Venetians

“ Compare them with the dreamers of Perugino’s school: you feel at once that a gulf lies between them; the fabric of their dream is of another substance. The great Venetians are giants; like the sea’s, their embrace is vast and powerful, endowed also with the gentleness of strength. ”

“ This gave the Venetians a love of comfort, of ease, and of splendour, a refinement of manner, and humaneness of feeling, which made them the first really modern people in Europe. Since there was little room for personal glory in Venice, the perpetuators of glory, the Humanists, found at first scant encouragement there, and the Venetians were saved from that absorption in archæology and pure science which overwhelmed Florence at an early date. ”

“ Is it not strange that for at least six hundred years the Venetians have been contending with those rivers at their mouths—that is to say, where their strength has become wholly irresistible—and never once thought of contending with them at their sources, where their infinitely separated streamlets might be, and are meant by Heaven to be, ruled as easily as children? ”

“ One may say, indeed, that Venice is, emphatically, the city of conversation; people talk all over the place, because there is nothing to interfere with their being heard. Among the populace it is a kind of family party. The still water carries the voice, and good Venetians exchange confidences at a distance of half a mile. It saves a world of trouble, and they don't like trouble. Their delightful garrulous language helps them to make Venetian life a long conversazione. ”

“ Thus, by the middle of the thirteenth century the Venetians were held in the highest consideration throughout the civilized world, and still their reputation was increasing. The voice of Venice was powerful in every cabinet; her flag was respected on every sea; and, in fact, from the Great Council of Venice magistrates were chosen to rule in other parts of Italy where the native governing class was violent in its jealousies. To Milan, Bologna, Padua, and other important cities had these Venetians been called, and wherever they ruled the influence of Venice was potent. ”

“ An art, too, which is both poetry and history, and when we think of the history of those Venetians who became lords of a mighty commerce and conquerors of provinces, we see, as by an invincible law spreading out before our imagination, the marble mansions around the Piazza and along the Grand Canal; we see through the streets of the city a people proud of [Pg 280] the wisdom of their statesmen and of the creations of their painters; we think of the golden Basilica, of the Palace of the Doges; we evoke the shapes of Titian, of Paolo Veronese, of Tintoretto.... ”

“ The men who guarded the docks were absolutely incorruptible. In the sixteenth century it seemed as if the pure blood of the old Venetians ran only in their veins, and as if they alone still upheld the noble traditions of loyalty and simplicity which the founders of the Republic had handed down from braver days. ”

“ The generalising influences at play in great political centres have hardly affected the inhabitants of the city which for a thousand years of independence was a body politic complete in itself. Nor has Venetian common life lacked those elements of beauty without whose presence the popular muse is dumb. The very industries of the Venetians were arts, and when they were young and spiritually teachable, their chief bread-winning work of every day was Venice—her ducal chapel, her campanile, her palaces of marble and porphyry. ”

“ As the Venetians are a people of indomitable perseverance, long schooled to obstinacy by oppression, I suppose they will hold out till their union with the kingdom of Italy. They can do nothing of themselves, but they seem content to wait forever in their present gloom. ”

“ Comparisons in Venice are certainly as odorous as are some of its canals, while many of its streets are not only paved with emerald, but are frescoed now with glaring End-of-the-Nineteenth-Century advertisements of dentifrice and sewing-machines.
That which first strikes the observant{2} stranger in Venice, to-day, is the fact that the Venetians have absolutely and entirely lost their grip upon the beautiful. Nothing on earth can be finer than the art of its glory; nothing in the world can be viler than the so-called art of its decadence. ”

“ We often wander about its vast and stately nave, reading, with pleasure, the historical names on the tombs—taking delight in the many remains of the middle ages—and filled more and more with veneration for the energy, magnificence, and taste of the Venetians.
I cannot tell you of all we see, or it would take you as long to read my letter as we shall be at Venice. As we remain a month, we do not crowd our day with sights; our gondoliers come in the morning, and we pass our time variously. Sometimes, after visiting a single church, we are rowed over to Lido ”

“ But if geography gave Venice an unrivalled site, the Venetians did the rest. Through all the early years of their history they defied Constantinople to the east of them, and Pope and Holy Roman Emperor to the west; sometimes turning to one, sometimes to the other, but stubbornly bent all the while upon independence, replying, when invited to become subjects: 'God, Who is our help and protector has saved us to dwell upon these waters. This Venice, which we have raised in the lagoons, is our mighty habitation, no power of emperor or of prince can touch us' ”

“ That the Venetians are more given to sensual pleasures than the inhabitants of London, Paris, or Berlin, I imagine will be difficult to prove; but as the State Inquisitors do not think proper, and the ecclesiastical are not allowed, to interfere in affairs of gallantry; as a great number of strangers assemble twice or thrice a year at Venice, merely for the sake of amusement; and, above all, as it is the custom to go about in masks, an idea prevails, that the manners are more licentious here than elsewhere. ”

“ There is enough servility in the language,—it is the fashion of the Italian tongue, with its Tu for inferiors, Voi for intimates and friendly equals, and Lei for superiors,—but in the manner there is none, and there is a sense of equality in the ordinary intercourse of the Venetians, at once apparent to foreigners.
All ranks are orderly; the spirit of aggression seems not to exist among them, and the very boys and dogs in Venice are so well-behaved, that I have never seen the slightest disposition in them to quarrel. ”

“ In view of the fact that the story of Venice is so stormy a one, it is interesting to note that all the early ideals of the Venetians ran in the direction of peace and mutual equality, and so determined were they that discord should not be permitted to raise its head that they made their very dress conform to their desires and adopted a long, loose dress, which would be most inconvenient for hot-blooded people who might be apt to quarrel upon small pretexts. ”

