dolphins, and not least the saint with a book on the left ambone.
S. Maria Formosa, one of the churches mentioned in the beautiful legend
of Bishop Magnus--to be built, you remember, where he saw a white cloud
rest--which still has a blue door-curtain, is chiefly famous for a
picture by a great Venetian painter who is too little represented in the
city--Palma the elder. Palma loved beautiful, opulent women and rich
colours, and even when he painted a saint, as he does here--S. Barbara
(whose jawbone we saw in the S. Rocco treasury)--he could not much
reduce his fine free fancy and therefore he made her more of a
commanding queen than a Christian martyr. This church used to be visited
every year by the Doge for a service in commemoration of the capture of
the brides, of which we heard at S. Pietro in Castello. The campo, once
a favourite centre for bull-fights and alfresco plays, has some fine
palaces, notably those at No. 5250, the Malipiero, and No. 6125, the red
Donà.
At the south of the campo is the Campiello Querini where we find the
Palazzo Querini Stampalia, a seventeenth-century mansion, now the
property of the city, which contains a library and a picture gallery.
Among the older pictures which I recall are a Holy Family by Lorenzo di
Credi in Room III and a Martyrdom of San Sebastian by Annibale Caracci
in Room IV. A Judith boldly labelled Giorgione is not good. But although
no very wonderful work of art is here, the house should be visited for
its scenes of Venetian life, which bring the Venice of the past very
vividly before one. Here you may see the famous struggles between the
two factions of gondoliers, the Castellani and the Nicolotti, actually
in progress on one of the bridges; the departure of the Bucintoro with
the Doge on board to wed the Adriatic; the wedding ceremony off S.
Niccolò; the marriage of a noble lady at the Salute; a bull-fight on the
steps of the Rialto bridge; another in the courtyard of the Ducal
Palace; a third in the Piazza of S. Mark in 1741; the game of pallone
(now played in Venice no more) in the open space before the Gesuiti;
fairs in the Piazzetta; church festivals and regattas. The paintings
being contemporary, these records are of great value in ascertaining
costumes, architecture, and so forth.
I speak elsewhere of the Palazzo Giovanelli as being an excellent
destination to give one's gondolier when in doubt. After leaving it,
with Giorgione's landscape still glowing in the memory, there are worse
courses to take than to tell the poppé to row on up the Rio di Noale to
the Misericordia, in which Tintoretto painted his "Paradiso". This great
church, once the chief funeral church of Venice, is now a warehouse,
lumber rooms, workshops. Beside it is the head-quarters of the _pompes
funèbres_, wherein a jovial fellow in blue linen was singing as I
passed.
At the back of the Misericordia is an ancient abbey, now also
secularized, with a very charming doorway surmounted by a pretty relief
of cherubs. Farther north is the Sacco of the Misericordia opening into
the lagoon. Here are stored the great rafts of timber that come down the
rivers from the distant hill-country, and now and then you may see one
of the huts in which the lumber-men live on the voyage.
From the Misericordia it is a short distance to the Fondamenta dei Mori,
at No. 3399 of which is the Casa di Tintoretto, with a relief of the
great painter's head upon it. Here he lived and died. The curious carved
figures on this and the neighbouring house are thought to represent
Morean merchants who once congregated here. Turning up the Campo dei
Mori we come to the great church of the Madonna dell'Orto, where
Tintoretto was buried. It should be visited in the late afternoon,
because the principal reason for seeing it is Tintoretto's
"Presentation," and this lovely picture hangs in a dark chapel which
obtains no light until the sinking sun penetrates its window and falls
on the canvas. To my mind it is one of the most beautiful pictures that
Tintoretto painted--a picture in which all his strength has turned to
sweetness. We have studied Titian's version in the Accademia, where it
has a room practically to itself (see opposite page 36); Tintoretto's is
hung badly and has suffered seriously from age and conditions. Titian's
was painted in 1540; this afterwards, and the painter cheerfully
accepted the standard set by the earlier work. Were I in the position of
that imaginary millionaire whom I have seen in the mind's eye busy in
the loving task of tenderly restoring Venice's most neglected
masterpieces, it is this "Presentation" with which I should begin.
[Illustration: THE PRESENTATION
FROM THE PAINTING BY TINTORETTO
_In the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto_]
The Madonna dell'Orto is not a church much resorted to by visitors, as
it lies far from the beaten track, but one can always find some one to
open it, and as likely as not the sacristan will be seated by the
rampino at the landing steps, awaiting custom.
The church was built in the fourteenth century as a shrine for a figure
of the Madonna, which was dug up in a garden that spread hereabout and
at once performed a number of miracles. On the façade is a noble slab of
porphyry, and here is S. Christopher with his precious burden. The
campanile has a round top and flowers sprout from the masonry. Within,
the chief glory is Tintoretto. His tomb is in the chapel to the right of
the chancel, where hang, on the left, his scene of "The Worship of the
Golden Calf," and opposite it his "Last Judgment".
