public it was decreed that they should not only remain unmolested but be fed at the expence of the state. Venice bas lost its liberty, but those light and gracecreatures appear to have escaped the German conquerors. dented architecture, the balconies, and The infinite number of pigeons that cover the piazza of Saint Mark, the cupola of the church, and the roofs of the Ducal palace, add also to the Oriental aspect of these monuments. In a country where the ruling power, though slow in action, is ever on the watch, one would prefer the Conveyance of letters by these birds. These pigeons have been in Venice from as earhest days. It was the custom on Palm Sunday to let fly from above the principal gate of Saint Mark, a number of pigeons with small rolls of paper ted to their feet, which prevented them from continuing in the air, and as they fed they were caught by the crowd, who began fiercely to dispute the prizes the moment they were loosed. This was a species of distribution to the public rather less ignoble than ours. It sometimes happened that the pigeons got rid of their impediments and sought an asylum on the roofs of Saint Mark and the Ducal palace, near to those awful Piombi where baman captives bemoaned a lot far more unhappy; bere they rapidly increased, and such was the interest they excited that to comply with the wishes of the *During the government of the Republic a person belonging to the city granaries fed the pigeons every morning on the piazza of Saint Mark and the Plata. When Venice was taken In 1796, these state pensioners were no longer supplied, and have sance beau indebted to the compassion of the VeBeams for their subsistence. Consult the work of Madame Justine Renier Michiel on the origin of Venecias fetes, Venice, 1817, 3 vol. 8vo, an agreeable and earned work, one of the best books that bas bern pabllibed on the history of Venice. I met with the authoress, a very amiable woman, not Venice still palpitates in the piazza of Saint Mark; this brilliant decoration costs a million annually in repairs; while other distant quarters, some of which possess magnificent palaces, are left to fall into ruins this corpse of a city, to use the expression of Cicero's friend, is already cold at the extremities, the life and heat remaining are confined to the heart. The Florian coffee-house, under the arcades Procuratie Nuove, in the old time of Venice was a species of institution; it has not survived the decline and fall of the city. This celebrated coffeehouse, like the other great coffee-houses in the piazza of Saint Mark, Quadri, Leoni, Suttil, etc., is however open the whole night in all seasons, and, in fact, is never shut. Florian was formerly the confidant and universal agent of the Venetian nobility. The Venetian who alighted there, had news of his friends and acquaintances; was informed when they would be back and what they had done in his absence; there too he found his letters, cards, and probably his bills; in short, every thing of moment had been done for him by Florian, with care, intelligence, and circumspection. Canova never forgot the more essential services be bad received from Florian at the commencement of his career, when he wanted to become known; and he remained his friend through life. Florian was often tormented with the gout in his feet, and Canova modelled his leg and foot so that the shoemaker could take his measure without putting him to pain. This leg of a coffeehouse-keeper appears to me no less honourable to Ca withstanding the deafness which afflicted her when advanced in years. She died at the age of seventy-eight in the year 1832. Madame Michiel also translated Shakspeare, and defended Venice in the most patriotic manner against M. de Chateaubriand. The visiting cards in Italy are commonly ornamented with emblems and monuments: 1 received cards at Verona on which was an engraving of the amphitheatre; the Venetians have on theirs the bridge of the Rialto, the front of Saint Mark, Lue columns of the Piazzetta, etc. nova than his Theseus, it is pleasing to esteem him as a man whom we have admired as an artist. At the extremity of the piazza there are three pili or flag-masts which formerly bore the glorious standards of Saint Mark, now replaced by the Austrian flag. The pedestals of these masts are in bronze, by Leopardo, and possess the elegance and taste of the Grecian artists. Independently of the great pains taken by the artist, they are so beautifully polished that the figures have all the appearance of having just quitted the workshop; whereas they have been there upwards of three centuries, exposed to the injury of the air, the African siroccos, and to the misty saline spray of the raging Adriatic. CHAPTER III. Church. - Baptistry. Bronze gate. The Virgin della Scarpa.-Pala d'oro.-Historical stones.Horses. Lion of Saint Mark.-Campanile.- Loggiella.