I never saw palaces anywhere but at Venice. Those at Rome are dungeons
compared to them. They generally come down to the water’s edge, and as
there are canals on each side of them, you see them _four-square_. The
views by Canaletti are very like, both for the effect of the buildings
and the hue of the water. The principal are by Palladio, Longhena, and
Sansovino. They are massy, elegant, well-proportioned, costly in
materials, profuse of ornament. Perhaps if they were raised above the
water’s edge on low terraces (as some of them are), the appearance of
comfort and security would be greater, though the architectural daring,
the poetical miracle would appear less. As it is, they seem literally to
be suspended in the water.—The richest in interior decoration that I
saw, was the Grimani Palace, which answered to all the imaginary
conditions of this sort of thing. Aladdin might have exchanged his for
it, and given his lamp into the bargain. The floors are of marble, the
tables of precious stones, the chairs and curtains of rich silk, the
walls covered with looking-glasses, and it contains a cabinet of
invaluable antique sculpture, and some of Titian’s finest portraits. I
never knew the practical amount to the poetical, or furniture seem to
grow eloquent but in this instance. The rooms were not too large for
comfort neither; for space is a consideration at Venice. All that it
wanted of an Eastern Palace was light and air, with distant vistas of
hill and grove. A genealogical tree of the family was hung up in one of
the rooms, beginning with the founder in the ninth century, and ending
with the present representative of it; and one of the portraits, by
Titian, was of a Doge of the family, looking just like an ugly, spiteful
old woman; but with a truth of nature, and a force of character that no
one ever gave but he. I saw no other mansion equal to this. The Pisani
is the next to it for elegance and splendour; and from its situation on
the Grand Canal, it admits a flood of bright day through glittering
curtains of pea-green silk, into a noble saloon, enriched with an
admirable family-picture by Paul Veronese, with heads equal to Titian
for all but the character of thought.
Close to this is the Barberigo Palace, in which Titian lived, and in
which he died, with his painting-room just in the state in which he left
it. It is hung round with pictures, some of his latest works, such as
the Magdalen and the Salvator Mundi (which are common in prints), and
with an unfinished sketch of St. Sebastian, on which he was employed at
the time of his death. Titian was ninety-nine when he died, and was at
last carried off by the plague. My guide who was enthusiastic on the
subject of Venetian art, would not allow any falling-off in these latest
efforts of his mighty pencil, but represented him as prematurely cut off
in the height of his career. He knew, he said, an old man, who had died
a year ago, at one hundred and twenty. The Venetians may still live to
be old, but they do not paint like Titian! The Magdalen is imposing and
expressive, but the colouring is tinted (quite different from Titian’s
usual simplicity) and it has a flaccid, meretricious, affectedly
lachrymose appearance, which I by no means like. There is a slabbery
freedom or a stiff grandeur about most of these productions, which, I
think, savoured of an infirm hand and eye, accompanied with a sense of
it. Titian, it is said, thought he improved to the last, and wished to
get possession of his former pictures, to paint them over again, upon
broader and more scientific principles, as some authors have wished to
re-write their works: there was a small model of him in wax, done by a
contemporary artist in his extreme old age, shewn in London a year or
two ago, with the black velvet cap, the green gown, and a white sleeve
appearing from under it, against a pale, shrivelled hand. The
arrangement of colouring was so truly characteristic, that it was
probably dictated by himself. It may be interesting to artists to be
told, that the room in the Barberigo Palace (said to be his
painting-room) has nearly a southern aspect. There are some other
indifferent pictures hanging in the room, by painters before his time,
probably some that he had early in his possession, and kept longest for
that reason. It is an event in one’s life to find one’s-self in Titian’s
painting-room. Yet it did not quite answer to my expectations—a hot sun
shone into the room, and the gondola in which we came was unusually
close—neither did I stoop and kiss the stone which covers his dust,
though I have worshipped him on this side of idolatry!
‘Ci giace il gran Titiano di Vecelli,
Emulator di Zeusi e di gl’Apelli.’
This is the inscription on his tomb in the church of the Frati. I read
it twice over, but it would not do. Why grieve for the immortals? One is
not exactly one’s-self on such occasions, and enthusiasm has its
intermittent and stubborn fits; besides, mine is, at present, I suspect,
a kind of July shoot, that must take its rise from the stock of former
impressions. It spread aloft on the withered branches of the St. Peter
Martyr, and shot out more kindly still from seeing three pictures of
his, close together, at the house of Signor Manfrini (a Venetian
tobacconist), an elaborate Portrait of his friend Ariosto—sharp-featured
and tawny-coloured, with a light Morisco look—a bronzed duplicate of the
Four Ages at the Marquess of Stafford’s—and his Mistress (which is in
the Louvre) introduced into a composition with a gay cavalier and a
page. I was glad to see her in company so much fitter for her than her
old lover; and besides, the varied grouping gave new life and reality to
this charming vision. The two last pictures are doubtfully ascribed to
Giorgioni, and this critical equivoque was a source of curiosity and
wonder. Giorgioni is the only painter with respect to whom this could be
made a question (the distinction between Titian and the other painters
of the Venetian school, Tintoret and Paul Veronese, is broad and
palpable enough)—and for myself, I incline to attribute the last of the
three _chef d’œuvres_ above enumerated to Giorgioni. The difference, it
appears to me, may be thus stated. There is more glow and animation in
Giorgioni than in Titian. He is of a franker and more genial spirit.
