of her heroes are set up, the one of a man of war, the other of a
comedian: in the Campo di SS. Giovanni e Paolo the statue of Bartolomeo
Colleoni, in the Campo di San Bartolomeo that of Carlo Goldoni. The
first is a warrior on horseback in full armour, uplifted high above
the square, disdaining the companionship of the puny mortals who
saunter without a purpose to and fro under his feet. Horse and rider
stand self-sufficient and alone; one spirit breathes in both: in the
contour of the stern face of the warrior, with its massive chin and
proudly disdainful lip, in his throat with the muscles standing out
like ropes upon it, and in the sweep of his capacious brow, under which
the keenly penetrating eyes hold their object in a grip of iron; and,
for the horse, in every line of his superbly curving neck, in the acute
serenity of his down-looking eye, and in each curling lock of his mane
that seem as if moved together by one controlling impulse. How clear
the outline of his skull, everywhere visible beneath its fine covering
of flesh and muscle! and his body, like the body of his master, how
perfectly responsive an instrument it is! There is nothing here of
that wild disorder of the beast untamed, which is mistaken sometimes
for strength. The hand of Colleoni is light upon the bridle, the horse
glories in a subjection that is itself a triumph: he and his master are
one. Do but compare this for a moment with the prodigious mass, the
plunging man and beast, that overlook the Riva degli Schiavoni--Victor
Emanuel on horseback. It is not altogether an arbitrary contrast; the
two great monuments seem to represent Venice before the fall and Venice
after. What unity of purpose, what hope of conquest is there in those
monstrous figures on the Riva? Beneath this redundancy of flesh and
armour how shall they prevail against the world? They are not only
different in degree, they are of a different species from Verocchio’s
horse and rider. The spirit of the first Renaissance is in every line
of his great statue--its strength, agility and decorative skill. How
studied is the symmetry, the static perfection of the whole! how
strongly and yet how delicately he emphasises the rectangular framework
of the design! The rod of Colleoni, the trappings of his horse, the
tail and legs and body-line--each is made contributive, while the
backward poise of the rider balances the forward motion of the horse,
and all is thus drawn into the scheme. It is all willed, but with that
spontaneity of will which men call inspiration.
This statue, which so marvellously sums up in sculpture the central aim
of Venice as a state in the fifteenth century, offers an instructive
contrast to that in the Campo di San Bartolomeo, where the comedian
Goldoni, though raised above the level of the square, still seems a
companionable part of the life that passes around him, moving in its
midst as he moved amid the life of the eighteenth century in Venice,
meditating upon it, observing, loving it, faithfully and fearlessly
recording it. Marked by a realistic fidelity and insight worthy of a
greater age, Dal Zotto’s statue of Goldoni is in its own way itself a
masterpiece and one of the noblest works of modern art in Venice, full
of sympathy and understanding and admirable in execution. The sculptor
might seem to have lived as an intimate with Goldoni, and the realism
of his treatment suits the subject singularly well. The comedian is not
aloft upon a pedestal, remote from men, in glorious aloofness; he is
raised but slightly above our heads, not much observed of the crowd,
but observing all. Briskly he steps along, in buckled shoes, frilled
shirt and neckerchief, his coat flying open, and a book or manuscript
bulging from the pocket of it, his waistcoat slackly buttoned, his
cocked hat tipped jauntily upon his forehead over his powdered periwig.
As he goes he crushes his gloves with one hand at his back and with the
other marks progress with his cane. It is a strong, taut little figure,
tending to roundness, with a world of suggestiveness in every motion,
an admirable mingling of thought and humour in the face that laughs
down on this strange, grotesque, conventional, lovable Venice. What
a strange contrast is this, of the slippered sage of the eighteenth
century, who houses the swallows in the loose folds of his slouch hat,
and the armed hero of the fifteenth, whose every muscle is alert,
responsive to the stern controlling will! Goldoni is a sage upon a
different platform, meditating upon a different world. His Venice is
the Venice of Longhi; she has become pedestrian; she has become a
theme for comedy. Comedy might have found plentiful food, no doubt,
in the Venice that employed Colleoni, the Venice of the first great
painters. There is a fund of humour and whimsicality in the strangely
fascinating faces of Carpaccio’s citizens. Yet try to picture them held
up to ridicule by one of themselves upon the stage, and the imagination
faints; the thing is inconceivable. In Goldoni’s age the interest of
life was shifted to another field, and he stands as the central figure,
the leader in a new campaign, representative not of its vices or its
vanities or its follies, but of the solid virtues of which these are
the shady side. He is one of those happy spirits which the reactionary
age of small things produced, not only in Italy but everywhere in
the eighteenth century; a spirit of clear, calm insight and capable
judgment, neither enamoured of the life of his small circle nor
embittered against it, content to live in the midst of it in serenity
and truth.
