exquisitely cut and figur’d, which beare as many tall masts painted
red, on which upon greate festivals they hang flags and streamers.
This church is also Gotic; yet for the preciousnese of the materials
being of severall rich marbles, aboundance of porphyrie, serpentine,
&c. far exceeding any in Rome, St. Peter’s hardly excepted. I much
admired the splendid historie of our Saviour, compos’d all of Mosaic
over the faciata, below which and over the chiefe gate are four
horses cast in coper as big as the life, the same that formerly were
transported from Rome by Constantine to Byzantium, and thence by the
Venetians hither. They are supported by eight porphyrie columns of very
great size and value. Being come into the Church, you see nothing,
and tread on nothing, but what is precious. The floore is all inlayed
with achats, lazuli’s, calcedons, jaspers, porphyries and other rich
marbles, admirable also for the work; the walls sumptuously incrusted
and presenting to the imagination the shapes of men, birds, houses,
flowers, and a thousand varieties. The roofe is of most excellent
Mosaic; but what most persons admire is the new work of the emblematic
tree at the other passage out of the Church. In the midst of this
rich volto rise five cupolas, the middle very large and susteyn’d by
thirty-six marble columns, eight of which are of precious marbles:
under these cupolas is the high altar, on which is a reliquarie of
severall sorts of jewells, engraven with figures after the Greeke
manner, and set together with plates of pure gold. The altar is cover’d
with a canopy of ophit, on which is sculptur’d the storie of the Bible
and so on the pillars, which are of Parian marble that support it.
Behind these are four other columns of transparent and true Oriental
alabaster, brought hither out of the mines of Solomon’s Temple as they
report. There are many chapells and notable monuments of illustrious
persons, Dukes, Cardinals, &c. as Zeno, Jo. Soranzi, and others: there
is likewise a vast baptisterie of coper.... In one of the corners
lies the body of St. Isidore, brought hither five hundred years since
from the island of Chios.... Going out of the Church they shew’d us
the stone where Alexander III. trod on the neck of the Emperor Fred.
Barbarossa, pronouncing the verse of the psalm, ‘_Super basiliscum_,’
&c. The dores of the Church are of massie coper. There are neare
five hundred pillars in this building, most of them porphyrie and
serpentine, and brought chiefly from Athens and other parts of Greece
formerly in their power. At the corner of the Church are inserted into
the maine wall foure figures as big as life cut in porphyrie, which
they say are the images of four brothers who poysoned one another,
by which means there escheated to the Republiq that vast treasury of
relicques now belonging to the Church. At the other entrance that looks
towards the sea, stands in a small chapell that statue of our Lady,
made (as they affirme) of the same stone or rock out of which Moses
brought water to the murmuring Israelites at Meriba.... The next day,
by favour of the French Ambassador, I had admittance with him to see
the Reliquary call’d here Tresoro di San Marco, which very few even of
travellers are admitted to see. It is a large chamber full of presses.
There are twelve breast-plates, or pieces of pure golden armour studded
with precious stones, and as many crownes dedicated to St. Mark by so
many noble Venetians who had recovered their wives taken at sea by the
Saracens; many curious vases of achats; the cap or cornet of the Dukes
of Venice, one of which had a rubie set on it esteemed worth 200,000
crowns; two unicorn hornes; numerous vases and dishes of achat set
thick with precious stones and vast pearles, [and] divers heads of
Saints inchas’d in gold.
JOHN EVELYN.
THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK
On the 25th of February, 1340, there fell out a wonderful thing in this
land; for during three days the waters rose continually, and in the
night there was fearful rain and tempest, such as had never been heard
of. So great was the storm that the waters rose three cubits higher
than had ever been known in Venice; and an old fisherman being in his
little boat in the canal of St. Mark, reached with difficulty the Riva
di San Marco, and there he fastened his boat, and waited the ceasing
of the storm. And it is related that, at the time this storm was at
its highest, there came an unknown man, and besought him that he would
row him over to San Giorgio Maggiore, promising to pay him well; and
the fisherman replied, ‘How is it possible to go to San Giorgio? We
shall sink by the way!’ but the man only besought him the more that
he should set forth. So, seeing that it was the will of God, he arose
and rowed over to San Giorgio Maggiore; and the man landed there and
desired the boatman to wait. In a short time he returned with a young
man; and they said, ‘Now row towards San Niccolò di Lido.’ And the
fisherman said, ‘How can one possibly go so far with one oar?’ and they
said, ‘Row boldly, for it shall be possible with thee, and thou shalt
be well paid.’ And he went; and it appeared to him as if the waters
were smooth. Being arrived at San Niccolò di Lido, the two men landed,
and returned with a third, and having entered into the boat, they
commanded the fisherman that he should row beyond the two castles. And
the tempest raged continually. Being come to the open sea, they beheld
approaching, with such terrific speed that it appeared to fly over the
waters, an enormous galley full of demons (as it is written in the
Chronicles, and Marco Sabellino also makes mention of this miracle):
the said barque approached the castles to overwhelm Venice and to
destroy it utterly. Anon the sea, which had hitherto been tumultuous,
became calm; and these three men, having made the sign of the cross,
exorcised the demons, and commanded them to depart, and immediately
the galley or the ship vanished. Then these three men commanded the
fisherman to land them, the one at San Niccolò di Lido, the other at
San Giorgio Maggiore, and the third at San Marco. And when he had
landed the third, the fisherman, notwithstanding the miracle he had
witnessed, desired that he would pay him, and he replied, ‘Thou art
right; go now to the Doge and to the Procuratore of St. Mark, and tell
him what thou hast seen, for Venice would have been overwhelmed had
it not been for us three. I am St. Mark the Evangelist, the protector
of this city; the other is the brave knight St. George, and he whom
thou didst take up at the Lido is the holy Bishop St. Nicholas. Say to
the Doge and to the Procuratore that they are to pay thee, and tell
them likewise that this tempest rose because of a certain schoolmaster
dwelling at San Felice, who did sell his soul to the devil, and
afterwards hanged himself.’ And the fisherman replied, ‘If I should
tell them this, they would not believe me!’ Then St. Mark took off a
ring which was worth five ducats, and he said, ‘Show them this, and
tell them when they look in the sanctuary they will not find it,’ and
thereupon he disappeared. The next morning, the fisherman presented
himself before the Doge, and related all he had seen the night before,
and showed him the ring for a sign. And the Procuratore having sent for
the ring, and sought it in the usual place, found it not; by reason
of which miracle the fisherman was paid, and a solemn procession was
ordained, giving thanks to God, and to the relics of the three holy
saints who rest in our land, and who delivered us from this great
danger. The ring was given to Signor Marco Lordano and to Signor
Andrea Dandolo, the Procuratore, who placed it in the sanctuary; and,
moreover, a perpetual provision was made for the aged fisherman.
MRS. JAMESON.
ST. GEORGE OF THE GREEKS
This Church of St. George of the Greeks is one of Venice’s most
wonderful places. One has the impression of a sanctuary which is at the
same time a treasure-house; gold everywhere--furniture, eikons, lamps,
embroideries--not gilding, but real, heavy gold. The vestments are
stiff with it. The bearded golden priest goes backwards and forwards,
the gold-embroidered curtains opening and shutting for him, revealing
and hiding a number of tapers and incense and shining encrusted walls;
while the acolytes, in slender folded linen smocks, with gold stoles
crossed over their backs, kneel before the rood-screen. There is a
sense of the departed splendours of Judaism, of a Solomon’s Temple
behind those half-drawn curtains; and every time that _pope_ came forth
a name rose up in my mind--Melchizedek, he who was a priest and also a
king. After that service at St. George’s of the Greeks, we walked home
through St. Mark’s, entering it by the sacristy. The hot air, smoke of
incense and dust, the shuffle of human beings and snuffling of priests
caught one by the throat after that fair empty splendour of the Greek
church. Caught me at least, subduing, crushing, perhaps rumpling my
imagination and feelings, but making them humaner. There is, in this
magnificence, a share of shabbiness; in this venerable place the sense
of the deciduous, the perishable, which, in a way, is also a sense of
the eternal. There is room, in St. Mark’s solemnity, for such as that
consumptive girl who made head garlands for cemeteries. And St. Mark’s
is the greater for her poor presence.
