Fondamenta dei Furlani or Friulani, to the little building at its
further end, a sombre little building with heavily barred windows,
but with a sculptured façade. Its outer door is never more than half
open; it appears to admit visitors reluctantly, and, however bright
the sunshine in the world outside, our first impression of San Giorgio
dei Schiavoni is always gloomy. Only for two short hours, from ten
to twelve in the morning, the chapel is open--short, because the
sacristan keeps jealous watch upon the clock and, as if it were with
the booming of the great gun from the royal palace that his true day
began, hurries to close the remaining wing of the outer door, and
bar the chapel into solitude and darkness. Carpaccio’s pictures were
painted for the light. Their original home was not the Schiavoni
chapel, but the School which, till 1451, the Confraternity of St.
George and St. Triphonius owned in the convent of San Catterina in the
northern extremity of Venice near the Fondamenta Nuova. The chapel of
the Schiavoni needs more daylight, and even such as is obtainable is
not freely enough admitted; but Carpaccio is a magician whose spell
can release us from all consciousness of discomfort. The chapel is
an intimate revelation of one of the most fascinating characters
in Venetian history. It is the completest record of Carpaccio that
exists, the series of paintings in which his imagination has the
fullest range. It is not as a portrait painter of Venice and the
Venetians that Carpaccio is here employed, his scope is wider and the
whole spirit of his treatment is different. The _St. Ursula_ series
is not lacking in subtle personal touches; but it is not intimate in
the same degree as the _St. George_, and it does not touch the level
of personal intensity of the _St. Jerome_. There are psychological
touches in this chapel of the Schiavoni which it would be hard to rival
in modern art; we are companioned here by one of the most humorous,
tender, profound and understanding of natures, one who reflects upon
life in the spirit of joy and whose painful experiences never prevailed
against his assurance of beauty. As is always the case with Carpaccio,
each picture, though one of a series, is complete in itself. Except
with St. Jerome, the painter shows even a certain carelessness of the
preservation of identity in his hero: St. George becomes steadily
younger from the time of his combat with the dragon, till, in the third
of the series, a mere boy is represented as presiding at the baptism of
the king and princess. The figure of St. George in the fight with the
dragon is magnificent. No comparisons are necessary to convince us of
its greatness of conception; but if we consider for a moment Basaiti’s
treatment of this subject, we shall understand better the material of
which Carpaccio is made. Basaiti’s St. George is a sentimentalist even
in this moment of stress; his sword-thrust and the spirit expressed in
his face are disconnected. With Carpaccio the source of St. George’s
action is his will. The spirit of the sword-thrust is revealed in the
thrilling purpose of his armoured limbs, which no metal can obscure. He
is not thinking of graces, but the purpose with which he is instinct
creates its own harmony; he is one who must prevail. When the stress
of the action is past, his face hardly seems striking, but here it is
so pierced with light, as it gleams in paleness against the aureole
of hair, that it has become a living flame. Rarely has such glory of
purpose and burning intensity of will been conveyed in a human face
upon canvas. And all the details of this picture are invested with
an accordant beauty. Even the grotesque fancy that seems to riot in
the horrors of material death has had to give way before it. The face
of the maiden, who lies, half-eaten, close to the dragon’s feet, is
as exquisite in her death-sleep as that of St. Ursula in her royal
chamber; and the mutilated youth under the body of the horse is not
less lovely. The horse’s face is wonderful; his large eyes drink in the
purpose of his master; his tongue lolls; his mane streams wildly as he
rushes against the wind. Like Colleoni’s horse he triumphs under his
rider, not so much ridden as a sharer in his progress; but he, like
his master, moves in another and more romantic world than Colleoni.