-Treasury. The basilic of Saint Mark, begun about the end of the tenth century by the doge Orsolo, is of chequered architecture, a mixture of Greek and Roman, but more especially Gothic. A description of the mosaics, sculptures, basso-relievos, and arabesques with which it is ornamented, would be endless. There are brilliantly blended Grecian elegance, Byzantian luxury, and the talents of the Venetian masters. On seeing these splendid compartments, the golden arched roofs, the pavement of jasper and porphyry, the Ave hundred columns of black, white, and veined marble, of bronze alabaster, vert antique, and serpentine, one would feel inclined to take this christian temple, except that is is somewhat too gloomily lighted, to be a palace of the Arabian Nights. Religion has preserved all these riches, which might have been dissipated in the speculations and enterprises of a commercial and navigating people. The wrecks of the magnificence of ancient Rome ornament the cathedrals of the modern city, its successor. Saint Mark has collected the costly spoils of Constantinople. Italy thus embraces the ruins of these two imperial cities. The benitier, or holy-water vase, a work of the fifteenth century, of porphyry, is supported by an antique altar of Grecian sculpture, ornamented with dolphins and tridents. One of the bronze doors of the baptistry, covered with the figures of saints and Greek inscriptions, appears to have been brought from the basilic of Saint Sophia. The mosaic, of the eleventh or twelfth century, on the wall, represents the Baptism of Christ, and is a warm animated composition. St. John the Baptist, in bronze, placed over the font, by Francesco Segala, is one of the good statues of the sixteenth century. I remarked in this chapel of the baptistry, against the wall, the tomb of the doge Andrea Dandolo, who died in 1354, an intrepid warrior and skilful politician, the friend of Petrarch and the oldest historian of Venice, as his ancestor was its greatest hero. The name of Dandolo is so noble and great that I loved to repeat it under the vaulted roofs of Saint Mark, and had not my respect for the solemnity of the place prevented me, I should have made it re-echo there, as an illustrious traveller did that of Leonidas on the ruins of Lacedemon; but the echo of Saint Mark would doubtless have died away as speedily as that of Sparta, although the heroic acts of the Venetian warrior are less ancient by fourteen centuries. I must confess that my feelings were very different when, as I looked at the bronze door of the vestry behind the altar, a work that occupied thirty years of Sansovino's existence, I saw there in relievo the almost living head of Aretino beside those of Titian and the author, both of them his friends. I could perceive in it all the presumption of his talent and disposition; a man who made a trade of calumny, who praised for a certain price, and who may be considered the representative of the licentious and ancient manners of Venice. The friendship between Titian, Sansovino, and Aretino, if it does but little honour to the two artists, must have contributed in an extraordinary degree to the good taste and splendour of Venice. These three men aided each other by mutual counsels, and the superb gate of Sansovino is a kind of monument of their close and constant union. Titian could not always escape the importunate pecuniary demands of the greedy author, nor his calumnies when the money was not forthcoming. The four Evange See the following passage from one of Aretino's letters to the duke of Florence, dated October, 1545: La non poca quantità di danari che M. Tiziano si lists of bronze in the choir, are also by | inscriptions that are almost barbarous; Sansovino, and are considered as some of his finest works, also an altar behind the high altar, ornamented with basso- | relievos in marble and bronze gilt. The Zeno chapel, the altar, and the monument of the Cardinal are the inestimable works of Pietro and Antonio Lombardo, and Leopardo. Here is also the celebrated statue of the Virgin cast by Alberghetti, with the cognomen of della scarpa, because the Virgin has shoes on. The altar, the statue of St. James, and other masterpieces of Leopardo, are both noble and graceful. The finest of the numerous columns of Saint Mark in white and black porphyry, is in the oratory of the Cross, nearest the altar on the epistle side. The twelve Apostles, the Virgin, and St. Mark, in marble, placed above the architrave which separates the body of the church from the choir, are by the brothers Jacobello and Pietro-Paolo dalle Massegne, excellent Venetian artists of the latter end of the fourteenth century, pupils of the Pisa school, who seem worthy of a more advanced epoch. The great chandelier of Saint Mark, notwithstanding the oddness of its base, is conader d as one of the most remarkable works of its kind for the taste and nature of the figures, and the elegance of the ornaments. The Pala d'oro, a species of mosaic In gold and silver on enamel, placed above the principal altar, is a curious Dougment of art belonging to the Greeks of the Lower-Empire, and of that prosperity-that military and commercial civilisation of the Venetians which prereded the poetical and literary civilisa- | tion of other Italian cities. Ordered at Constantinople by the republic towards the end of the tenth century, the Pala doro was augmented and enriched at Vence in the three following centuries: it exhibits, symmetrically enchased among its numerous ornaments, a series of portures representing subjects from the Old and New Testaments, the life of Saint Mark, the Apostles, the angels, and the prophets, with Greek and Latin rica, e la pure assai avidità che tiene di accrearente, rauss ch egli non dando cura e obbligo che settia con amico, ne a dovere che si convenga a' purest!, solo a quello con istrana ansia attende che promette gran cose." Cicognara was the first who gave a detailed BCCoal of the Pala doro in the Fabbriche di Venc the figures are stiff, plain, and singular, but the ensemble has something dignified in it: one might compare it to an old poem or some ancient chronicle, interesting as regards the period