VERNON LEE.
A VENETIAN DAY
On her still lake the city sits
While barque and boat beside her flits,
Nor hears, her soft siesta taking,
The Adriatic billows breaking.
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
Sunset.... It is the hour when Venice puts forth her
stealing charm.... At the evening hour, now, as in old
times, a spirit takes Venice and folds it in loving arms,
whispering words that are not even guessed by day.
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.
Night in Venice: the brilliant stars twinkle in the little
pools of water which the sea has left on the marshes, the
breeze murmurs in the verdant seaweeds. From time to time
we perceive the light from a gondola gliding over the
water. The voice of the Adriatic breaking on the opposite
shores of the Lido reaches us in a monotonous and majestic
sound. We give ourselves up to a thousand delicious dreams.
GEORGE SAND.
SUNRISE IN VENICE
The sun rose upon Venice, and presented to me the city, whose image
I had so early acquired. In the heart of a multitude, there was
stillness. I looked out from the balcony on the crowded quays of
yesterday; one or two idle porters were stretched in sleep on the
scorching pavement, and a solitary gondola stole over the gleaming
waters. This was all.
It was the Villeggiatura, and the absence of the nobility from the city
invested it with an aspect even more deserted than it would otherwise
have exhibited. I cared not for this. For me, indeed, Venice, silent
and desolate, owned a greater charm than it could have commanded
with all its feeble imitation of the worthless bustle of a modern
metropolis. I congratulated myself on the choice season of the year
in which I had arrived at this enchanting city. I do not think that I
could have endured to be disturbed by the frivolous sights and sounds
of society, before I had formed a full acquaintance with all those
marvels of art that command our constant admiration while gliding about
the lost capital of the Doges, and before I had yielded a free flow to
those feelings of poetic melancholy which swell up in the soul as we
contemplate this memorable theatre of human action, wherein have been
performed so many of man’s most famous and most graceful deeds.
If I were to assign the particular quality which conduces to that
dreamy and voluptuous existence which men of high imagination
experience in Venice, I should describe it as the feeling of
abstraction which is remarkable in that city and peculiar to it. Venice
is the only city which can yield the magical delights of solitude.
All is still and silent. No rude sound disturbs your reveries;
Fancy, therefore, is not put to flight. No rude sound distracts your
self-consciousness. This renders existence intense. We feel everything.
And we feel thus keenly in a city not only eminently beautiful, not
only abounding in wonderful creations of art, but each step of which
is hallowed ground, quick with associations that, in their more
various nature, their nearer relation to ourselves, and perhaps their
more picturesque character, exercise a greater influence over the
imagination than the more antique story of Greece and Rome. We feel all
this in a city, too, which, although her lustre be indeed dimmed, can
still count among her daughters maidens fairer than the orient pearls
with which her warriors once loved to deck them. Poetry, Tradition, and
Love, these are the graces that have invested with an ever-charming
cestus this Aphrodite of cities.
LORD BEACONSFIELD.