Titian has more subtilty and meaning, Giorgioni more life and youthful
blood. The feeling in the one is suppressed; in the other, it is overt
and transparent. Titian’s are set portraits, with the smallest possible
deviation from the straight line: they look as if they were going to be
shot, or to shoot somebody. Giorgioni, in what I have seen of his
pictures, as the Gaston de Foix, the Music-piece at Florence, &c. is
full of inflection and contrast; there is seldom a particle of it in
Titian. An appearance of silence, a tendency to still-life, pervades
Titian’s portraits; in Giorgioni’s there is a bending attitude, and a
flaunting air, as if floating in gondolas or listening to music. For all
these reasons (perhaps slenderly put together) I am disposed to think
the portrait of the young man in the picture alluded to is by Giorgioni,
from the flushed cheek, the good-natured smile, and the careless
attitude; and for the same reason, I think it likely that even the
portrait of the lady is originally his, and that Titian copied and
enlarged the design into the one we see in the Louvre, for the head
(supposed to be of himself, in the background) is middle-aged, and
Giorgioni died while Titian was yet young. The question of priority in
this case is a very nice one; and it would be curious to ascertain the
truth by tradition or private documents of any kind.
I teazed my _valet de place_ (Mr. Andrew Wyche, a Tyrolese, a very
pleasant, companionable, and patriotic sort of person) the whole of the
first morning at every fresh landing or embarkation by asking, ‘But are
we going to see the Saint Peter Martyr?’ When we reached the Church of
Saint John and Saint Paul, the light did not serve, and we got
reprimanded by the priest for turning our backs on the host, in our
anxiety to find a proper point of view. We returned to the charge at
five in the afternoon, when the light fell upon it through a high-arched
Gothic window, and it came out in all its pristine glory, with its rich,
embrowned, overshadowing trees, its nobly-drawn heroic figures, its
blood-stained garments, its flowers and trailing plants, and that cold
convent-spire rising in the distance amidst the sapphire mountains and
the golden sky. I found every thing in its place and as I expected. Yet
I am unwilling to say that I saw it through my former impressions: this
picture suffices to itself, and fills the mind without an effort; for it
contains all the mighty world of landscape and history, grandeur and
breadth of form with the richest depth of colouring, an expression
characteristic, powerful, that cannot be mistaken, conveying the scene
at the moment, a masterly freedom and unerring truth of execution, and a
subject as original as it is stately and romantic. It is the foremost of
Titian’s productions, and exhibits the most extraordinary specimen of
his varied powers. Most probably, as a picture, it is the finest in the
world; or if I cannot say it is the picture which I would the soonest
have painted, it is at least the one which I would the soonest have. It
is a rich feast to the eye, ‘where no crude surfeit reigns.’ As an
instance of the difference between Titian and Raphael, you here see the
figures from below, and they stand out with noble grandeur of effect
against the sky; Raphael would have buried them under the horizon, or
stuck them against the landscape, without relief or motion. So much less
knowledge had he of the picturesque! Again, I do not think Raphael could
have given the momentary expression of sudden, ghastly terror, or the
hurried, disorderly movements of the flying Monk, or the entire
prostration of the other (like a rolling ruin) so well as Titian. The
latter could not, I know, raise a sentiment to its height like the
former; but Raphael’s expressions and attitudes were (so to speak) the
working out of ‘foregone conclusions,’ not the accidental fluctuations
of mind or matter—were final and fixed,[47] not salient or variable. I
observed, in looking closer, that the hinder or foreshortened leg of the
flying monk rests upon the edge of a bank of earth, from which he is
descending. This explains the action of the part better, but I doubt
whether this idea of inequality and interruption from the broken nature
of the ground is an addition to the feeling of precipitate fear and
staggering perplexity in the mind of the person represented. This may be
an hypercriticism. The colouring of the foremost leg of this figure is
sufficient to prove that the utter paleness of the rest of it is from
its having faded in the course of time. The colour of the face in this
and the other monk is the same as it was twenty years ago; it has
sustained no injury in that time. But for the sun-burnt, well-baked,
robust tone of the flesh-colour, commend me to the leg and girded thigh
of the robber. What a difference between this and Raphael’s
brick-dust!—I left this admirable performance with regret; yet I do not
see why; for I have it present with me, ‘in my mind’s eye,’ and swear,
in the wildest scenes of the Alps, that the St. Peter Martyr is finer.
That, and the Man in the Louvre, are my standards of perfection; my
taste may be wrong; nay, even ridiculous—yet such it is.
