Horatio Robert Forbes Brown

“ During the long wars with Genoa, after the defeats of Curzola, Sapienza, Pola, above all during the crisis of the war of Chioggia, it had been brought home to the Venetians that, as they owned no meat or corn-producing territory, a crushing defeat at sea and a blockade on the mainland exposed them to the grave danger of being starved into surrender. Both these pressing necessities, for a free outlet for merchandise and for a food-supplying area, drove Venice on to the mainland, and compelled her to initiate a policy which eventually landed her in the disastrous wars of Cambrai. ”

“ The growing wealth of Venice soon attracted the cupidity of her piratical neighbours on the coast of Dalmatia. The swift Liburnian vessels began to raid the Lido, compelling the Venetians to arm their own vessels and thus to form the nucleus of their famous fleet, the importance of which was recognized by the Golden Bull of the emperor Basil, which conferred on Venetian merchants privileges far more extensive than any they had hitherto enjoyed, on condition that the Venetian fleet was to be at the disposition of the emperor. ”

“ There was for the future one Venice and one Venetian people dwelling at Rialto, the city of compromise between the dangers from the mainland, exemplified by Attila and Alboin, and the perils from the sea, illustrated by Pippin's attack. The position of Venice was now assured. The state was a vassal of a weak and distant empire, which would leave it virtually free to pursue its own career; it was an independent tributary of a near and powerful kingdom with which it could trade, and trade between east and west became henceforth the note of its development. ”

“ There is a tradition that Venice was founded by "consuls from Padua"; and Padua claimed complete control of the course of the Brenta down to its mouth at Malamocco. The destruction of the mainland cities, and the flight of their leading inhabitants to the lagoons, encouraged the lagoon population to assert a growing independence, and led them to advance the doctrine that they were "born independent." Their development as a maritime people, engaged in small trading and intimately acquainted with their home waters, led Belisarius to seek their help in his task of recovering Italy from the Goths. ”

“ The closing of the great council was, no doubt, mainly due to the slowly formed resolution on the part of the great commercial families to secure a monopoly in the Levant trade which the Fourth Crusade had placed definitely in their hands. The theory of the government, a theory expressed throughout the whole commercial career of the republic, the theory which made Venice a rigidly protective state, was that the Levant trade belonged solely to Venice and her citizens. No one but a Venetian citizen was permitted to share in the profits of that trade. ”

“ Sansovino’s splendid monument to Tomaso Rangone is an essential feature of the facade of San Giuliano. The most successful Venetian sculpture is to be found in the many noble sepulchral private monuments. The jealousy of the Venetian republic forbade the erection of monuments to her great men. The sole exception is the superb equestrian statue in honour of the General Bartolommeo Colleoni, which stands on the Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo. By his will Colleoni left his vast fortune to Venice on condition that a monument should be raised to him at St Mark’s. ”

“ The history of Venice during the next two hundred years is marked externally by the growth of the city, thanks to an ever-expanding trade, both down the Adriatic, which brought the republic into collision with the Dalmatian pirates and led to their final conquest, in 1000, by the doge Pietro Orseolo II., and also on the mainland, where Venice gradually acquired trading rights, partly by imperial diploma, partly by the establishment and the supply of markets on the mainland rivers, the Sile and the Brenta. ”

“ But it was inevitable that, when the barbarians, Lombard or Frank, were once established on the mainland of Italy, Venice should be brought first into trading and then into political relations with their near neighbours, who as masters of Italy also put forward a claim to sovereignty in the lagoons. It is between the two claims of east and west that Venice struggled for and achieved recognized independence. ”

“ In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, and although Venice entered at once into treaty with the new power and desired to trade with it, not to fight with it, yet it was impossible that her possessions in the Levant and the archipelago should not eventually bring her into collision with the expanding energy of the Mussulman. Europe persistently refused to assist the republic to preserve a trade in which she had established a rigid monopoly, and Venice was left to fight the Turk single-handed. ”