VENICE: NIGHT ILLUSION--MORNING REALITY
If, instead of entering Venice by the Adriatic, the visitor ... crosses
at night the long viaduct which connects the town with the mainland,
what a strange impression he will receive! To glide silently in the
middle of the night over still black waters, to see glimmering lanterns
flitting right and left, to hear the splash of an oar on the water, to
glide between high banks of architecture, processions of palaces that
flit by more felt than seen, as in an etching of Piranesi,--to pass
under bridges, hear cries without catching their meaning, every moment
to brush past those sombre catafalques which are other gondolas gliding
through the darkness as silently as your own,--then, from time to time,
to see as in a flash of lightning the outline of a figure leaning
forward on its oar, a lamp burning and casting a keen reflection
at the corner of a winding canal, a window brilliantly lighted and
making a flaring hole in the midst of night,--to get entangled in
dark water-lanes, turning, twisting, moving, without the feeling of
movement, and all at once to land at a staircase which plunges its
steps down into the water, and leads into a large and noble hall of
fine architectural proportions, in a palace gleaming with lights, full
of life and activity, and of busy men who bring one back after that
strange journey to the commonplaces of hotel life,--this is certainly
the most wonderful of dreams, a sort of ideal nightmare.
It has scarcely lasted an hour; but you are tired from a long journey;
you soon fall asleep from weariness, hardly asking yourself, in the
first uncertainty and fatigue, over what Styx you have sailed, what
strange city you have traversed, and whether you have not been the dupe
of a dream. In the morning you rush out upon the balcony, and there,
amidst dazzling fight and a very debauch of colours, with a shimmering
of pearl and silver, triumphant upon the waters of her lagoon, you
behold that Venice which you have never seen except in Byron, in Otway,
Musset, and George Sand. She glows, she sings in silvery radiance; here
in very truth is the Queen of the Adriatic! A pigeon of St. Mark’s
flies over the balcony, throwing its shadow on the flagstones, and you
cherish the long-awaited sight! Here are the islands, the Arsenal, the
Lido, the Mole, the Redentore, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Ducal Palace,
the gondoliers; in a word, all the city of Canaletto! But is it not an
illusive scene, a phantasmagoria, a treacherous dream?--if it were but
a mirage after all?
And when you begin to wander about the town, stupefied, dazzled,
confused, blinded; when you go into the museums, the churches; when
cradled in your gondola you pass down that marvellous avenue, the Grand
Canal; when you shall have seen face to face, in their full glory,
Veronese, Tintoret, Vittoria, the gentle Carpaccio, the Bellini, those
sweet and solemn masters, the Vivarini, the Palmas, the great Titian,
Sansovino, Verocchio, the Lombardi, the elegant and noble Leopardi,
Calendario the rebel, whose genius did not save him from condign
punishment; when you shall have viewed all these painters, sculptors,
architects, these mighty spirits who, in the palaces of the Doges, at
the Frari, in the Arsenal, at Santa Maria Formosa, at San Rocco and
the Procuratie, or on either bank of the Grand Canal, have celebrated
the glory of Venice with their gorgeous palettes, have moulded and
carved the bronze and marble with their puissant hands, have raised to
the sky the clear profiles of the campaniles in their hues of white
and rose, have cast upon the green mirror of the waters of Canareggio
the delicate network of Gothic palaces, or the sudden projections of
classic entablatures and balconies; after all this, you will come in
worn out, confused, overwhelmed by the force and greatness of these men
of the Renaissance, and you will call out to your gondolier, ‘To the
Lido,’ in order that you may find rest in Nature from the dazzling
things of art. In another week you will be looking at Tintoret with
a careless eye; for masterpieces crowd too thick upon one another;
bronzes, enamels, triptychs, marbles, figures of doges lying on their
sculptured tombs, famous condottieri buried in their armour, or
standing haughty and valorous in full panoply on their mausoleums,
will leave you indifferent. You are hungry for the open air, for the
lagoon, the changing aspects of the pearl-grey waves, for Nature’s
own reflections as Guardi and Canaletto caught them.... As you get
further from the shore, you turn to enjoy the view, for it is the most
splendid scene ever dreamt by the imagination; and before this picture
of Venice--a picture signed by the Master of masters--you forget the
immortal works made by hands that have been stiff for centuries.
