Foot-prints of Travel - Maturin Murray Ballou (book suggestions txt) 📗

the Adriatic and hangs serenely over the lagoons. No pen can justly describe such a sight--only a Claude Lorraine could paint it. Glancing gondolas on their noiseless track cut the silvery ripples; a sweet contralto voice, with guitar accompaniment, salutes the ear; stately palaces cast long, mysterious shadows upon the water; the Bridge of Sighs arches the canal between the palace and prison close at hand; oddly-rigged craft from the far East float lazily at anchor in the open harbor; the domes of lofty churches are outlined against the dark blue sky; while the proud columns of St. Mark and St. Theodore stand like sentinels at the water's edge. It seems, altogether, like some well-prepared theatrical scene upon the stage, on which the curtain will presently fall, shutting out everything from view.

The broad outline of the history of this long-lived republic is familiar to most of us. Many of its details have been enshrined by Byron, who, without assuming the dignity of historical record, has taught us in poetic form. The names of Dandolo, Faliero, and the two Foscari are familiar to all cultured people. The close of the fifteenth century may be designated as the culminating point of the glory of Venice, it being then the grand focus of European commerce, and twice as populous as it is to-day. At that time it possessed three hundred sea-going vessels and forty-five naval galleys, with which it maintained sway over the Mediterranean Sea. With the commencement of the sixteenth century her glory began gradually to fade until she ceased to maintain a prominent position among the powers. In art, Venice always occupied a first position, and was celebrated for the brilliancy of the coloring which characterizes the Venetian school.

Though fallen in commercial glory, Venice still stands without a rival. Where else can be found a city composed of over seventy islands? Is there another city where architects, sculptors, painters, and workers in mosaic devoted their lives to the purpose of decorating and beautifying their native place? No capital, even in Italy, is richer in splendid and antique churches, in superbly decorated palaces, and with the exception of Rome and Florence, no city has more invaluable art treasures. Here the works of Guido, Paul Veronese, Titian, Bonifacio, Giordano, and Tintoretto especially abound. The Venetian school of painting maintains precedence even in our day. In the Doge's Palace, built many hundred years ago, the visitor will find paintings and sculpture which he can never forget, and among them Tintoretto's Paradise, said to be the largest oil painting extant by a great master. It contains an army of figures, and would seem to have required a lifetime to produce.

The Piazza of St. Mark is the centre of attraction. How strange, and yet how familiar everything seems to us here! We require no guide to point out the remarkable monuments. We do not fail to recognize at a glance the tall masts from which the banners of the republic floated in triumph, when the carrier pigeons brought news that "blind old Dandolo had captured Constantinople!" We recognize the lofty Campanile, the sumptuous palace of the Doges, and the gorgeous front of the Cathedral over-topped by its graceful domes, bristling with innumerable pinnacles. Above the portals of St. Mark we gaze upon the celebrated bronze horses which Napoleon I. stole and transported to Paris, but which the Emperor Francis restored to Venice. It is not the first time these historic horses of Lysippus have been stolen, these monuments of the departed glory of Chios and Constantinople--of Venice and Napoleon.

In many respects the Cathedral of San Marco is the most remarkable church in existence, while its ornamentation is rich to excess. For good architectural effect it stands too low, the present grade of the surrounding square being some fifteen inches or more above its mosaic pavement. The pillars and ornaments are too crowded; having been brought hither from other and historic lands, there is a want of harmony in the aggregation. Nearly a thousand years old, it has an indescribable aspect of faded and tarnished splendor, and yet it presents an attractive whole quite unequalled. It combines Saracenic profusion with Christian emblems, weaving in porphyries from Egypt, pillars from St. Sophia, altar pieces from Acre, and a forest of Grecian columns. Especially is this church rich in mosaics--those colors that never fade. There is a sense of solemn gloom pervading the place, the dim light struggling through the painted windows being only sufficient to give the whole a weird aspect, in its over-decorated aisles. Some idea may be formed of the elaborate ornamentation of the Cathedral from the fact that it contains over forty thousand square feet of mosaic work! The vaulting consists entirely of mosaic, representing scenes in the Old Testament, beginning with the story of the creation, and followed by scenes from the New Testament. As we walk about the church, the floor beneath our feet is found quite uneven from the slow settlement of ages. Inside and out the structure is ornamented by over five hundred columns of marble, the capitals of which present a fantastic variety of styles true to no country or order, but the whole is, nevertheless, a grand example of barbaric splendor.

Just opposite the entrance to the Church of San Marco stands the lofty Campanile, reaching to a height of three hundred feet, and which was over two hundred years in building. A view from its summit is one of the sights not to be missed in this city, as it affords not only a splendid picture of Venice itself, but the city and lagoons lie mapped out before the eye in perfection of detail, while in the distance are seen the Adriatic, the Alpine ranges, and the Istrian Mountains. The Campanile is ascended by a winding way in place of steps, and there is a legend that Napoleon rode his horse to the top, a feat which is certainly possible. In this lofty tower Galileo prosecuted his scientific experiments.