“ It is very curious to find the Venetians treating what in other countries became of so great individual importance, merely as a kind of diaper ground, like that of their chequered colors on the walls. ”

“ But were I to form an idea of them from what I have seen, I should paint them as a lively ingenious people, extravagantly fond of public amusements, with an uncommon relish for humour, and yet more attached to the real enjoyments of life, than to those which depend on ostentation, and proceed from vanity.
The common people of Venice display some qualities very rarely to be found in that sphere of life, being remarkably sober, obliging to strangers, and gentle in their intercourse with each other. The Venetians in general are tall and well made. ”

“ If we ask what was the ‘social standing’ of Titian and of some of the most famous Venetians, we shall find that they were simple members of a Guild, and were reckoned with the working men. The Golden Book was the register of the nobles, the Silver Book was reserved for the class of the secretaries, that is, of the burghers or original citizens; but he who exercised an art such as painting, sculpture, or architecture, belonged to the people. ”

“ They rapidly grew in numbers and wealth. Their chief, the great Roman necromancer, enjoyed the state of a temporal prince, and had a whole kingdom appropriated to his use, that he might suitably support his rank and dignity as arch-conjuror.
But to return to Venice;—the great stream of concourse flowed in the direction of the Giardini Pubblici, which are a nook of one of the more southerly islands on which the city stands, fitted up as a miniature landscape, its lilliputian hills and vales being the only ones the Venetians ever see. ”

“ We have not the least desire to be pointed at, whenever we go out, as the maidens who were carried away. If the Venetians were so interested in us, they had much better have set about discovering where we were hidden away before. ”

“ The Venetians of old time who made as great a mystery of love as of state affairs, have been replaced by the modern Venetians, whose most prominent characteristic is to make a mystery of nothing. Those who come to the Erberia with women wish to excite the envy of their friends by thus publishing their good fortune. ”

“ The Venetians were among the first in such willingness. Having many quarrels with the Byzantine Greeks, they were eager to reopen the old eastern market at Alexandria, and did so at the earliest opportunity. From that beginning they spread their trade with Arabs, Moors and Turks, along the whole Mahometan line, in Asia and Africa. But, though Venice took the lead in the reviving commerce of the middle ages and held it substantially to the end of that period of history, she had powerful rivals to contend with, and the strongest were among her near neighbors in Italy. ”

“ Venetians were in special request for this purpose during the 12th and 13th centuries, probably because at this time, at least, they were less concerned than other Italians in the affairs of the mainland. ”

“ It was not very long before the grave senators who objected to the Companions were seen in their scarlet togas presiding over authorised gambling establishments in the ‘ridotti.’
The Venetians were an imaginative people who delighted in fables, amusing, terrible, or pious, as the case might be. Their stories differ from those of other European races in the Middle Ages by the total absence{202} of the element of chivalry upon which most other peoples largely depended for their unwritten fiction. One can make almost anything of a business man except a knight. ”

“ At this period the Venetians were masters of the coast of Dalmatia, and the islands of Cyprus, Candia, and a great part of the Morea, and had almost monopolized the trade of Egypt and the East. The first great attempt to humble Venice was made in the beginning of the 16th century, when the famous league of Cambrai, of which Pope Julius the Second was the real author, though the Emperor of Germany, and the kings of France and Spain were parties to it, was framed for the avowed purpose of completely subduing her, and partitioning her territories. ”

“ This means that Venetian painting followed simpler and more unperturbed ideals than that of Florence. The composure, complacency, and self-centered quality of the Venetians was 325a source of strength to their artists and as well a limitation. The city stuck closely to its chief business of gaining greatly in order to live magnificently. ”

“ The [199] great Sight at Venice, after the Grand Canal and St. Mark's Place, is the Carnival, which begins on Twelfth Day, and holds all Lent. The Diversion of the Venetians is now all for Masquerading. Under a Disguise, they break through their Natural Gravity, and fall heartily into all the Follies and Extravagances of these occasions. With Operas, Plays, and Gaming-Houses, they seem to forget all Habits, Customs, and Laws; lay aside all cares of Business, and swamp all Distinctions of Rank. ”

“ From the time when they had assisted the Longobards against the Greeks, the Venetians found it to their interest to cultivate the friendship of the latter, until, in the twelfth century, they mastered the people so long caressed, and took their capital, under Enrico Dandolo. ”

“ The King was to make his{176} entry on the eighteenth, and he was requested to stop at Murano on the previous evening, in the
Horatio Brown, Venetian studies.
Palazzo Cappello, which was all hung with silk and cloth of gold in his honour. Forty young nobles were attached to his person and sixty halberdiers mounted guard, dressed in yellow and blue, which were regarded by the Venetians as his colours, and wearing a
Henry III. visits Venice, A. Vicentino; Sala delle Quattro Porte. cap with a white tuft for a cockade. Their weapons were taken from the armoury of the Council of Ten. ”

“ Titian's supremacy above all the other Venetians, except Tintoret and Veronese, consists in the firm truth of his portraiture, and more or less masterly understanding of the nature of stones, trees, men, or whatever else he took in hand to paint; so that, without some correlative understanding in the spectator, Titian's work, in its highest qualities, must be utterly dead and unappealing to him. ”

“ Mellow lights, the morning hues of primrose, or of palest amber, pervade the whole society. It is a court of gentle and harmonious souls; and though this style of beauty might cloy, at first sight there is something ravishing in those yellow-haired white-limbed, blooming deities. No movement of lascivious grace as in Correggio, no perturbation of the senses as in some of the Venetians, disturbs the rhythm of their music; nor is the pleasure of the flesh, though felt by the painter and communicated to the spectator, an interruption to their divine calm. ”