Never was horse more gloriously or more worthily caparisoned; his
trappings are of scarlet, stamped with classic heads and chased with
bronze; his bridle of the richest gilded leather set with gems. And the
dragon too is beautiful. If we compare this trampling, vivid creature
of the luminous eyes with the crawling worm against which St. George
raises his sword in the succeeding picture, we shall feel something of
the meaning of the breath of life. The very colour of his skin seems
to have flowed through him with his blood; he is abjectly grey when
dragged on to the Piazza. This transformation of the dragon is a great
feat, the greater when we remember that even when he first appears, the
virtue is beginning to go out of him, his claws are already beating
the air with growing impotence. This first picture of the St. George
series is the most complete lyric of Carpaccio’s that we possess; it
is an episode of high romance, and its landscape is conceived in the
spirit of romantic fantasy. We have noted elsewhere the treatment
of the buildings, the way the city, which at first sight seems of a
dreamlike quality, like the port whence St. Ursula’s prince sets out,
defines itself gradually as a solid, fortified citadel, half hidden
behind oriental watch-towers. But we have still to note the inspiration
with which Carpaccio has unified these defences with the grand sweep
of the coast-line. The huge cliffs which enclose the bay on the left,
stretching out to the yellow light, are worthy to rank with those in
Turner’s _Ulysses and Polyphemus_. The landscape to the right of the
bay is freer and more fanciful. A cupolaed duomo crowns the cliff
behind the princess. Men and horses move on the huge projecting rock,
joined to the main cliff only by a natural arch and by a high-swung
delicate bridge. The houses among the trees and the horsemen moving
over the dizzy bridge enhance the romantic strangeness of effect. The
framing by this rugged arch of a full-rigged vessel upon the open sea
is one of Carpaccio’s happiest fancies. The devastated shore, the
sea flowing into the city, the yellow of the sky above the horizon
passing into a troubled paleness of cloud-flecked blue, the wind-driven
vessel on the high sea, the suggestion of vast ocean spaces--all these
combine in the imaginative grandeur of effect. The second picture of
the series, _St. George’s Return_, is very different in atmosphere.
It is filled with sunlight, the trampling of victory and the sound of
music. Its keynote is victorious joy and pomp of festival, sounded
in the spacious sunniness of the Piazza and the horizon of slope and
mountains beyond; sustained in the buildings that surround the square
and the airy pinnacles and balconies crowded with onlookers, and in
the flags that fly round the octagonal building winging it with air.
The radiant flowered brocades compete with the trappings of the horses
to perfect the scene; and through it, and round it, sounds the music
of drum and trumpet from the turbaned band which forms a background
to the royal party, drawing them, as it were, into the sweep of the
central square where St. George officiates. All moves to the measure
of glad yet solemn music; here is no lightning stroke, no sudden
motion; the muscles of action are relaxed, in slow measure the horses
paw the ground. The third picture, _The Baptism of King and Princess_,
is still pervaded with music. The musicians lead in the scene; the
three foreground trumpeters, conspicuous on the carpeted dais, seem
to be trumpeting for their lives. The golden, cavernous trumpet-mouth
pointing directly at us has a strangely inspiring effect, seeming to
invade us with sound breaking on the heavy roll of the meditative
drummer. The music connects itself with the background and helps to
widen the horizon. There is not one of these pictures which is not
enlarged by the suggestion, at least, of some wide background of
nature. Sometimes, as in these jubilant scenes, it enhances and extends
the gladness of the festival, sometimes it wings our spirits amid
conditions that burden and confine. In the first of the _St. Jerome_
series, for instance, where the lion arrives, the first point that
strikes us is the obvious humour of the scene, the effect of the entry
of this gentlest and most companionable of beasts on the Brethren
of the cloister. They do not wait to determine its intentions: it
is a lion. It is wounded and asking sympathy, but the Brothers have
attention for nothing but their fears. But below the humour there is
tragedy. It is not the quaintness of the lion, or the scattering monks,
or the beasts on the grassy square, or all the varied monotony of that
beautiful frescoed cloister, that claim our attention as the heart of
the picture. It is the bent and aged figure of St. Jerome. His features
are the same as in the study scene, but his mature youth has given
place to snowy age. And another change has come over his face; the
radiance of the study scene is replaced by bewildered sorrow slightly
touched with contempt. A loneliness is now in his face. In his study
he was at peace communing with other minds or with the mind of God.
