Part 5

I have said nothing of Canaletto or of Guardi. They seem to belong to another world than that of the great Venetians. But it would be uncourteous to omit them. Canaletto, or Il Canale, was really fond of the waters of Venice, much fonder of them than his predecessors were; and when he painted the long reaches of the Grand Canal, he managed to represent one aspect at least of that wonderful sea-street, when under a faint wind it trembles into multitudinous small curving ripples that annihilate all reflections. He does not often vary from this, and when he varies he does not succeed so well. But he painted the buildings with a real desire to impress us with their nobility and largeness of design, with no special care for accuracy of detail, but with great care to give fully a sense of their splendour of situation and of architecture. And he drew over the scene--and this he did excellently--a clear, pure, luminous, tenderly gradated, but rather hard atmosphere, in which the buildings were frankly visible, and the waters almost austere. The pictures are so decorative that many of them tend to weary the eyes, and we turn with some relief to those other pictures of his in which the sky is dark, and a more grave and homelier representation is made of the Venice of his time. I have not seen any pictures by him of the lagoons. But I have seen a set of drawings of the islands in the lagoon done in Indian ink, which in their slight and careless drawing pleased me because he seemed to love what he was doing, and to feel delicately the magical reflectiveness and charm of the waters of the lagoon.

Guardi cares more than Il Canale for the waters of Venice. He did his best to represent their lovely trembling in the light, and the images they made in their mirror of the buildings above them and of the life which moves upon them. It is easy, when one does not require the best, to admire, even to have a special liking for, his pictures. As to what the moderns have done for the Venetian waters, what the sea-charm of the city has impelled on their canvas--it would require an essay as long as this to tell the tale of it.

* * * * *

These things, with regard to Venetian painting, are part of the charm which the sea exercised on the artists. One other charm is also derived from the sea. The sea and its life have largely made the character of the Venetian people. That is too great a matter to discuss fully, but if those who visit Venice will make friends with the fisher people, they will soon discover the historical character of the Venetian people as distinguished from the upper classes. It is salted with the nature of the sea. A wild, free, open, dashing, quiet and tempestuous character, too much the sport of circumstance and impulse, yet capable of a steady exercise of power when it loves or desires greatly--it is the human image of the sea on which they live. It is one of the pleasantest charms of Venice to know it, and be friends with it.

It is always a romantic character, and the sea has always fathered its romance. The history of the city, legendary and actual, is steeped in the romance of the sea. Wherever we wander through the town, in the churches, by the monuments, squares, bridges and quays, among the islands in the lagoon, on the sea-beaten sand of the Lido, when we hear the beat of the hammers in the Arsenal, in the very names of the streets--we meet the sea, and stories of the sea, and have all the pleasure and charm a boy has when he reads of ocean adventure, and feels on his cheek the salt wind from the sea. I will only take one well-known example. Walking in the neighbourhood of the Church of Santa Maria Formosa, I happened to look up to the name of the street. It was called after the guild of workers who made the bridal chests and jewel boxes for the Venetian maidens. It was here they lived and wrought. But they were not only workmen, but sailors trained for war. And as I saw the name, I remembered the story of the brides of Venice, twelve of whom were each year, on the Feast of the Purification, dowered by the State. It happened one year that pirates from Trieste, knowing this custom, stole in at night to the Island of San Pietro di Castello, and hid in the low bushes near the water. When the brides, carrying their boxes of gems and money, were among the peaceful throng in the Church, these bold bad men seized them and bore them away to the port of Caorle, and there, landing with the spoil, lit their fires and took to feasting. All Venice rose to pursue them, but the Chest and Box-Makers were the first, with that fierce swiftness which belonged to Venetian war, to take to their boats and pursue the ravishers; and outsailing all the rest, rescued the damsels and slew the villains as they were drinking round their fires. Returning with the rest, the Doge Candiano asked them what reward they would have from the State--and they answered: “Only that the Doge should visit in procession their Church of Santa Maria Formosa on the anniversary of the Day of the Brides.” Everywhere in the city such romantic stories spring up from church and square, palace and bridge; and their historical charm is born of the sea.

In conclusion, I may write a little word on the sensational charm of Venice seated in the hearing of the sea waves, and adorned for worship by the beauty of her water-world. The word sensational here brings no reproach; it only means that the vivid impressions made on the senses are more numerous, varied, and intense in Venice than elsewhere. Each of them is accompanied with a spiritual passion as intense as the sensible impression. The imagination is incessantly kindled into creation by what it sees.

I will bring together, to illustrate this, what I saw in one day when I went to Torcello. We started early, on a lovely morning. As we rounded the angle of Murano we saw far away, and filling the line of the horizon, the rare vision of the peaks of the Dolomites. Snow lay on them, but snow transfigured by distance into ethereal light. Fine bars of vapour lay across them, floating free, as if they were the battlements of fairyland. Below, their buttresses and flanks fell into the plain, blue as the heaven above them. Seen thus, across the dazzling lagoon, they made that impression of farness and mystery, of a land of enchanting secrets, of ethereal hope taking ethereal form, which is part of the magic which rises like a wizard vapour from the lagoons. The mountain glory is transfigured into a spiritual glory, and the soul loses its conscious life in a drift of dreams.