Petrarch wrote that Venice was the home of justice and equity, refuge of the good; rich in gold, but richer in renown; built on marble, but founded on the surer foundation of a city worthy of veneration and glory. But this is no longer the Venice he described; no longer the city of grasping and successful ambition, of proud and boastful princes. It has become what pride, ostentation, and luxury in time must always lead to. It presents to-day a fallen aspect--one of grandeur in rags. No argosies are bound to foreign ports, no princely merchants meet on the Rialto; that famous bridge is now occupied on either side by Jews' shops of a very humble character; and yet do not let us seem to detract from the great interest that overlies all drawbacks as regards the Venice even of the present hour.

The Academy of Fine Arts is reached by crossing the Grand Canal, over the modern iron bridge, which, with that of the Rialto, a noble span of a single arch, built of white marble, forms the only means of crossing the great water-way, except by gondola. This remarkable gallery contains almost exclusively works by Venetian artists. Here we find a remarkable representation of the "Supper of Cana," which is nearly as large as the "Paradise." It is considered by competent critics, to be one of the finest pieces of coloring in existence. Here we have some of Titian's best productions, and those of many Italian artists whose pictures are not to be found elsewhere. The gallery, like all of the famous ones of Europe, is free to every one, either for simple study, or for copying. This is the collection which Napoleon I. said he would give a nation's ransom to possess. On the way to the Academy the guide points out the Barberigo Palace, in which Titian lived and died.

The Doge's Palace is full of historic interest. We wander with mingled feelings through its various apartments, visiting the halls of the Council of Ten, and the still more tragic chambers of the Council of Three. Many secret passages are threaded; we cross the Bridge of Sighs, and descend into the dungeons in which Faliero, Foscari, and other famous prisoners are said to have been incarcerated. These mediaeval dungeons are wretched beyond belief, and how human beings could live and breathe in such places is the marvel of every one who visits them in our day. Here we are shown the apartment where the condemned prisoners were secretly strangled, and the arched windows by which their bodies were launched into boats on the canal, to be borne away, and sunk in the distant lagoons. Trial, sentence, fate,--all in secret, and this was done under the semblance of justice and a republican form of government.

The church of the Frari, whither we will next turn our steps, is in an American's estimation quite as much of a museum as a church. It is the Westminster Abbey of Venice, and is crowded with the monuments of doges, statesmen, artists, philosophers, and more especially is ornamented in a most striking manner by the tombs of Titian and Canova. These elaborate marble structures face each other from opposite sides of the church--monuments raised in memory of rarest genius, and which for richness of design and completeness of finish exceed anything of the sort in Italy.

In the square of St. Mark we have an opportunity for studying the masses, the well-to-do classes, but not the refined and cultured; these maintain a certain dignified exclusiveness. The uniforms of the police, each one of whom is bedizened equal to a militia general, are a standing caricature. One notes the many Jews among the throng; here a turbaned Turk sits before a cafe smoking his pipe, and near by a handsome Greek, with his red fez, smokes a cigar. There are Orientals of all types, with jaunty Englishmen, and gay parties of Americans.

We will now pass on to Milan, once considered the second city of Italy in importance, but it was totally destroyed in 1162 by Barbarossa, and we therefore see a comparatively modern capital. In the olden time it was filled with temples, baths, amphitheatres, circuses, and all the monuments common to great Italian cities. Seven hundred years and more have elapsed since its destruction, during which it rapidly sprang into life again as the capital of Lombardy, and is still a growing metropolis. True, it can offer no such attractions to the traveller as abound in Naples, Rome, and Florence, though there are some art treasures here which are unique. Were it not that the city is so near to Lakes Como and Maggiore, and in possession of half a hundred remarkable pictures, with a score of choice original pieces of sculpture, together with its wonderful cathedral, the traveller would hardly care to pass more than a day in Milan. The present population is about two hundred and forty thousand. It is thrifty and devoted more to successful branches of business than are the cities of Southern Italy.

The Milan Cathedral is regarded as one of the wonders of the world, being also next to the cathedral at Seville and St. Peter's at Rome, the largest church in Europe, though this matter of size is of insignificant consideration compared with its other marvels. The interior is nearly five hundred feet in length and but a fraction less than two hundred in width, while the dome is over two hundred feet in height. Its loftiest tower is over three hundred and sixty feet above the ground; there are a hundred pinnacles in all, and no less than four thousand five hundred marble statues ornament the exterior. The interior consists of a nave with double aisles, and is supported by fifty-two pillars, each fifteen feet in diameter, the summits of which are decked with canopied