But here with the monks he is bewildered--bewildered and oppressed.
We seem to see him ageing as he eyes his foolish companions. Is this,
he seems to question, the fruit of his long sojourn? He has asked the
sympathy of the Brothers, and they are beside themselves with fear.
There is deep pathos in this aged figure making his appeal in vain, and
if the cloister filled the horizon, the effect on our spirits would
be stifling. But there is a great sky overhead, there is an orange
tree, “that busy plant,” there is a winding way amidst the vista of
palm trees and blue hills, there is the great desert whence the lion
has come. _The Death of St. Jerome_ affords a still more impressive
example of this kind of relief. Here we are not walled in, the desert
is around us; we see it through the gateway by the well and through
the porticoes of the buildings, and above it in purple outline rise
the snow-capped mountains. And this wide horizon is peculiarly welcome
as an escape from the confinement of spirit expressed in the funeral
procession. The gladness of the open country, the hills and mountains,
the palm-tree signposts along the desert way, are a relief to the
lion’s agony. For the lion is the keynote of the picture, though it
is struck so quietly that at first we may even be unconscious of its
sounding. In the foreground on a narrow strip of pavement lies the
body of St. Jerome. His head rests upon a stone and his long beard
lies straight and smooth upon his breast. It is quite lifeless, this
body, but the kneeling Brothers think their master is before them.
There are wonderful character studies among these Brothers, sensual and
simple and devout. Those Carpaccio has chosen to read the Office for
the Dead are the most lifeless. The skull on the blasted tree trunk,
which his love of the grotesque has inserted in the angle of the wall,
seems a fit symbol of the sovereignty they acknowledge. But we have
already noted the existence of another actor in the scene. In front
of a little group of buildings under a broad rustic portico lies the
lion, not inert like his master or like the monks who perform the rites
of the dead, not now a suppliant, deprecating lion. His paw tears the
ground, his head is raised; he roars in the agony of his bereavement.
He is no longer feared, it seems; custom has staled the terrors of him.
To the Brothers he is merely another animal of the menagerie, one of
the last whims of Brother Jerome. Yet he understands that his master is
not here in this square of the convent. He has long been content; but
now the desert calls to him and he answers with the voice of the desert
that he had unlearned for a while. We have mentioned only a few of the
series of paintings in this wonderful chapel, and even of them the
greater part has been left unsaid. Each picture requires the whole of
the two hours, the Scuola allows, for study of them all; but, in coming
to them from time to time for a few moments only, we may constantly
discover some new token of their artist’s insight and understanding,
some richness of composition, some delicacy of colour, some intimate
detail of workmanship which makes us feel Carpaccio’s presence. The
beauties of St. Jerome’s study are almost inexhaustible; the details of
this exquisite room will reveal to us much of Carpaccio and of Venice.
Nothing is in it by chance or because space has to be filled. The gold
and rose of the apse, the marble of its pillars, the painted ceiling
and richly bound manuscripts, the delicate bronzes, the colouring of
the walls, the tiny white dog (forerunner of the lion), the crosier and
crimson cushion, all are expressive. And there is one touch--for which
we give thanks to the artist--unobtrusive but surely significant; the
candles on either wall are held in the bronze fore-paws of a lion. This
Chapel of the Schiavoni has not gone unscathed; during a fire that two
years ago destroyed a warehouse on the opposite bank of the canal, the
water from the engines poured through the roof of the chapel, injuring
the pictures on the wall nearest the rio--the _Combat of St. George_
and his _Return with the Dragon_.
Leaving the sestiere of Santa Giustina, with its relics of ancient
Venice and its famous Palace of the Contarini, on our right, and also
on our right, the Church of San Francesco della Vigna, where in the
darkness of the Giustiniani Chapel are preserved some of the most
beautiful sculptures of the Lombardi, we turn sharply to the left into
the Rio del Pestrin, and again to the left into the Rio San Lorenzo.
