LETTER XXXI.
Picture of the Assumption, by Titian.—Martyrdom of St. Peter.—Church of St. Mark.—Attention to the countenance by the old masters.—Canova’s Monument.—Palaces.—Arsenal and Museum.—Gondolas and Gondoliers.—Lions’ Mouths.—Concourse in the Square of St. Mark.—Attempt to revive Venice as a free port.—Composition Floors.—Cause of frequent conflagration in America.—Mr. Owen’s social scheme.—Company to erect edifices for lodging mechanics suggested.
We have left the Leone Bianco for lodgings near the Piazza San Marco, where we control our own ménage, avoiding the expense and confusion of an inn. I have set up my gondola, and we have been regularly at work looking at sights for the last week. I shall continue, in my own way, to speak only of those things that have struck me as peculiar, and which, previously to my own visit here, I should myself have been glad to have had explained.
In the first place, Titian, and Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese, are only seen at Venice. Good pictures of the first are certainly found elsewhere; but here you find him in a blaze of glory. I shall not weary you with minute descriptions of things of this sort, but one story connected with a picture of Titian’s is too good not to be told. You know, the French carried away every work of art they could. They even attempted to remove fresco paintings; a desecration that merited the overthrow of their power. One great picture in Venice, however, escaped them. It stood in a dark chapel, and was so completely covered with dust and smoke that no one attended to it. Even the servitors of the church itself fancied it a work of no merit.
Within a few years, however, some artist or connoisseur had the curiosity to examine into the subject of this unknown altar-piece. His curiosity became excited; the picture was taken down, and being thoroughly cleaned, it proved to be one of the most gorgeous Titians extant. Some think it his chef-d’œuvre. Without going so far as this, it is a picture of great beauty, and every way worthy of the master. The subject is the Assumption, which he has treated in a manner very different from that of Murillo, all of whose Virgins are in white, while this of Titian’s is red. The picture is now kept in the Academy, and imitations of it are seen on half the ornamented manufactures of Venice.
The Martyrdom of St. Peter, (not the Evangelist,) Sir Joshua Reynolds pronounced a wonder, in its way; but it stands in a bad light, and it did not strike me as a pleasant subject. All Martyrdoms are nuisances on canvass. Like the statues of men without skins, they may do artists good, but an amateur can scarcely like them. The better they are done, the more revolting they become.
We have visited half the churches, picture-hunting: and a queer thing it is to drive up to a noble portico in your gondola, to land and find yourself in one of the noblest edifices of Europe. Then the sea-breezes fan the shrines; and sometimes the spray and surf is leaping about them, as if they were rocks on a strand. This applies only to those that stand a little removed from the bulk of the town, and exposed to the sweep of the port. But St. Mark’s is as quaint internally as on its exterior. It is an odd jumble of magnificence, and of tastes that are almost barbarous. The imitation mosaics, in particular, are something like what one might expect to see at the court of the Incas. The pavement of this church is undulating, like low waves—a sort of sleeping ground-swell. C—— thinks it is intentional, by way of marine poetry, to denote the habits of the people; but I fancy it is more probably poetic justice, a reward for not driving home the piles. The effect is odd, for you almost fancy you are afloat as you walk over the undulating surface. St. Mark’s, if not the very oldest, is one of the oldest Christian churches now standing. There were older, of course, in Asia Minor; but they stand no longer,—or if they do stand, they have ceased to be Christian churches.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says, if it were the fashion to go naked, the beauties of the human form are so much superior to that of the face, that no one would regard the latter. Clothes have produced a different effect on the art of painting. All the painters who create or revive their art commence with the countenance, which they paint well long before they can draw the form at all. You may see this in America, where the art is still in its infancy, in one sense; many drawing good heads, who make sad work with the body and the hands. The works of the old masters exhibit heavenly countenances on spider’s limbs, as any one knows who has ever seen a picture by Giotto. A picture here, by the master of Titian, has much of this about it; but it is a gem, after all. John of Bellino was the painter, and I liked it better than any thing I saw, one fresco painting excepted.