Goldoni, Colleoni, each is representative of a period in the history
of the Republic, periods widely separated in temper and in time, and
yet related intimately; so intimately indeed that the period of which
Goldoni is the master-spirit is actually foreshadowed in the very
presence of the superb warrior of the other public square. To study the
process of the growth and the decadence of the Republic is to find that
there is no convenient preconceived theory with which it will fit in;
it rebels against such manipulation, as everything individual rebels
against the ready-made. We need rather to look upon Venice as upon a
plant that springs and comes to its perfection and fades slowly away,
changing and developing in indefinable gradations, showing at every
stage some surprising revival from the past, some strange anticipation
of the future. In the fifteenth century itself, while the earliest
artists were at work for Venice at Murano, and Carpaccio was as yet
unborn, Venice already bore about with her the seeds of her decay.
In fact, the growth of her art coincides with the slow relaxation of
her hold upon the bulwarks of her policy both at home and abroad.
The election of Foscari as Doge in 1423 marks a moment of change in
Venetian life and government, indicated by the substitution of the
title Signoria for that of Commune Venetiarum, and by the abolition of
the _arengo_--yet Carpaccio has still his grave citizens to portray,
and Ursula sleeping the sleep of infancy. Among the exhortations which
tradition has handed down to us as addressed from time to time to the
Venetians by Doge or by ambassador is that supposed to have been spoken
on his death-bed by Foscari’s precursor, the Doge Tommaso Mocenigo. It
might have been spoken for our instruction, instead of as a reminder
to his own subjects of what they knew so well, so vivid an impression
is to be derived from it of the inner life of Venice during the first
thirty years of the fifteenth century. Whether legendary or not, these
exhortations have something significant and individual about them
which really illuminates; it is as if a light were suddenly flashed
into a vast room, pressing our vision upon one point, providing a
nucleus of knowledge about which scattered ideas and impressions may
group themselves intelligibly. Whatever they are, they are not the
fabrication of a later time which has lost understanding of the spirit
that animated the past. If the portrait they give is imaginary, they
have seized upon the salient features and endowed them with a vitality
which the photograph, however literal, too often lacks. Mocenigo’s
farewell address is an impressive portico opening upon a new period
in the career of Venice, a strange trumpet-note of ill omen on the
threshold of her greatest glory. Behold, he says, the fulness of the
life you have achieved, of the riches you have stored; turn now and
preserve it; there is peril in the path beyond; there is twilight and
decay and death. Your eyes, full of the light, have no knowledge of the
shadow; but mine, dim now with age, have known it, and its grip is
upon my limbs. Venice heard but might not heed his warnings. The sun
himself must rise and fulfil his day and set. Decay is in each breath
that the plant draws in; it cannot crystallise the moment; inexorably
it is drawn onwards to maturity and death. It was inevitable for Venice
that as her strength increased her responsibilities should increase
with it; perforce she must turn her face to land as well as sea. She
could not remain alone, intent only on nourishing and developing her
individual life. In proportion to her greatness she must attract others
to her, and the circle of her influence must widen till it passed
beyond her own control. The dying words of Mocenigo came too late.
A temporary delay there might have been; there was no turning back.
Venice had been drawn already into the vortex of European mainland
politics, and she could not stand aside. In our own colonial policy we
are continually confronted with the problem of aggression and defence.
In reality there is no boundary between the two, or the boundary, if
it exists, is so fine that the events of a moment may obliterate it.
St. Theodore carries his shield in his right hand and his spear in the
left; and an old chronicler of Venetian glory interprets the action as
symbolising the predominance of defence in his warrior’s ideal. Doge
Tommaso Mocenigo would have approved the interpretation. But spear and
shield cannot exchange their functions. Until the spear is laid aside,
it will insist on leading; and Venice had not laid aside the spear, she
had furnished herself anew.