“ The growing importance of the lagoon townships, owing to their maritime skill, their expanding trade, created by their position between east and west, their monopoly of salt and salted fish, which gave them a strong position in the mainland markets, rendered it inevitable that a clash must come over the question of independence, when either east or west should claim that Venice belonged to them ”

“ But it is in the domestic architecture of Venice that we find the most striking and characteristic examples of Gothic. Gothic palaces.The introduction of that styled coincided with the consolidation of the Venetian constitution and the development of Venetian commerce both in the Levant and with England and Flanders. The wealth which thus accrued found architectural expression in those noble palaces, so characteristic of Venice, which line the Grand and smaller canals. They are so numerous that we cannot do more than call attention to one or two. ”

“ The island commanded the entrance to the Dardanelles. Genoa determined to oppose the concession, and war broke out. The Genoese Admiral Luciano Doria sailed into the Adriatic, attacked and defeated Vettor Pisani at Pola in Istria, and again Venice and the lagoons lay at the mercy of the enemy. Doria resolved to blockade and starve Venice to surrender. He was master of the sea, and the flow of provisions from the mainland was cut off by Genoa's ally, Francesco I. Carrara, lord of Padua. Doria seized Chioggia as a base of operations and drew his fleet inside the lagoons. ”

“ The unification of Italy, the growing prosperity of the country, above all the opening of the Suez Canal, which restored to Venice the full value of her position as the port farthest into the heart of Europe, brought about an immense expansion of trade. The government accordingly resolved to reopen the Lido entrance to the lagoon, and thus to afford a shorter and more commodious access from the sea. As at the Malamocco entrance so at the Lido, two moles were run out in a south-westerly direction ”

“ This expansion of the trade of Venice resulted in the rapid development of the wealthier classes, with a growing tendency to draw together for the purpose of securing to themselves the entire direction of Venetian politics in order to dominate Venetian commerce. ”

“ Venice, like Rome and other famous cities, was an asylum city. But it is nearly certain that long before Attila and his Huns swept down upon the Venetian plain the little islands of the lagoon already had a population of poor but hardy fisherfolk living in quasi-independence, thanks to their poverty and their inaccessible site. This population was augmented from time to time by refugees from the mainland cities of Aquileia, Concordia, Opitergium Altinum and Patavium. But these did not mingle readily with the indigenous population ”

“ But the empire was vast and weak, and its capital lay far away; in practice, no doubt, the lagoon population enjoyed virtual independence, though later the Byzantine claim to suzerainty became one of the leading factors in the formation of the state. It was from Byzantium that the Venetian people received the first recognition of their existence as a separate community. ”

“ But the population of Venice was growing rapidly, and citizenship was as yet undefined. To secure for themselves the command of trade the leading commercial families resolved to erect themselves into a close gild, which should have in its hands the sole direction of the business concern, the exploitation of the East. ”

“ On each occasion, no doubt, some of the refugees remained behind in the islands, and gradually built and peopled the twelve lagoon townships, which formed the germ of the state of Venice and were subsequently concentrated at Rialto or in the city we now know as Venice. These twelve townships were Grado, Bibione, Caorle, Jesolo, Heraclea, Torcello, Murano, Rialto, Malamocco, Poveglia, Chioggia and Sottomarina. The effect of the final Lombard invasion is shown by the resolve to quit the mainland and the rapid building of churches which is recorded by the Cronaca altinate. ”

“ Modern Buildings:—In recent times the general prosperity of the city, which is on the ascendant, has brought about a revival of domestic and civic architecture. The architects Rupolo and Sardi have erected a considerable number of buildings, in which they have attempted, and with considerable success, to return either to Venetian Gothic or to the early Renaissance Lombardesque style. ”

“ All three are dotted with small islands, possibly the remains of some earlier lido. These islands are little else than low mud banks, barely rising above the water-level. On a group of these mud banks about the middle of the lagoon of Venice stands the city of Venice. It would be difficult to imagine a site less adapted for the foundation and growth of a great community. The soil is an oozy mud which can only be made capable of carrying buildings by the artificial means of pile-driving; there is no land fit for agriculture or the rearing of cattle ”