Some of the carvings of the churches, that are in high relief, surpass any thing of the sort I have ever seen; and, in general, there is an affluence of ornaments, and of works of merit, that renders these edifices second to few besides those of Rome. A monument by Canova, that was designed for Titian, but which has received a new destination by being erected in honour of the sculptor himself, is an extraordinary thing, and quite unique. Besides the main group, there are detached figures, that stand several feet aloof; and the effect of this work, which is beautifully chiselled out of spotless marble, beneath the gloomy arches of a church, is singularly dramatic and startling. One is afraid to commend the conceit, and yet it is impossible not to admire the result. Still, I think, the admirable thought of Nahl renders his humble Swiss tomb the sublimest thing in Europe.
What shall I tell you of the famous palaces? They are more laboured externally, and have less simplicity and grandeur than I had expected to see; but many of them are magnificent houses. All stand on a canal, very many on the principal one; but they all extend far back towards the streets, and can be entered as well by land as by water. There is a large vestibule or hall below, into which one first enters on quitting the gondola; and it is very usual to see one or more gondolas in it, as one sees carriages in a court. The rooms above are often as rich as those of royal residences, and many capital pictures are still found in them. The floors are, almost invariably, of the composition which I have already mentioned as resembling variegated marble. A much smaller proportion of them than of those at Rome appear to be regularly occupied by their owners.
You may suppose that I have had the curiosity to visit the renowned Arsenal. It stands at one end of the town, and of course commands the best water. The walls enclose a good deal of room, and ships of size can enter within them. An Austrian corvette was on the stocks, but there was no great activity in the building-yard. A frigate or two, however, are here.
There is a museum of curious objects attached to the Arsenal, that is well worth seeing. Among other things, we saw plans, and even some of the ornaments of the Buccentauro, which is broken up, the sea being a widow. One does not know which is the most to be pitied, la Veuve de la grande armée, or the bereaved Adriatic.
I have told you nothing of the gondolas. The boats have a canopied apartment in the centre, which will contain several people. Some will hold a large party, but the common gondola may seat six in tolerable comfort. With the front curtain drawn, one is as much concealed as in a coach. The gondolier stands on a little deck at the stern, which is ridged like a roof, and he pushes his oar, which has no rullock, but is borne against a sort of jaw in a crooked knee, and may be raised from one resting-place to another at will. It requires practice to keep the oar in its place, as I know by experience, having tried to row myself with very little success. By his elevated position, the gondolier sees over the roof of the little pavilion, and steers as he rows. If there are two gondoliers, as is frequently the case, one stands forward of the pavilion, always rowing like the other, though his feet are on the bottom of the boat. The prow has a classical look, having a serrated beak of iron, that acts as an offensive defence.
The boats themselves are light, and rather pretty; the mould, a little resembling that of a bark canoe. The colour is almost invariably black; and as the canopy is lined with black cloth, fringed, or with black leather, they have a solemn and hearse-like look, that is not unsuited to their silence and to the well-known mystery of a Venetian. There is something to cause one to fancy he is truly in a new state of society, as his own gondola glides by those of others with the silence of the grave, the gentle plashing of the water being all that is usually audible. My gondolier has a most melodious voice, and the manner in which he gives the usual warning as the boat turns a corner is music itself.
The private gondolas are often larger, and on great occasions, I am told, they are very rich. The livery of a private gondolier used to be a flowered jacket and cap; and a few such are still to be seen on the canals.
Of course we have visited the cells, the halls of the Ducal Palace, and the piombi. There are several Lions’ mouths, all let into the wall of the palace, near the Giant’s Stairs; and the name is obtained from the circumstance that the head of a lion is wrought in stone and built into the building, the orifice to receive the paper being the mouth of the animal.
The Square of St. Mark is a delightful place of resort at this season; I pass every evening in it, enjoying the music and the sports. Here you can also see that you are on the eastern confines of Europe, Asiatics and Greeks and European Turks frequenting the place in some numbers. There is one coffee-house, in particular, that appears to be much in request with the Mussulmans, for I seldom pass it without finding several grave turbaned gentlemen seated before it. These men affect Christian usages so far as to sit on chairs; though I have remarked that they have a predilection for raising a leg on one knee, or some other grotesque attitude. They have the physical qualifications, in this respect, of an American country buck, or of a member of Parliament, to say nothing of Congress.
