wonderful painting. Bellini faithfully recorded Venice, but we cannot
so faithfully record Bellini. We can only hope to call attention to the
detail of what is undoubtedly one of the most valuable portraits of the
Venice of the first Renaissance by one of the greatest of her citizens.
When we have paused long enough on the site of the picture and go down
the Rio San Giovanni Laterano, immediately in front of the Capello
Palace, the high water again denies us passage; but it gives more than
it withholds in compelling us to return to our former junction with
the Rio Pestrin and to pass out among the coal barges making the wider
circuit of the lagoon. It is a wonderful moment when we come suddenly
from the narrow water into the wide expanse of the lagoon; and on this
December morning a marvellous vision awaits us. The long brown line of
Sant’ Erasmo lies like a dark cloud on the water; Burano, San Francesco
and Torcello are isolated in a strange translucency of mist; whilst
from the low tones of the water one red sail rises like a column of
flame. Above Murano the smoke coils languidly; the cypresses over
the cemetery wall stand out in startling blackness. A flock of gulls
incessantly flickers and glitters on the surface of lucent aquamarine
that stretches away to the shore where the mountains lie like purple
shadows crowned with a radiancy of snow. The sunlight of the lagoon
in this wintry clearness seems other than that which falls on the
waterways of the city; this outer robe of Venice to-day is of so
immaterial a texture that we feel the material city slipping from our
grasp. We turn back into it, but by a way that can feed the visionary
sense, by the Rio dei Mendicanti. It might seem, indeed, that all
vision would die in the dreary, plastered uniformity of the building
that stretches along the fondamenta on our left. This building was
formerly the Scuola di San Marco; but the superb façade erected by the
Confraternity on the Campo di SS. Giovanni e Paolo has little in common
with these white-washed walls and dreary sunless corridors. For this
most famous School is now the Hospital of the Mendicanti, and it is as
a visitor to the wards that we are admitted. Yet amidst these chill
cloisters and corridors is kept one of the most luminous and visionary
treasures of Venice--Tintoretto’s _Procession of St. Ursula and The
Virgins_. It is the more precious as being, with _Bacchus and Ariadne_
and _The Paradise_, almost the only work of Tintoretto that we can
make sure of fully seeing. There is abundant light in the cold, grey
church to illumine a picture which is in itself a song of light in the
daybreak.
This stream of wonderful maidens moves all to one rhythm, winding with
sweeping trains down out of the misty dawn to end and centre in the
glorious figure of St. Ursula waiting the bishop’s consecration of her
mission. She is so entrancingly radiant that the young cross-bearing
bishop who stands beside her seems, as he gazes, to be illumined by
her fire and joy. The ships in which the company is to embark lie like
phantoms on the misty sea-line, and the long lights of dawn are above
the water--pale rose and gold and purple--while the curtain of night
is slowly withdrawn, leaving spaces of darker blue and glowing cloud.
The early morning mists still hang about the shadowy hulks of the huge
vessels and the figures near the shore, making as it were two spheres
of action. The grassy slope down which the travellers come, seems in
its undulations to yield itself to their motion, to reflect and echo
it, and is luminous as all the figures are. The faint rainbow raiments
of those distant companies that sweep forward nearer to the shore are
like wings lit from the dawn and half-folded, while the foremost ranks
of the procession are in the full golden light of day. Note with what
daring Tintoretto has placed the strong rose-robed angel with the palms
of martyrdom across the picture directly overhead. Her figure cuts
across the phantom ships; one arm hides part of the procession; yet far
from obscuring or diverting from the central theme, she leads the eye
more directly to St. Ursula. There are no spectators of this morning
procession, unless it be the marvellous group on the left. The central
figure is that of a woman, meditative, gathered into herself; she
scarcely seems to belong to the procession; she is dreaming apart with
downbent face, and is very close in feeling to Carpaccio’s sleeping
St. Ursula. Beside her is a radiant youth, his face one of Giorgione’s
faces, in a helm shaped like a shell and set with pearls. There are
many types of Venetian ladies in the procession, such as were idealised
by one and another of the painters; all are here, in marvellous
richness of raiment and jewelled headgear. We do not question whether
they are fitly robed for a great journey; we only share in their joy.
The wine of dawn seems to have entered into them, and to sing in
every motion, every colour of the superb lyric--the intoxication of
embarking on a mystic voyage in the pale radiance of dawn.