This Rio San Lorenzo is the scene of one of Gentile Bellini’s most
famous pictures. We are parallel here with the Rio di Sant’ Antonin, by
which we came from the basin of St. Mark. The miracle represented by
Bellini as taking place here is one of those connected with a fragment
of the true Cross belonging to the School of San Giovanni Evangelista.
Some of the finest artistic power of Venice was lavished in honouring
the virtues of this relic, and we owe to it inestimably precious
records of the city in the days of her splendour. We understand
in watching Bellini’s procession something of the nature of those
ever-recurring ceremonies which made Casola feel that the Venetians
must needs be specially beloved of God. The three-arched bridge of San
Lorenzo, which is the structural centre of the composition, is thronged
with a white-robed confraternity bearing splendid candles which glint
among the trees that are tied upon the bridge, and that we see receding
into the campo of the church which is hidden from us. In the centre
of the bridge is fixed the banner of the Confraternity, waving in the
wind. The throng upon the bridge is by no means idle; there is the
effect of that incessant movement of which one is conscious in the
densest crowd, and those at its edge are eagerly watching the doings
in the water. It is indeed the water that excites our chief interest;
Bellini has contrived to perpetuate numberless familiar graces and
dignities in the rowers whom we see framed by the central arch of
the bridge, or holding up their boats alongside of it. But it is the
novel element of the swimmers in the canal which gives the picture a
unique place in our regard. In the space of water between the bridge
and the temporary platform in the immediate foreground, where kneels
a monumental little company of Venetian gentlemen--tradition says the
family of the Bellini--is an aquatic display of the most delicate
order. Four of the Brothers swim in the clear green water, upheld by
their flowing robes like a water-lily by its leaves, and one, the
Grand Guardian--as he treads water with admirable equilibrium and an
easy grace that is beyond all praise--holds up on high the precious
Cross. No words can describe the delight that these swimmers afford
us. Their whole heart is in the quest; two of them, an old man and a
young, who have been pursuing the elusive trophy in vain, have seen
the discovery and slackened their strokes; but one, who has evidently
just dived off the fondamenta, is striking boldly out and trying with
down-turned face to penetrate the depths of the green water. The negro,
stripped, and ready for a plunge, who stands quaking on the lowest
step of a wooden landing-stage opposite, affords a delightful foil to
the Brothers who swim with such careless proficiency despite their
encumbering robes. If he would but look up, he would see that his
courage need not be put to the test--that the lost treasure is already
sailing triumphantly ashore.
[Illustration: A VENETIAN BRIDGE.]
To identify the exact scene of the picture, we shall do well to
pass into the Rio San Lorenzo from the Rio del Pestrin and take up
our stand a little beyond the Ponte San Lorenzo at about the point
of Bellini’s wooden bridge. Looking back we have now in front of
us the present Ponte San Lorenzo in place of Bellini’s beautiful
three-arched bridge, spanning the canal between the long fondamenta
on our left, and the campo and Church of San Lorenzo, which are
still--as in the picture--wedged between the buildings on our right.
The minute private fondamenta also, where in the picture kneel two of
the foremost of the procession, is still in existence. On our left is
the fondamenta in front of Bellini’s beautiful frescoed house, and
beyond it several houses of irregular heights, as in the picture,
while the horizon on this side is still filled by the main features
of Bellini’s background--another Palazzo Capello bounded on three
sides by water, the Rio Pestrin, the Rio San Lorenzo, and the Rio
San Giovanni Laterano. The palace retains some of its grandeur; it
is easily recognisable by its shape, though to-day it is one storey
higher. The Capello arms are still to be seen on it, but it has been
robbed of most of its glories of marble and colour. There is a certain
melancholy as well as a fascination in attempting to reconstruct the
scene of the picture. In the Gallery, when we are face to face with the
frescoed houses that we may only see foreshortened, we long to join the
spectators across the rio and complete those tantalising fragments of
centaurs and figures on horseback that combine with more conventional
ornaments to decorate the palace on the fondamenta. But now we are face
to face with reality, the frescoes are no more. With the exception of
the Palazzo Capello it is only the shape and relative position of the
houses that assures to us their identity.