The attempt to revive the importance of Venice, by making it a free port, is not likely to result in much benefit. It requires some peculiar political combinations, and a state of the world very different from that which exists to-day, to create a commercial supremacy for such places as Venice or Florence. Venice does not possess a single facility that is not equally enjoyed by Trieste, while the latter has the all-important advantage of being on the main. The cargo brought into Venice, unless consumed there, must be reshipped to reach the consumer; or, vice versâ, it must be shipped once more on its way from the producer to the foreign port, than if sent directly from Trieste. A small district in its immediate vicinity may depend on Venice as its mart, but no extended trade can ever be revived here until another period shall arrive, when its insular situation may make its security from assault a consideration. A general and protracted war might do something for the place, but the prosperity that is founded on violence contains the principle of its own destruction.
I have been so much struck by the beauty of the composition floors that are seen here in nearly every house, as to go to the mechanics, and to employ them to let me see the process of making them. Enclosed you have the written directions they have given me. In addition to this I can add, that the great point appears to be beating the mortar, and to put it on in separate layers. The time required to make a thoroughly good floor of this kind is about two years, though one may suffice; and this, I well know, will be a serious objection in a country like our own. Their great beauty, however, their peculiar fitness for a warm climate, and the protection they afford against fire, are strong inducements for trying them. As they can be carpeted in winter, there is no objection to them on account of the cold; indeed, if properly carpeted, they must be warmer than planks, insomuch as they admit no air when thoroughly constructed.
I have now been in Europe four years, and I have seen but two fires, although most of my time has been passed in London, Paris, Rome, Florence, Naples, &c. &c. It is true, some portion of this exemption from alarms is to be ascribed to the system of having regular corps of firemen, who are constantly on duty, and who go noiselessly to work: but, after making every allowance for this difference, and excluding New York, which is even worse than Constantinople for fires, I am persuaded there are ten fires in an ordinary American town, for one in a European. The fact may be explained in several ways, though I incline to believe in a union of causes. The poor of America are so much better off than the poor of Europe, that they indulge in fires and lights when their class in this part of the world cannot. The climate, too, requires artificial heat, and stoves have not been adopted as in the North of Europe, and where they are used, they are dangerous iron stoves, instead of the brick furnaces of the North, most of which receive the fire from the exterior of the room. But, after all, I think a deficient construction lies at the bottom of the evil with us. Throughout most of Europe, the poor, in particular, do not know the luxury of wooden floors. They stand either on the beaten earth, coarse compositions, stones, or tiles. In Italy, it is commonly the composition; and you may form some idea of the consistency to which the material is brought, by the fact that good roofs are made of it.
It is the misfortune of men to push their experiments, when disposed at all to quit the beaten track, into impracticable extremes, and to overlook a thousand intermediate benefits that might really be attainable. Every one, of any penetration or common sense, must have seen, at a glance, that the social scheme of Mr. Owen was chimerical, inasmuch as it was destructive of that principle of individuality by which men can be induced to bestow the labour and energy that alone can raise a community to the level of a high civilization,—or when raised, can keep it there. Still his details suggest many exceedingly useful hints, which, by being carried out, would add immeasurably to the comfort and security of the poor in towns. What a charity, for instance, would a plan something like the following become!—Let there be a company formed to erect buildings of great size, to lodge the labouring mechanics and manufacturers. Such an edifice might be raised on arches, if necessary, with composition floors. It might enjoy every facility of water and heat, and even of cooking and washing, on a large scale, and, of course, economically. The price of rooms could be graduated according to means, and space obtained for the exercise of children in the greater area of so many united lots. Even entire streets might be constructed on this community-plan, the whole being subject to a company-police. Here, however, the community principle should cease, and each individual be left to his own efforts. America may not need such a provision for the poor; but Europe would greatly benefit by taking the practicable and rejecting the impracticable features of the Owen System. Among other benefits, there would be fewer fires.