We pass out again through the long corridors under the great sculptured
portal. On our left is the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, a storehouse
of Renaissance art, and before us the friend of whom we never grow
weary--Colleoni astride of his war-horse in the centre of the square.
This paid servant, this adopted son of Venice, is not on the Piazza
where it was his wish to be; but he stands even more fitly here upon
this small campo beside the canal. Anywhere he would be monarch; but
we are admitted here into his private presence-chamber, while the
great stirring Piazza would seem but the crowded outer court. If,
before leaving the campo, we make a short journey on foot along the
Salizzada which passes on the south of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, we may
find a treasure buried in dirt and neglect. None would guess its
presence; but those who care for unfrequented paths may venture under
the unattractive sotto-portico which leads to the outer staircase of
a once beautiful Renaissance palace. It is given over to the poor,
but a sculptured doorway still surmounts the stair; its chief beauty
however is a series of delicately sculptured arches in the brickwork
below, and a fine well-head half imprisoned by the chimney of a
neighbouring bakery. The wall of the bakery is so near the staircase
of the palace that we can get no complete conception of the arches,
and the dirt and ill odours of this neglected corner are likely to
daunt all but the most enthusiastic seekers after treasure. Yet
these fragments, in elegance and beauty of design, may rank with the
worthiest remains of the Venetian Renaissance.
[Illustration: PALAZZO SANUDO.]
Returning to Colleoni’s square, we again embark and continue our way
down the Rio dei Mendicanti, past courtyards flooded by still rising
water, and turn soon to the right, into the Rio Santa Marina--a
picturesque canal, ever varying in width and angle. At the corner
of the Palazzo Pisano we are confronted again by the problem of the
high water. If we would include in our tour the Palazzo Sanudo,
with its riches of many ages, Byzantine, early Gothic and Ogival,
its two courtyards, its beautiful garden on the fondamenta and its
dolphin-shaped knocker, we must turn to the right along the Rio delle
Erbe. But it is useless to hope that this morning any gondola will
be able to pass under its low bridges, and in consequence we must
continue our way to the church of the Miracoli, by skirting the other
side of the lozenge-shaped island on which it stands. We soon turn at
right angles into the Rio dei Miracoli, and in a few moments we see
the sun shining on the cupola of the church, gilding the marbles of
the circular east tower and lighting the traceries of serpentine and
porphyry and cipollino on the west front. It is a joyous and radiant
aspect, this of the Miracoli, with its broad spaces of Greek marbles
and its bands of Verona, its plaques of verd-antique and porphyry, its
sculptured angels and grave apostles. It stands in quiet beauty on the
brink of the canal. From its little campo opens the beautiful inner
courtyard of the Sanudo Palace, while on another side it is bordered
by the spacious and noble Corte delle Muneghe, formerly known as the
Corte Cà Amadi, from the family whose arms are still to be seen on the
brickwork. Close to the well in this court stood originally the image
of the Madonna, thanks to whose miracles we now possess this most
beautiful church built in her honour. The chronicles relate that a
certain Francesco Amadi, an inhabitant of Santa Marina, had piously set
up an image of the Virgin close by his house. The fame of this image
as a worker of wonders grew so great that it was transferred by Angelo
Amadi, in 1480, to the Corte di Cà Amadi, and set up there for popular
veneration. In his Venetian Annals for 1480, Malipiero thus briefly
relates the occurrence: “This year began the cult of the Madonna of
Miracles which was at the door of Corte Nuova, opposite the door of
the Amai in the narrow calle, and because of the crowd of people it
became necessary to move the image, and carry it to the courtyard of
Cà Amai, and immense offerings have been made of wax, statues, money
and silver, insomuch that it has reached four hundred ducats in one
month. And in process of time it amounted to three thousand ducats of
alms, and with them we bought Corte Nova from the houses of the Bembo,
Querini and Baroci, and there was built a most beautiful temple and
convent, into which we put the nuns of Santa Chiara of Murano.” The
foundation-stone was laid on February 25, 1481, when the image was
moved with great pomp from the court to the little wooden shelter on
the site chosen for the church. An interesting account of the move
is contained in the _Memorie_ of Angelo Amadi. It affords a vivid
verbal picture of religious festivals in Venice at the time they were
finding their most splendid expression on canvas. “On the day of the
twenty-fifth of February,” begins Amadi, “in the name of Messer Jesus
Christ and of the glorious Virgin Mary, we removed the image from our
house to transfer it to the hut or house of wood where the chapel or
church is to be made; at which removal were present all the Schools
or Fraternities, the Battudi, that is, the School of Madonna Santa
Maria della Misericordia, to which I belong, and the School of the
Carità, and of San Marco, and that lately founded of San Rocco, whose
brothers go about in sackcloth, beating themselves continually with
scourges and iron chains.” All the Procurators of San Marco, he says,
were present, with countless cavaliers and doctors and a great part of
the Signoria, the Patriarch in his pontificals, and a host of vicars
and canons and other clerics, all richly and splendidly clothed. The
Amadi insisted on themselves carrying the portable stand that had been
made for the image, covered with cloth of gold, cremosine and cloth
of silver, and adorned with silver candelabra and oriental censers.