“ It is almost invariably square; the only examples of round campanile in this part of Italy are to be found at Ravenna and at Caorle to the east of Venice; while inside Venice itself the solitary exception to the square plan was the campanile of San Paternian, built in 999 and now demolished, which was a hexagon. The campanile is usually a plain brick shaft with shallow pilasters running up the faces. It has small angle-windows to light the interior inclined plane or staircase, and is not broken into storeys with grouped windows as in the case of the Lombard bell-towers. ”

“ The adoption of veneer for decoration prohibited any deep cutting, and almost all the sculpture is shallow. Only in the capitals, which are of extraordinary richness and variety, do we get any deep or bold relief. Dentil mouldings, of which examples may still be seen in the remains of the palace of Blachernae at Constantinople, are characteristic of Venetian ornamentation at this period, and remain a permanent feature in Venetian architecture down to the 11th century. The dome is the leading idea or motif in Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture ”

“ Above this is a lofty third store, pierced with a few large windows, with pointed arches once filled with tracery, which is now lost. The whole surface of the ponderous upper storey is covered with a 'diaper pattern in slabs of creamy white Istrian stone and red Verona marble, giving a delicate rosy-orange hue to the building. Very beautiful sculpture, executed with an ivory-like minuteness of finish, is used to decorate the whole building wit wonderful profusion. At each of the three free angles is a large group immediately over the lower column. ”

“ We may date the true foundation of the library to the donation of Cardinal Bessarion. Bessarion had intended to bequeath his books to the Benedictines of San Giorgio Maggiore, but Pietro Morosini, Venetian ambassador at Rome, pointed out the inconvenience of housing his library on an island that could not easily be reached. The cardinal therefore obtained a bull from Pope Paul II., permitting him to recall his original donation, and in a letter dated from' the baths of Viterbo, May 13th, 1468, he made over his library to the republic. ”

“ The advent of the Franks determined the final solution. The emperor Leo, the Isaurian, came to open rupture with Pope Gregory II. over the question of images. The pope appealed to Liutprand, the powerful king of the Lombards, to attack the imperial possessions in Ravenna. He did so, and expelled the exarch Paul, who took refuge in Venice and was restored to his post by the doge of the Heraclean or Byzantine party, Orso, who in return for this assistance received the imperial title of hypatos, and trading rights in Ravenna. ”

“ Meantime the internal politics of Venice had been steadily preparing the way for the approaching fusion at Rialto. The period from the election of the first doge to the appearance of the Franks was characterized by fierce struggles between Heraclea and Jesolo. At length the whole population agreed to fix their capital at Malamocco, a compromise between the two incompatible parties, marking an important step towards final fusion at Rialto. ”

“ The three commissioners at once laid down a rule—which contains the essence of the act—that only those who could prove that a paternal ancestor had sat in the great council should be eligible for election. This measure divided the community into three great categories: (1) those who had never sat in the council themselves and whose ancestors had never sat; these were of course the vast majority of the population, and they were excluded for ever from the great council: (2) those whose paternal ancestors had sat in the council ”

“ The arsenal suffered frequently and severely from tires, the worst being those of 1509 and 1569; yet such was the wealth of Venice that in the following year she put upon the seas the fleet that crushed the Turks at Lepanto in 1571.
The Lido, which lies about 2 m. S.E. of Venice and divides the lagoon from the sea, is rapidly becoming a fashionable bathing-place. The point of San Nicolo del Lido is strongly fortified to protect the new entrance to the port (see harbour) . ”

“ The remains of a Byzantine façade now almost entirely built into a wall in the Rio di Ca’ Foscari offer us excellent illustration of this decorative work.
Gothic Architecture.-Venetian Gothic, both ecclesiastical and domestic, shares most of the characteristics of north Italian Gothic generally, though in domestic architecture it displays one peculiarity which we shall presently note. The material, brick and terra-cotta, is the determining, cause of the characteristics of north Italian Gothic. ”