Then, through the winding of the dark piles, through the shallows haunted by sea birds, we came to Torcello. Torcello has been described by a master hand, and I will not follow him; but when we had visited the well-known places we went down along the banks to the large arm of the sea beside the island. There was not a sound, save the cry of a scythe in the coarse reeds, as we sat on the flowery grass. The place was once full of human life, of wealth, and labour; it was now the very home of desolation. Deep sadness--the sense of all the might and splendour of the earth passing away into the elements, of nature only living, and living in regret--filled the heart. And the sensation was as different from that with which we had begun the day, as the glory of the mountains was from the wild sea-marsh where we sat, and the sorrowful salt water stealing by.

We left Torcello and went on to Burano, a small island about a mile from Torcello. The men are fishers, the women lace-makers. A few canals traverse it, and it has a large population. It belongs to itself alone, and the indwellers have kept their distinct type for centuries. For centuries they have been poor, rough, and helpful to one another. A British working man would think their life starvation. It is an austere struggle for existence; but on the day I went to see them they had a festa. Baldassare Galuppi, whom Browning celebrated, was a native of the island, and this was his centenary. To honour this half-genius all the inhabitants cheerfully struck work, and turned out in their best array. The canals, the streets, were crowded; the market-place was full of booths and rejoicing folk. In the church the preacher was improving the occasion. A local poet had written a sonnet on Galuppi, and it was hung up at the corner of every street. Illustrated broadsheets with Galuppi’s portrait and his life were sold on every stall; the men and women were singing snatches from his music. A cripple, on gigantic crutches, seized hold of me and carried me off to the Municipio to show me the musician’s bust, as excited as the rest of the crowd to celebrate the artist of their town. We forgot the mountains, we forgot Torcello, in the gaiety, brightness, good humour, and artistic excitement of humanity. Nothing can well be more wretchedly poor than the life of these hard-working people, and yet, to celebrate one dead for a hundred years, every memory of their misery perished in pleasant joy.

When we left Burano we rowed on another mile to visit the Island of St. Francis in the Desert. Ever since the fourteenth century, with a few intervals, it has been held by the Franciscans. A marble wall surrounds the tiny island, a marble pavement leads up to the small convent with its church and garden. Cypresses and tall poplars stand in the garden, and one stone pine looks out from the corner of the wall over the waste lagoon. It is a solitary and lovely place, like an island in the sea of the world.

We found service going on; the little bell was ringing, and we knelt among the monks. All the spirit of the silence, of the peace of obedience, chastity, and poverty, of the love that ruled St. Francis, fell upon us. The depth of the religious life was here. I looked up as I knelt, and saw, rudely painted on the wall, the charming legend of the place--how St. Francis, returning from the East, took boat at Venice to reach the mainland, and as night fell was drifted to this island, slept, and woke in the morning among the low bushes which clothed its shore. And as the sun rose he began to chant the Matins. But who, said he, will sing the responses? At which all the little birds came flocking into the bushes, and when he paused sang the responses for him.[2] And Francis, rejoicing, struck his staff into the ground, and it became a tree where the birds had plenteous shelter. Part of the trunk of that tree is still kept in the cloister--small and poor, paved with brick, and a deep well in the centre. Vervain and roses and balsams grew round its low pillars in pots of red earthenware, and the scent of them was sweet and solitary. And we forgot the noise and excitement of Burano, and remembered only the peaceful sainthood of the world, and the secret of obedience, and the love of God to poverty.

When we left the island the sun had set over the Euganean Hills, and again, as in the morning, but of how different a note, a new impression out of the life of Nature was made upon us. We rowed in silence through the teaching of evening. And when night came and the only light was the light of stars, the silence deepened into mystery. There is a sense of the infinite on the lagoon at night, and speech seems to break its spell. It is half awe, half pleasure; the excitement it brings is not for words; it is translated within into the language of the personal soul, the tongue which no one knows but one’s self alone.

This was our day. There is no other place I know of where so many varied impressions may be awakened in the imagination. They are bound up with the sea and their charm is from the sea.

This perfect evening slowly falls Without a stain, without a cloud; The sun has set--and all the bells Of Venice in the skies are loud,

Clashing and chiming far and near “Ave Maria,” while the moon Large-globed and red, climbs through the mist To loiter o’er the dark lagoon.

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The view from both these places, San Andrea and the Campo Marte, is now blocked out by the great Fondamenta, built for the Orient Liners and the Adriatic trade of Venice.

[2] There is another form of the legend, but I prefer this.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.