“Nor would we allow any other to carry it, that we might demonstrate
publicly that it belonged to us and had been made by our ancestor.”
Four citizens accompanied the image-bearers, carrying poles on which
to support the stage as it mounted bridges or stopped in the streets.
It was followed by the dignitaries already enumerated and almost the
whole Venetian populace. The procession left the house of the Amadi
to the sound of trumpet and pipe; it made a circuit of the bridges,
streets and squares of the city as far as Santa Maria Formosa, halting
in the parish church of the Amadi for many lauds to be sung. “And
along all the calli and in the squares of the churches all the people
kneeling on the ground prayed devoutly with tears and hands joined
on their breasts, calling aloud and raising a great outcry.” In this
manner the procession returned to the shelter, and the foundation-stone
was laid by the Patriarch amid the chanting of lauds. After a final
_Te Deum_ the image was left to the devotions of the people who, till
night fell, continued to pour out their offerings for the building.
There is something stirring in this ceremony with its popular outcry
and petitions for mercy. It reminds us of that strong element of piety
which in Venice went side by side with its strong commercial instincts.
The church of the Miracoli seems to belong peculiarly to Venice in the
light of these stories of its birth. It is itself one of the miracles,
this little Roman temple; with its quadrangular-domed choir, raised
high above the nave, its marble ambones, its dark painted roof, and
walls lined with marbles, it impresses us with a sense of sublimity.
All here is perfectly proportioned and decorated with simple and
absolute fitness. It is impossible to mount the flight of marble
steps leading from nave to choir, past the wonderful little figures
of St. Clare and St. Francis with his profound contemplative smile,
past the Annunciation Angel and the Virgin draped like a Roman matron,
into the choir where the great cross of porphyry and serpentine hangs
in the apse, without feeling that we are mounting to sacrifice in a
temple full of the Deity. But what part has that marvellous little
company of sea youths and maidens in the tale of the Passion? They are
the offspring of some delicate fantasy careless of all save itself,
yet they seem to need no other passport than beauty to their place in
the temple. Work of the same imaginative quality is to be seen on a
pillar in the nave: not here a dream of mermaids with delicate breasts
and arms and glittering tails, but a purely naturalistic subject.
The artist has conspired with the stone to sing his delight in the
life of the fields, and he has achieved his purpose so that the very
spirit of the wild creatures lives again. A lizard with smooth scales
and lithe, restless tail, ears of corn, a serpent holding a bird by
its look as it rears itself for a spring, birds fighting and birds
preening their breasts,--all these delicate beings, that move amid a
design of admirable grace, are a field pilgrim’s scrip laid open for
all who will read. These old artists were not afraid. To them all
things of nature appeared symbols worthy to lay on the altar. And it is
because of this permeating imaginative vision that the Church of the
Miracoli is one of the jewels of Venice, instinct with life, from the
grave mystery of its marble-lined walls, slab alternating with slab,
Carrara cream and white, paonazetto, marmo greco, marbles of Verona red
and almond, to lizard and serpent, siren and infant, from the dusky
gold and colour of the ceiling to the eloquent figures that stand in
constant ministration on the ambones.