The "Last Judgment" is one of his Michael-Angelesque works and also one
of his earliest, before he was strong enough or successful enough (often
synonymous states) to be wholly himself. But it was a great effort, and
the rushing cataract is a fine and terrifying idea. "The Worship of the
Golden Calf" is a work interesting not only as a dramatic scriptural
scene full of thoughtful detail, but as containing a portrait of the
painter and his wife. Tintoretto is the most prominent of the calf's
bearers; his Faustina is the woman in blue.
Two very different painters--the placid Cima and the serene Bellini--are
to be seen here too, each happily represented. Cima has a sweet and
gentle altar-piece depicting the Baptist and two saints, and Bellini's
"Madonna and Child" is rich and warm and human. Even the aged and very
rickety sacristan--too tottering perhaps for any reader of the book to
have the chance of seeing--was moved by Bellini. "Bellissima!" he said
again and again, taking snuff the while.
The neighbouring church of S. Marziale is a gay little place famous for
a "Tobias and the Angel" by Titian. This is a cheerful work. Tobias is a
typical and very real Venetian boy, and his dog, a white and brown
mongrel, also peculiarly credible. The chancel interrupts an
"Annunciation," by Tintoretto's son, the angel being on one side and the
Virgin on the other.
And now for the most north-westerly point of the city that I have
reached--the church of S. Giobbe, off the squalid Cannaregio which leads
to Mestre and Treviso. This church, which has, I suppose, the poorest
congregation of all, is dedicated to one of whom I had never before
thought as a saint, although his merits are unmistakable--Job. Its
special distinction is the beautiful chapel of the high altar designed
by the Lombardi (who made S. Maria dei Miracoli) for Doge Cristoforo
Moro to the glory of S. Bernardino of Siena. S. Bernardino is here and
also S. Anthony of Padua and S. Lawrence. At each corner is an exquisite
little figure holding a relief.
On the floor is the noble tombstone of the Doge himself (1462-1471) by
Pietro Lombardi. Moro had a distinguished reign, which saw triumphs
abroad and the introduction of printing into the city; but to the
English he has yet another claim to distinction, and that is that most
probably he was the Moro of Venice whom Shakespeare when writing
_Othello_ assumed to be a Moor.
The church also has a chapel with a Delia Robbia ceiling and sculpture
by Antonio Rossellino. The best picture is by Paris Bordone, a mellow
and rich group of saints.
This book has been so much occupied with the high-ways of Venice--and
far too superficially, I fear--that the by-ways have escaped attention;
and yet the by-ways are the best. The by-ways, however, are for each of
us separately, whereas the high-ways are common property: let that--and
conditions of space--be my excuse. The by-ways must be sought
individually, either straying where one's feet will or on some such
thorough plan as that laid down in Col. Douglas's most admirable book,
_Venice on Foot_. Some of my own unaided discoveries I may mention just
as examples, but there is no real need: as good a harvest is for every
quiet eye.
There is the tiniest medieval cobbler's shop you ever saw under a
staircase in a courtyard reached by the Sotto-portico Secondo Lucatello,
not far from S. Zulian, with a medieval cobbler cobbling in it day and
night. There is a relief of graceful boys on the Rio del Palazzo side of
the Doges' Palace; there is a S. George and Dragon on a building on the
Rio S. Salvatore just behind the Bank of Italy; there is a doorway at
3462 Rio di S. Margherita; there is the Campo S. Maria Mater Domini with
a house on the north side into whose courtyard much ancient sculpture
has been built. There is a yellow palace on the Rio di S. Marina whose
reflection in the water is most beautiful. There is the overhanging
street leading to the Ponte del Paradiso. There is the Campo of S.
Giacomo dell'Orio, which is gained purely by accident, with its church
in the midst and a vast trattoria close by, and beautiful vistas beneath
this sottoportico and that. There are the two ancient chimneys seen from
the lagoon on a house behind Danieli's. There is the lovely Gothic
palace with a doorway and garden seen from the Ponte dell'Erbe--the
Palazzo Van Axel. There is the red palace seen from the Fondamenta
dell'Osmarin next the Ponte del Diavolo. There is in the little calle
leading from the Campo Daniele Manin to the lovely piece of architecture
known as the staircase dal Bovolo--a bovolo being a snail--from its
convolutions. This staircase, which is a remnant of the Contarini palace
and might be a distant relative of the tower of Pisa, is a shining
reproach to the adjacent architecture, some of which is quite new. It is
a miracle of delicacy and charm, and should certainly be sought for. And
above all there is the dancing reflection of the rippling water in the
sun on the under sides of bridges seen from the gondola; and of all the
bridges that give one this effect of gentle restless radiancy none is
better than the Ponte S. Polo.