“In my time,” says Mocenigo, after a pathetic preliminary avowal of
his obligations to Venice and of the humble efforts he had made to
discharge them, “in my time, our loan has been reduced by four millions
of ducats, but six millions still are lacking for the debt incurred in
the war with Padua, Vicenza, Verona.... This city of ours sends out at
present ten million ducats every year for its trade in different parts
of the world, with ships and galleys and the necessary appointments to
the value of not less than two million ducats. In this city are three
thousand vessels of from one to two hundred anforas burden, carrying
sixteen thousand mariners: there are three hundred vessels which
alone carry eight thousand mariners more. Every year sail forty-five
galleys, counting small and great craft, and these take eleven thousand
mariners, three thousand captains and three thousand calkers. There
are three thousand weavers of silk garments and sixteen thousand of
fustian.... There are one thousand gentlemen with incomes ranging from
seven hundred to four thousand ducats. If you go on in this way, you
will increase from good to better, you will be lords of riches and of
Christendom. But beware, as of fire, of taking what belongs to others
and making unjust war, for these are errors that God cannot tolerate
in princes. It is known to all that the war with the Turk has made you
brave and valorous by sea, ... and in these years you have so acted
that the world has judged you the leaders of Christendom. You have
many men experienced in embassies and government, men who are perfect
orators. You have many doctors in diverse sciences, lawyers above all,
and for this reason many foreigners come to you for judgement in their
differences and abide by your decisions. Take heed, therefore, how you
govern such a state as this, and be careful to give it your counsel
and your warning, lest ever by negligence it suffer loss of power. And
it behoves you earnestly to advise whoever succeeds me in this place,
because through him the Republic may receive much good and much harm.
Many of you incline to Messer Marino Caravello; he is a worthy man and
for his worthy qualities deserves that rank. Messer Francesco Bembo
is an honest man, and so is Messer Giacomo Trevisan. Messer Antonio
Contarini, Messer Faustin Michiel, Messer Alban Badoer, all these
are wise and merit it. Many incline to Messer Francesco Foscari, not
knowing that he is an ambitious man and a liar, without a basis to his
actions. His intellect is flighty; he embraces much and holds little.
If he is Doge, you will always be at war. The possessor of ten thousand
ducats will be master but of one. You will spend gold and silver. You
will be robbed of your reputation and your honour. You will be vassals
of infantry and captains and men-at-arms. I could not restrain myself
from giving you my opinion. God help you to choose the best, and rule
and keep you in peace.”
Mocenigo’s warning was disregarded. But although Foscari was made Doge,
Venice did not rush into war. In spite of repeated efforts on the part
of the Florentines to secure an alliance, the traditions of the old
peace policy were tenaciously adhered to during the first years of the
new reign. It was the temptation to secure Carmagnola as leader of
her forces which finally overcame her scruples. Foscari’s discourse
on this occasion, as reported by Romanin, is a curiously specious
mingling of philanthropy and self-interest. Reading between the lines,
we understand from it something of Mocenigo’s fears at the prospect
of his election. The passion of empire is in his heart. Venice, whom
eulogists loved to represent as the bulwark of Europe against the
infidel, is now to be the champion of down-trodden Florence. It is the
sword of justice that she is to wield. We are reminded of Veronese’s
allegory--Venice seated upon the world, robed in ermine and scarlet,
her silver and her gold about her, her breast clasped with a jewelled
buckler, round her neck the rich pearls of her own island fabric, on
her head the royal crown. Her face is in the shadow of her gilded
throne and of the folds of the stiff rose satin curtain, as she looks
out over the world, over the universe, from her lofty seat on the dark
azure globe. The lion, the sword and the olive branch are at her feet.
What is she dreaming of, this Venice of the soft, round, shadowed face?
Is it of peace, or of new empire? Is it to the olive bough or to the
sword of justice that she inclines? In a neighbouring fresco, Neptune,
brooding in profound abstraction beside his trident, deputes to the
lion his watch; but Mars of the mainland is alert, on foot, and his
charger’s head from above him breathes fire upon his brow.
“You will be the vassals of captains and men-at-arms.” There was a note
of prophecy in Mocenigo’s closing words, and it is indeed a question,
in face of Verocchio’s superb warrior--who was the prince and who
the vassal, who the servant and who the master. Colleoni’s triumph
at his grand reception in Venice can scarcely have been the triumph
of a mere man-at-arms. Studying the magnificent reserve of strength
in his grandly moulded face and neck, we feel Venice must rather
have acknowledged that an Emperor had descended in her midst. Little
wonder that such a man dared ask a place on the Piazza of St. Mark
itself! The period of his command embraced some of the most brilliant
successes of the Venetian arms on land. Difficulties and perils that
seemed insurmountable were yet surmounted by a mind possessed of
supreme qualities of judgment, daring and nobility. Singularly akin,
indeed, to Venice herself was this man who had a key to the minds of
his antagonists, who read their secrets and forestalled their actions:
it is not strange that he was dear to her. Though a professional
soldier and no Venetian born, he could act as a worthy representative
of Venice, and there might seem small fear of ruin for a Republic that
could so choose her servants. But Colleoni had fought against the Lion
and set his foot upon its neck, and the Lion had been constrained to
turn and ask his service of him, the highest tribute it could offer,
the completest confession of its defeat. And Colleoni could respect
and be faithful to such a paymaster: for twenty years he led the
Republic on land, and was never called to render an account before her
judgment-seat. Magnanimously at his death he absolves her of all her
debts to him, makes her two grand donations, then, by his own wish,
towers over Venice, a paid alien, her virtual master, yet such a master
as she was proud to serve. We wonder if this thought came ever to the
mind of Verocchio, the Florentine, as he moulded the great figure of
the hero: did the imagination please him of Venice the vassal, Venice
subjected beneath the horse and his rider?