Santa Maria dei Miracoli might well mark the limit of our tour; but
if we go a short distance further into the Rio San Canciano we shall
come on three examples of the earlier domestic architecture of Venice,
which we shall do well not to miss. The first is a house by the Ponte
Widmann, dating from the ninth century. It is exceedingly picturesque,
with its long, low portico, and a profusion of Byzantine ornaments of
most varied device on the walls--weird lions and birds and oriental
beasts. The capitals of the window columns also are Byzantine, though
the balconies are Renaissance. We can also distinguish, though it is
immured, the ancient solario, or sun-terrace, which, in this house of
old Venice, was evidently of considerable beauty and extent. Passing
under another bridge after the Ponte Widmann, we come to the Ponte
Pasqualigo, and landing at the calle on the left, we have on the right
of us, only a few steps down, one of the oldest houses in Venice. So
well cared for is it by its present owners that we seem not to be
examining a relic, but to move in a living page of the past. On the
morning we saw it, the sun was streaming into the court and falling
on the Signora, who, in scarlet shawl, and with a brilliant kerchief
round her head, was dozing in the sun. She rose and gave us a cordial
welcome, and we climbed the outer stair, under an immense projecting
roof, into the garden hanging above the court, full of sunshine and
flowers; higher still, on the altana, was a bright line of clothing
hung out to dry. The structure of the ancient roof overhanging
the stair is very remarkable, with its secondary beams that jut
horizontally under a long cross-beam running the whole length of the
gallery. The rooms, which open out of one another from the terrace, are
rich also in beams, though now for the most part covered with a foolish
uniformity of ceiling. The floor of the reception room is, as usual,
paved with small variegated stones, but it is remarkable for occasional
little islands of mosaic, one of which, a tiny square of deep blue
and gold set diamond-wise, is a veritable gem of colour. Worthy to rank
with this hospitable, ample house of ancient Venice, is a courtyard
opening on the water, into which we pass immediately from the Ponte
Pasqualigo. The wooden barbicans of the projecting roof adjoining the
portico rest on pillars of fine earliest Gothic, grave and strong and
simple in their build. The sense that they are individuals bearing
the burden of the beams is increased by the fact that it is not
geometrically adjusted to their shoulders. It rests there because they
are willing; there is an understanding, a _combinazione_ between beam
and pillar, but the two were not mechanically made to fit.
[Illustration: A SIDE CANAL.]
Returning to the Rio dei Miracoli we leave the church on our left, and
crossing the Rio Santa Marina and the Rio San Giovanni Grisostomo,
we pass directly into the Rio del Teatro, leaving the water-entrance
to Marco-Polo’s palace on our right. This corner is one of the most
beautiful in the canals of Venice. It is rich in palaces and fragments
of ancient ornament, and full of strange interplay of lights from the
many tortuous ways that converge here. There is a constant fascination
in the broad sweep of water at the crossways, in the problems of
traffic, in the warning cries that herald boat or barge passing
under the many bridges. There is perhaps no spot in Venice so full of
ancient mystery, of the gloom, the light, the sound and stillness of
her waterways. A little further on we pass into the Rio della Fava,
full also of delightful and unexpected corners; and looking back
from the Ponte di San’ Antonio we see the site of Mansueti’s picture
commemorating another miracle of the Holy Cross; or rather we see one
corner of the picture; for Mansueti has cut away the whole length of
a calle and all the houses between this bridge of San’ Antonio and
the Campo di San Lio, so that in his painting, for obvious artistic
reasons, the waters of the canal flow directly in front of the campo,
which he has narrowed to little more than a fondamenta. In a sketch
for this picture now in the Uffizi at Florence, Mansueti has more
faithfully transcribed the actual surroundings of the Campo di San
Lio. His picture illustrates a miracle of the Cross that would seem to
offer small scope for artistic treatment. A member of the Confraternity
of San Giovanni Evangelista, on being invited by another Brother to
attend the Cross in procession, impiously replied, “I will neither
accompany it, nor do I care whether it accompanies me.” Within a short
while, continues Flamino Corner, the perverse man died and the School
assembled for his burial; but when the procession reached the Ponte
di San Lio, the parish of the dead man, the Holy Cross became so heavy
that no force could avail to move it. While all stood appalled and
dismayed by such an occurrence, the friend of the dead man recalled the
impious words he had spoken, and made known the reason of the refusal
of the Cross. It was removed from the procession, and, the chronicler
informs us, withheld henceforth from any but public solemnities. In
Mansueti’s composition a number of Brothers are gathered on the bridge
attempting to drag the Cross, and the clergy of San Lio and a group
of citizens are waiting on the campo to receive it. There is much
quaintness in the rendering of this rather humorous incident, and
the picture is full of rich and homely detail, in the houses and in
the doings of their inhabitants, the chase of a cat, the hanging of
a clothes line, the stacking of the pliant rods on which the clothes
are hung. The windows, with closed or open gratings, are thronged
with onlookers, chiefly splendid ladies. In Bellini, the windows are
unpeopled, but here there is scarcely one uncarpeted, and without
its contingent of festive heads and shoulders; whilst in one of the
windows, in the house we can still identify, a fascinating infant
prances against the grating and pokes a fist through the bars. The
bridge in the picture is obviously too low for any gondola to pass
under it; it is merely a temporary private way thrown across the rio,
which it is easy to believe that Mansueti has substituted in order
that we may see above it the procession winding out of the Rio del
Piombo. As we look back from the Ponte San’ Antonio we may get, in
spite of Mansueti’s changes, a distinct impression of his scene; the
sun, shining through the small circular ogival window in the house
that still bounds our horizon, lights up a gay interior of green walls
draped in crimson and gold with singular richness of effect.