In Bellini’s time this corner by San Lorenzo was splendid indeed. The
Capello family, which, according to the chroniclers, was numbered
among the patricians in 1297, played a prominent part in all Venetian
activities, but chiefly in war. It is a member of this family--Vittore
Capello, generalissimo of Venice in the Turkish campaign of 1462
and 1465, who is represented as kneeling before Sant’ Elena in
the beautiful relief above the façade of Sant’ Aponal. Another
Capello--Vincenzo--in the succeeding century filled five times the
office of Admiral, and in 1541 erected the façade of Santa Maria
Formosa. Notoriety of a different kind was brought to the family by
Bianca, who married for love and freedom, and was cheated of both, but
who died Grand Duchess of Tuscany. This palace of the Capello family
at San Giovanni Laterano was worthy of their fame. The superb side
wall that faces us in Bellini’s picture is like a tapestry in diamonds
of dusky crimson and gold. It is bordered by a design of gold below
the bands of colour, which are most effectively placed immediately
under the projecting roof. A beautiful design in red and green, like
rich embroidery, forms a kind of flag, enclosing the Capello symbols
on a shield painted in different shades of blue. Everything that
conventional ornament could do to beautify the house has been done.
Ornamental borders and squares are set among the bricks, and the smooth
marble facings of the ogival windows are inlaid with coloured discs and
knobs. The lower square house at the end of the fondamenta, divided
from the Capello palace by the rio, has the same beauties of ornamental
band and stripes of alternating colours beneath the roof. The single
window in the wall that faces us is magnificent, grated and enclosed
by gilt rope-work; the capitals of its pillars and its ogival arch are
richly gilded, and in the surface of the stone above are set discs of
porphyry with centre and rim of gold. Over the massive wooden entrance
door is a painted frieze of green leaves, and discs with Byzantine
birds are inserted in the wall above. A grand surface of wall is still
left for the fresco painter, and Tintoretto was yet to come. Perhaps
the most notable feature in this lower house is the carving of its
chimneys; each has an individual form. The fondamenta in the picture is
thronged with citizens, and the conspicuous row of stalwart ladies, who
kneel on its extreme edge above the water, tradition calls Catterina
Cornaro and her train. Certainly this representation of the Queen of
Cyprus and her train is different from that which Bembo has given us in
his delightful letters to Lucrezia Borgia from Asolo. Catherine, it is
true, was no longer a girl when she went to her captivity at Asolo; but
there is a lightness and freedom in Bembo’s picture of the party who
told tales of love and philosophy and idled among the gardens, which
leaves us unprepared for the solidity and uncomeliness of this uniform
row of figures. We know little of this Queen of Cyprus, but we expect
more grace of her than is possible to these matrons. They have studied
so little how to please in the wearing of their sumptuous robes, that
despite their jewels they produce an effect of almost conventual
dulness. It is difficult to imagine anything more magnificent than
the dresses of these ladies; they are literally covered with jewels.
Excessively virtuous they may be, but they are also excessively lavish;
they might well give ground for the legislation as to women’s dress
quoted by Sanudo; but they have not taught their jewels to shine. The
matron who heads the row is robed in dark velvet: her sleeves and
the front of her bodice are of gold, slashed with white and trimmed
with pearls. An edging of solid gold, studded with jewels, passes
from her shoulders to her waist; rich lace completes the decoration
of her bodice. Strings of pearls cross on her breast, and a thickly
turned gold cord is round her neck and hangs in front. She wears a
gold coronet set with gems, and beneath it a broad ornamental band. A
transparent veil falls down her back, and is draped about her forehead
and neck, covering her long ear-rings. A jewelled cross hangs on her
breast, and a chain round her waist. Rings are the only possible
splendour she and her ladies are without. The Venetian ladies and
gentlemen standing behind this Queen of Cyprus and her train are
hardly less sumptuous than they, but their robes are less rigid and
uniform, and very much more gracefully worn. The men are dressed in a
splendour of brocade and cloth of gold that gives out a rich and sober
glow.