CHARLES YRIARTE.
SUNSET AND VENICE
This perfect evening slowly falls
Without a stain, without a cloud;
The sun has set--and all the bells
Of Venice in the skies are loud,
Clashing and chiming far and near
‘Ave Maria,’ while the moon,
Large-globed and red, climbs through the mist
To loiter o’er the dark lagoon.
And now the loud o’ermastering sound
Ceases, and silence, like a tide,
Flows o’er the shores of sea and sky,
And the gray earth is sanctified.
Beneath me the long gardens lie;
Cool alleys trellised with the vine;
And on the rustling mulberry-trees
Shadows the solitary pine.
Stone-black, it spreads against the fire
That westward reddens and above
Pales into gold and rose and pearl,
And then to azure, warm as love.
How sweet the air, how calm the eve!
How still the light, how still the pine!
But O the more I know their rest,
The more I feel it is not mine.
Great Nature loves our joy and calm;
But to our restless scorn and grief,
Wild weariness of love, she gives
No tenderness, and no relief.
Unkind, alas, she is to me!
What has her heart to do with strife?
‘Seek peace,’ she says, ‘my law of peace.’--
I cannot, let me live my life.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
AT SUNSET
Fusina’s fence of boughs
No more allows
Me vision of a red wheel in the west,
Yet cloud and wave retain
Their splendid stain,
Ere Venice by the night be repossessed.
I drift, as in a dream,
Down the blue stream
By oozy beds of weed and shell and slime;
And Gigio, when he breaks
The water, makes
A lazy sound that fits the silent time.
Now, with the sinking fires,
Yon train of spires
Melts on its mirror in a mist of grey,
While an obscurer pall
Wraps the white wall
Of lonely hills that deep in distance lay.
Swung high in convent-tower
Bells mark the hour
For grave Armenian monks to bend in prayer;
They from their quiet isle
Watch the last smile
Of sunset fade upon the golden air.
Ah! could the pageant stay!
Would yesterday
Were impotent to sweep it from my sight;
This were my hour to die,
And silently
To step from world of flame to world of night!
PERCY PINKERTON.
SUNSET
The autumn evening dies, and all the west
Is warm soft gold to half the heaven’s height:
And in the silent air I float and rest
On waters that are lovers of the light.
The clear curved dome of the Redeemer’s Church
Is black against the yellow arch of sky;
And purple-peaked within the sunset’s porch,
The Euganean hills like islands lie--
Children of Padua, but to Venice friends!
Who that has seen them in the evening hour,
But has forgotten earthly cares and ends,
All things but Love that never loses power;
And from St. George among the Seaweed, set
A sapphire isle in golden waters, down
To the Armenian Convent where the fret
Of the sea winds has turned the cypress brown,
The spacious waters in full tide are spread,
A lustrous cloth of gold with colours splashed;--
Blue liquid belts and mirrored clouds blood-red,
Green blazing sea-marsh, broidered waves that flashed
Now ebony, now scarlet, when the tide,
Smoothing the ripple on the shallow’s rim,
Flowed strong to southward where, in towered pride,
Islanded Venice sang her evening hymn.
How calm, how passionless, how golden-fair!
Beauty, I thought, stood tiptoe on his height--
When down the near canal, and tossed in air,
Two lofty sails moved slow athwart the light;
And their tall masts and soaring booms aslope,
Were sky-companions of the lonely dome,
That on Giudecca bids the sinner hope,
And seen from Malamocco speaks of home.
The moving sails, the thought of ocean’s life,
The sense of human will within the ship,
Enriched the peace with which they seemed at strife,
And filled the cup of Beauty to the lip.
O thou, who wast beside me when we loved
This vision of the evening and the sea;
Why art thou silent, why so far removed?
Implore of Death, ask God to set thee free.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
A VENETIAN NIGHT
’Tis a goodly night; the cloudy wind which blew
From the Levant hath crept into its cave,
And the broad moon has brightened. What a stillness!...