[Illustration: THE GONDOLIERS’ SHRINE.]
The name of the Rio della Fava, the Canal of the Bean, boasts a
traditional derivation that throws a curious light on Venetian pieties.
It appears that in 1480, the same year in which was initiated the cult
of the Madonna dei Miracoli at the Cà Amadi, another wonder-working
image, under the patronage of the same family, was thought worthy
of a chapel in San Lio. This chapel was named Santa Maria della
Consolazione, or della Fava, from its proximity to the Ponte della
Fava. “The ecclesiastical writers,” says Tassini, “recount that the
bridge was so named because a man living by it, who had hidden some
contraband salt under some sacks of beans, a vegetable he dealt
in, when warned that the police were approaching threw himself at
the feet of the said miraculous image for succour and obtained this
favour--that the Justices, despite their search, found nothing in the
house but simple beans.” This naïve faith in the willingness of the
Madonna to meet all contingencies survives among the humbler citizens
of Venice to-day. A proof is provided by the personal experience of
a friend who had bespoken overnight a gondola for the station in the
dark early hours of the next morning. The gondolier duly arrived and
set out with his fare from San Marco. But they had gone no further than
the church of the Salute when his lamp gave out and he halted and asked
leave to replenish it. No place for procuring oil was apparent, but the
gondolier knew one. He went to the shrine of the Madonna and addressed
the figure thus, “Blessed Madonna, thou thinkest harm of no man and
thou wouldst not that harm should come to any. I turn to thee for help
in my need. The police are not like thee. They will have no pity in
their fine if they see me at the station with my lamp unlit. I beg thy
lamp for this little while.” And, as there was-no sign of refusal, the
Madonna’s lamp was taken to the station and returned on the homeward
journey.
Continuing our way down the Rio della Fava we pass almost immediately,
on the left, the Palazzo Gussoni, a palace the great beauty of which
cannot be overlooked. It is a building of the first Renaissance
combining extreme richness of detail with simplicity of general effect.
The basement is beautifully and variously sculptured and surmounted
by a band of Verona marble; above it rises a design of leaves and
ears of corn growing and spreading like a plant, and full of graceful
and delicate fancy. The unique feature of the palace is the richly
sculptured stone barbacan that supports the projecting portion of the
upper storey overhanging the Calle della Fava. There is in Venice an
abundance of fine wooden barbacans, but this is the only example we
remember of the sumptuous casing in stone.
A little further and we pass below a palace of the Transition, from
whose graceful balcony keep watch a row of sculptured lions in
half-relief. As we come into the Rio della Guerra, the midday light
plays reflectively on the water, striking out of it a thousand fitful
diamonds, and the now ebbing tide washes with a soft caressing sound
against the houses. At the juncture of the Rio della Guerra with the
Rio del Palazzo is the Casa dell’ Angelo so named from the beautiful
sculptured angel on the wall that faces us. It stands erect, with
wings spread, holding in the left hand a globe signed with the Cross,
which it seems in the act of blessing. The lower part of its body is
covered with two shields bearing, according to Tassini, the arms of the
Narni family. It is sheltered by a pent-roof, supported on graceful
pillars, most delicately and nobly worked. In the lunette above the
angel, in the immediate shadow of the roof, is discernible a painting
of the Madonna and Child between two kneeling angels, which still
retain traces of soft and beautiful colouring. But the most precious
possessions of this palace front are the remnants of fresco under
the broad projecting roof at the further end of the building. The
beautiful figure of a woman, with head resting on her hand and braided
golden hair, is still intact. There is another fine figure between the
windows, and there are many fading fragments in the plaster below.
Tradition unanimously attributes these frescoes to Tintoretto, and it
is difficult to believe that the lovely woman could have come from any
other hand.