The picture of the Assumption, at the Academy of Painting at Venice,
which was discovered but the other day under a load of dirt and varnish,
is cried up as even superior to the St. Peter: it is indeed a more
extraordinary picture for the artist to have painted; but for that very
reason it is neither so perfect nor so valuable. Raphael could not paint
landscape; Titian could hardly paint history without the help of
landscape. A background was necessary to him, like music to a melodrame.
He had in this picture attempted the style of Raphael, and has succeeded
and even failed—to admiration. He has given the detached figures of the
Roman school, the contrasted, uniform colours of their draperies, the
same determined outline, no breaking of the colours or play of light and
shade, and has aimed at the same elevation and force of expression. The
drawing has nearly the same firmness with more scope, the colouring is
richer and almost as hard, the attitudes are imposing and significant,
and the features handsome—what then is wanting? That glow of heavenward
devotion bent on ideal objects, and taking up its abode in the human
form and countenance as in a shrine; that high and abstracted
expression, that outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible
grace, which Raphael alone could give in its utmost purity and
intensity. One glimpse of the Crowning of the Virgin in the Vatican is
worth it all—lifts the mind nigher to the subject, dissolves it in
greater sweetness, sinks it in deeper thoughtfulness. The eager headlong
enthusiasm of the Apostle to the right in a green mantle is the best;
the lambent eyes and suffused glow of the St. John are only the
indications of rosy health, and youthful animation; the Virgin is a
well-formed rustic beauty with a little affectation, and the attitude of
the Supreme Being is extravagant and distorted. Raphael could have
painted this subject, as to its essential qualities, better; he could
not have done the St. Peter Martyr in any respect so well. I like
Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (notwithstanding the horror of the
subject) better than the Assumption, for its characteristic expression,
foreshortening, and fine mellow masses of light and shade. Titian could
come nearer the manner of Michael Angelo than that of Raphael, from an
eye for what was grand and impressive in outward form and position, as
his frescoes of Prometheus, Cain and Abel, and another grotesque and
gigantic subject on the ceiling of one of the churches, shew. These, in
picturesque grouping, in muscular relief, and vastness of contour,
surpass Michael Angelo’s figures in the Last Judgment, however they may
fall short of them in anatomical knowledge or accuracy. I also was
exceedingly delighted with the Salutation of the Virgin at the Academy,
which is shewn as one of his masterpieces, for the mixture of airy
scenic effect with the truth of individual portraiture. The churches and
public buildings here bear ample testimony to the powers of Titian’s
historic pencil, though I did not see enough of his portraits in private
collections, of which I had hoped to take my fill. In the large hall of
the Academy of Painting are also the fine picture of the Miracle of
Saint Mark by Tintoret, an inimitable representation of a religious and
courtly ceremony by Paris Bourbon (inimitable for the light, rich,
gauze-colouring, and magical effect of the figures in perspective), and
several others of vast merit as well as imposing dimensions. The Doge’s
Palace and the Council-Chamber of the Senate are adorned with the lavish
performances of Tintoret and Paul Veronese; and in the allegorical
figures in the ceiling of the Council-Chamber, and in the splendid
delineation of a Doge returning thanks to the Virgin for some victory
over the Infidels, which occupies the end of it, I think the last-named
painter has reached the top of his own and of Venetian art. As an art of
decoration, addressing itself to the eye, to the vain or voluptuous part
of our constitution, it cannot be carried farther. Of all pictures this
Thanksgiving is the most dazzling, the most florid. A rainbow is not
more rich in hues, a bubble that glitters in the sun is not more light
and glossy, a bed of tulips is not more gaudy. A flight of angels with
rosy hues and winged glories connects the heavenly and the earthly
groups like a garland of blushing flowers. The skill and delicacy of
this composition is equal to its brilliancy of effect. His marriage of
Cana (another wonderful performance) is still at Paris: it was formerly
in the Refectory of the church of St. Giorgio Maggiore, on an island on
the opposite side of the harbour, which is well worth attention for the
architecture by Palladio and the altar-piece in bronze by John of
Bologna, containing a number of figures (as it appears to me) of the
most masterly design and execution.
I have thus hastily run through what struck me as most select in fine
art in this celebrated city. To enumerate every thing would be endless.
There are other objects for the curious. The Mosaics of the church of
St. Mark, the Brazen Horses, the belfry or Campanile, the arsenal, and
the theatres, which are wretched both as it relates to the actors and
the audience. The shops are exceedingly neat and well-stocked, and the
people gay and spirited. The harbour does not present an appearance of
much traffic. In the times of the Republic, 30,000 people are said to
have slept every night in the vessels in the bay. Daniell’s Hotel, at
which we were, and to which I would recommend every English traveller,
commands a superb view of it, and the scene (particularly by moonlight)
is delicious. I heard no music at Venice, neither voice nor lute; saw no
group of dancers or maskers, and the gondolas appear to me to resemble
hearses more than pleasure-boats. I saw the Rialto, which is no longer
an Exchange. The Bridge of Sighs, of which Lord Byron speaks, is not a
thoroughfare, but an arch suspended at a considerable height over one of
the canals, and connecting the Doge’s palace with the prison.