Around me are the stars and waters--
Worlds mirror’d in the ocean, goodlier sight
Than torches glared back by a gaudy glass;
And the great element, which is to space
What ocean is to earth, spreads its blue depths,
Soften’d with the first breathings of the spring;
The high moon sails upon her beauteous way,
Serenely smoothing o’er the lofty walls
Of those tall piles and sea-girt palaces,
Whose porphyry pillars, and whose costly fronts,
Fraught with the orient spoil of many marbles,
Like altars ranged along the broad canal,
Seem each a trophy of some mighty deed
Rear’d up from out the waters, scarce less strangely
Than those more massy and mysterious giants
Of architecture, those Titanian fabrics,
Which point in Egypt’s plains to times that have
No other record. All is gentle: nought
Stirs rudely; but, congenial with the night,
Whatever walks is gliding like a spirit.
The tinklings of some vigilant guitars
Of sleepless lovers to a wakeful mistress,
And cautious opening of the casement, showing
That he is not unheard; while her young hand,
Fair as the moonlight of which it seems part,
So delicately white, it trembles in
The act of opening the forbidden lattice,
To let in love through music, makes his heart
Thrill like his lyre-strings at the sight; the dash
Phosphoric of the oar, or rapid twinkle
Of the far lights of skimming gondolas,
And the responsive voices of the choir
Of boatmen answering back with verse for verse;
Some dusky shadow checkering the Rialto;
Some glimmering palace roof, or tapering spire,
Are all the sights and sounds which here pervade
The ocean-born and earth-commanding city--
How sweet and soothing is this hour of calm!
I thank thee, Night! for thou hast chased away
Those horrid bodements which, amidst the throng,
I could not dissipate: and with the blessing
Of thy benign and quiet influence,
Now will I to my couch, although to rest
Is almost wronging such a night as this.
LORD BYRON.
VENETIAN NOCTURNE
Down the narrow Calle where the moonlight cannot enter,
The houses are so high;
Silent and alone we pierced the night’s dim core and centre--
Only you and I.
Clear and sad our footsteps rang along the hollow pavement,
Sounding like a bell;
Sounding like a voice that cries to souls in Life’s enslavement,
‘There is Death as well!’
Down the narrow dark we went, until a sudden whiteness
Made us hold our breath;
All the white Salute towers and domes in moonlit brightness,--
Ah! could this be Death?
A. MARY F. ROBINSON (_Madame Duclaux_).
NIGHT IN THE PIAZZA
There have been times, not many, but enough
To quiet all repinings of the heart;
There have been times, in which my tranquil soul,
No longer nebulous, sparse, errant, seemed
Upon its axis solidly to move,
Centred and fast: no mere elastic blank
For random rays to traverse unretained,
But rounding luminous its fair ellipse
Around its central sun....
O happy hours!
O compensation ample for long days
Of what impatient tongues call wretchedness!
O beautiful, beneath the magic moon,
To walk the watery way of palaces!
O beautiful, o’ervaulted with gemmed blue,
The spacious court, with colour and with gold,
With cupolas, and pinnacles, and points,
And crosses multiplex, and lips and balls
(Wherewith the bright stars unreproving mix,
Nor scorn by hasty eyes to be confused);
Fantastically perfect this low pile
Of Oriental glory; these long ranges
Of classic chiselling, this gay flickering crowd,
And the calm campanile. Beautiful!
O beautiful! and that seemed more profound
This morning by the pillar when I sat
Under the great arcade, at the review,
And took, and held, and ordered on my brain
The faces, and the voices, and the whole mass
O’ the motley facts of existence flowing by!
O perfect, if ’twere all!
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
VENETA MARINA
INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS
The masts rise white to the stars,
White on the night of the sky,
Out of the water’s night,
And the stars lean down to them white.
Ah! how the stars seem nigh;
How far away are the stars!