to which it belongs, but which it would be irrational to take as a model after the masterpieces of the great artists. If the fickle and conquered people of Venice appear to have forgotten their history, the stones and monuments are indelibly impressed with it, and nowhere perhaps is the historical aspect of a place less defaced than there. A red marble pavement without any inscription near to the sixteenth arcade, recalls the most ancient recollections of Venice. It was there that Narses when he succeeded Belisarius built the ancient church of Saint Geminian, destroyed in the twelfth century, when the canal on the edge of which it stood was filled up. Every year the doge and senate visited the new church of Saint Geminian, pulled down in 1809, and they were reconducted with great pomp to this identical stone, the original limit of the piazza of Saint Mark. Not far from thence, in a retired street, there is a small white stone marking the spot where Boemondo Tiepolo, the Catiline of Venice, perished; he was killed by a pot of flowers that a too curious old woman ac. cidentally threw down from her window, in leaning forward to see him as he was going, at the head of the conspirators, to seize the Ducal palace and overthrow the Great council, a flower-pot which has effectually saved Venetian liberty, as the Catiline Orations did Rome and the senate. Immediately after the defeat of Tiepolo's party, the council of Ten was created; a formidable institution, also due to the old woman's flower-pot. Independently of the mementos of glory and conquest which abound in Saint Mark, certain squares of red marble, under the vestibule, still mark the spot of the famous interview where a dissembled reconciliation was affected between Alexander III. and the emperor zia, although a work of that kind belongs less to the bistory of architecture than that of painting. The description is remarkable for its scrupulous accuracy. * See post, chapters XIV, and XXIV. This elegant church occupied the present ball and staircase of the Royal palace. Frederick Barbarossa, through the mediation of the victorious Venetians. Saint Mark presents a collection of relics of the greatest antiquity, the various mementos of conquest and revolutions. Before the entrance of the church, on the right, near the Piazzetta, are two pillars covered with Coptic and hieroglyphic characters, said to have originally belonged to the temple of Saint Saba, at Saint Jean d'Acre. According to antiquaries, the porphyry group, at the angle near the door of the Ducal palace, represents Harmodius and Aristogiton, the furious assassins of Hipparchus, the Athenian tyrant. The four famous horses of Corinth, or of the Carrousel, have resumed their former position on the tribune, over the principal door. Never was a trophy of victory more modestly placed, or worse, for they are scarcely perceptible. Won at Constantinople, brought back from Paris, these Greek or Roman steeds are associated with the two grandest instances of taken towns that history record. The lion of Saint Mark is replaced on his column, but mutilated. He ought never to have left it; though insignificant as a work of art, at Venice it was a public and national emblem of its ancient power. It is venerable on the piazza of Saint Mark, but on the esplanade of the Invalides it was only a superfluous mark of the bravery of our warriors, less noble than all those tattered flags taken on the battlefield and suspended in the nave of the church. It was, moreover, a singularly ill-judged and odious act of a rising republic to humiliate, and spoil of the vestiges of their past glory, such old republics as Venice and Genoa. The Sacro Catino, and the Lion of Saint Mark, were there patriotic monuments worthy of respect; elsewhere they sunk into mere shop or cabinet curiosities, the prey of ruthless conquest. The Campanile of Saint Mark is a bold structure, and one of the solidest and most elevated in Italy or even Europe; it was begun in the tenth century, but | not finished till the sixteenth. The chief builder was the illustrious maestro Buono, a great Venetian architect, who is some Clcognara regards these horses as a Roman work of Nero's time; the Cav. Mustoxidi pretends that they are Greek from the Island of Chios, and that they were carried to Constantinople in the fifth century by order of Theodosius. The metal times confounded with other artists o the same name; he died in 1529. The ascent to its summit is by path, a rea foot-path of brick, smooth and withou steps. The sea, Venice rising from its bosom, the resplendent verdure of the fields on terra firma, the hoary tops of the Frioul Alps, the crowd of islets gracefully grouped around this imposing city, present a point of view which may almost be called a prodigy. The Loggietta, at the foot of Saint Mark's steeple, is of rich and elegant architecture, by Sansovino; the four bronze statues of Pallas, Apollo, Mercury, and Peace, by the same artist, are beld in estimation, as are also the ornaments by Titian Minio, bis clever pupil, and those of Geronimo Lombardo of Ferrara, one of the first sculptors of the sixteenth century. The marble bassorelievos are exquisite, especially the Fall of Hella from the ram of Phryxus, and Tethys aiding Leander. In the interior is a Nostra Signora, another beautiful work of Sansovino. My eagerness to examine Saint Mark's Gospel, which was not in the library, as I had been informed, induced me to solicit admission to the treasury,-—an intrigue stimulated by the curiosity of a traveller and amateur for which I have no blush, and which was crowned with success. The Gospel, now almost mouldered to dust, is enclosed in a frame; the damp has so far destroyed it, that only a few straggling letters can be with difficulty perceived. The ecclesiastics who showed it to me pretended, bowever, in opposition to Montfaucon, that it was on parchment and not papyrus,— though which is correct cannot be easily decided now. This manuscript is in Latin, and was taken by the Venetians at Utina in 1420. Notwithstanding all the miracles attending its transfer to Venice, it is impossible to regard it as authentic, since, as before observed, the apostles wrote only in Hebrew and Greek. 