There was a fête given in honour of Colleoni at Venice in 1455, on
the occasion of the bestowing on him the staff of supreme command.
To Spino, Colleoni’s enthusiastic biographer and fellow citizen, the
episode was portentous, as to one unfamiliar with Venetian traditions
in this respect. It had, indeed, a significance he did not dream of;
it was the reception not of a victorious fleet, not of an admiring
monarch or fugitive pope, but of an army of mercenaries and their
leader. Spino tells how Colleoni was accompanied by an escort of the
chief citizens of Bergamo, Brescia and other cities of the kingdom that
had been committed to his charge; how barges over a thousand were sent
from Venice to fetch him and his party from Marghera; how the Venetians
came out in flocks to meet him in gondolas and sandolos to the sound
of trumpets and other instruments of music, preceded by _three_ ships
called _bucintori_, “of marvellous workmanship and grandeur,” in which
were the Doge and Signoria, the senate and other magistrates; and
how ambassadors of kings and princes and subject states came to do
homage to the new Serenissimo Pasqual Malipiero. He tells, as all the
chroniclers of festivals at Venice tell, of the throngs, not only on
windows and upon the fondamentas, but upon the house roofs along the
Grand Canal; of Colleoni’s reception at San Marco and the display of
the sacred treasures at the high altar; and how, as he knelt before
the Doge, the staff of his office was bestowed upon him with these
words, “By the authority and decree of the most excellent city of
Venice, of us the Doge and of the Senate, ruler and captain-general of
all our men and arms on land shalt thou be. Take from our hands this
military staff, with good presage and fortune, as emblem of thy power,
to maintain and defend the majesty, the faith and the judgments of
this State with dignity and with decorum by thy care and charge.” For
ten days the festivals continued with jousts and tournaments and feats
of arms. But all was not fêting and merriment. Colleoni held grave
discourses also with the Padri, and “their spirits were confirmed by
him,” says Spino, “in safety and great confidence.”
[Illustration: IN THE PIAZZA.]
The Venice who could thus do honour to Colleoni her general was a
superb Venice, superb as Colleoni himself who in his castle of Malpaga
received not only embassies from kings but kings themselves; who, at
the visit of Cristierino, King of Dacia, came out to meet him “on
a great courser, caparisoned and equipped for war, and he, all but
his head, imperially clad in complete armour, attended only by two
standard-bearers carrying his helm and lance, while a little further
behind followed his whole company of six hundred horse in battle array,
with his condottieri and his squadrons, all gloriously and most nobly
armed and mounted, with flags flying and the sound of trumpets”; who,
besides making rich provision for all his children, built churches,
endowed monasteries and left to the Venetians, after cancelling all
their debts to him, one hundred thousand ducats of gold. The Venice
that employed Colleoni was superb--we have a record of her living
features in Gentile Bellini’s marvellous presentment of the procession
in St. Mark’s square--the brain as flexible, the jaws as rigid as
those of the mighty warrior Verocchio conceived. Yet Spino’s comment
on the last tribute paid by the Venetians to their general gives us
pause--“confessing to have lost the defender of their liberty.” It was
a confession which could still clothe itself triumphantly in the great
bronze statue, but there is an omen in the words. In this confession of
1496 is foreshadowed the fall of 1796.
Much has been written of the social life of this Venice of the Fall;
there are countless sources for its history in the letters, diaries
and memoirs of its citizens and of its visitors, reputable and
disreputable; richest sources of all, there are the pictures of Longhi,
the comedies of Goldoni. But of the Venice that lay behind this small
round of conventions and refinements, laxity and tyranny, perhaps
less has been said. Of many avenues by which it might be approached
we shall choose one, and since the praise of Colleoni has drawn our
attention to the foundations of Venetian power on land, nothing will
better serve our purpose than the foundation of her power by sea, that
Arsenal which Sansovino described as “the basis and groundwork of the
greatness of this Republic, as well as the honour of all Italy.” The
Arsenal was, next to San Marco, perhaps the sanctuary of Venetian
faith. It was far more than a mere manufactory of arms and battleships.
In the celebration of the Sensa its workmen held the post of honour,
the rowing of the Bucintoro. Its officers were among the most reputed
in the State. The Council of Ten had a room within its precincts. It
was entered by a superb triumphal arch, a sight which none who visited
Venice must miss. The condition of the Arsenal may well be taken as an
index to the condition of Venice herself.