3 The part of the treasure deposited in Saint Mark's (the other part, consisting of vases and pateras of hard Oriental stones mounted in gold and silver, is at the Mint) may be reckoned, I believe, one was analysed at Paris, and ascertained to be pure copper, instead of Corinthian brass as generally stated, and as it was natural to suppose. * See book XIX. ch, vli. 3 See book 11. ch. xi. of the most extensive reliquaries in the world-a kind of glass-covered charnelhouse, seen by the glare of candles and torches: there are exhibited some of the too numerous pieces of the true cross, with the nail, sponge, and reed used in our Saviour's passion; the knife he used at the last supper, with some Hebrew characters on the handle so nearly effaced that Moutfaucon could not decipher them; some earth from the foot of the cross impregnated with the divine blood; the humerus of Saint John Baptist; numberless relics of Saint Mark; a superb silver cross, presented by the empress Irene, wife of Alexis Comnenes, to the church of Constantinople; and especially two admirable chandeliers, chefs-d'œuTre of the Byzantian goldsmiths, which alone would ample repay a visit to the treasury. All these spoils proceed from the taking of Constantinople; that vast pillage of the wrecks of antiquity, of saints' bones and modern jewels-a barbarous conquest, as it even tore from the people the objects of their faith and veneration. CHAPTER IV. Ducal palace. -Government of Venice. Calendario's Ügures and capitals.-Allegorical painthogs. hope of Europa, by Paolo Veronese.Pregadi.-Tillan's St. Christopher.-Celling by Paolo Veronese-Council of Ten-Lion's mouth. It is impossible, however, not to perceive that a singular exaggeration prevails in all the narratives concerning the tyranny of the old Venetian government. For instance, we are told by a recent traveller that the reservoir of fresh water for the use of the city was placed within the limits of the ducal palace, and the nobles had thereby obtained the means of making their rebel subjects perish with thirst. It is a fact that there are two fine bronze cisterns, of the sixteenth century, in the centre of the palace court; but there are others in the various squares of the city, and every house has one to itself. The accusations against the Venetian government, which was admired by Commines, were redoubled towards the close of its existence, at an epoch when, probably, they were least merited. It was long the fashion to extol its constitution, the wisdom of its laws, and the incorruptibility of its justice, which was even frequently invoked by foreigners, as it has since been to write on the constitution, finances, and commerce of England. Notwithstanding the heavy forbidding appearance of the Ducal palace, it has some elegant details, and in some parts is remarkable in an artistic point of view. The capitals of the Tuscan columns in the front, ornamented with foliage, figures, and symbols, original master -State Inquisitors-Grand council.-Portraits of pieces, of a taste at once bold and pure, the doges.-Tintoretto's Glory of Paradise. and so interesting for the history of art. are chiefly by Calendario, the Michael Angelo of the middle ages, equally eminent as a sculptor and architect, whose foundations of the Ducal palace on the unstable soil of Venice are still a miracle for solidity. The Loggietta is one of the most frequently mentioned works of Alessandro Vittoria; the principal door, called della Carta, and its statues, are excellent works of Maestro Bartolommeo; there are eight beautiful Grecian statues on the clock front; the Adam and Eve, on the inner front, are esteemed; the small front to the left of the Giants' Stairs, by Guglielmo Bergamasco, is of superior architecture; the two colossal statues of Mars and Neptune on the Giants' Stairs, are by San The Ducal palace, by its architecture and stern gloomy aspect, gives no bad representation of the ancient government of Venice: it is as the Capitol of aristocratic power; its origin even is surrounded with terrors; the doge who begun it, Marino Faliero, lost his head, and the architect Filippo Calendario was hung as a conspirator. The names, too, of some parts of it, are in unison with the impression it produces: the Giants' Stairs, a superb structure, witnessed the coronation of the doges, and the Bridge of Sighs has the shape of a large sarcophagus suspended over the sea. A palace, a prison, and a tribunal, one might say, If the word centralisation were not ridiculous applied under such circum-sovino, but of his latter years; and the stances, that the ducal palace had furnished the first and most terrible example. See the Italian Miscellanies, Golden Staircase, magnificently embellished by Sansovino, is ornamented with stuccos by Vittoria. The by-gone glory and splendour of |
