VENICE.*
LOVERS of Venice, "visited "or "unvisited,"—and who that Las heard of the queen city of the Adriatic is not her lover ?—will
be delighted with M. Yriate's second volume, which dealing with the arts, industries, and life of the city which he has made his special study, will call to their remembrance, or inform with fuller meaning, all the delights, quaintnesses, and grandeurs on which they have long dwelt in memory or imagination. She is very different now from what she was in the days when Petrarch could write :—" From this port I see vessels departing which are as large as the house I inhabit, and which have masts taller than its towers. The ships resemble a mountain floating on the sea they go to all parts of the world, amidst a thousand dangers ; they carry our wines to the English, our honey to the Scythians ; our saffrons, our oils, and our linen to the Syrians, Armenians, Persians, and Arabians ; and won- derful to say, convey our wood to the Greeks and Egyptians. From all these countries they bring back in return articles of merchandise, which they diffuse over all Europe. They go even as far as the Tanais. The navigation of our seas does not extend farther north, but when they have arrived there, they quit their vessels and travel on to trade with India and 'China, and after passing the Caucasus and the Ganges, they pro- ceed as far as the Eastern Ocean." Gone, too, are the days of glowing mosaics and delicate glass (though these may be reviving), the days also when a Palladio would build and a Veronese decorate, and a Titian and Giorgione fresco the front of a palace. Faded like these frescoes are the splendours of Venice, /et like the palace, Venice herself remains lovely still, with an inexplicable charm "above all storms and stars." The glorious facade to the sea (revealed to the untravelled by Turner in many aspects) still greets the expectant worshipper catering by Malamocco, with its brilliant and soft reflections on the pearl-grey or green water ; St. Marco still glows and gleams, and the works of the mighty colourists flame undimmed on wall and ceiling. Gondolas and music float on the moonlight waters of the Canal Grande, the Giudecca, or on the broad lagunes as far as,—
" Where the cold sea raves, On Lido's wet, accursed graves ;"
and a whole world of smaller picturesque life replaces the stately Doge and robed Senators, brocaded ladies, hardly visible save on days of fête and carnival, busy merchants, Jew, Turk, Infidel, and heretic, from all parts of the world. In the domain of politics the name of Mania and the days of '49 may still remind the world that the Venetian is not dead, but perchance only sleepeth.
Let us hope that the same may be said for the Arta once so glorious in Venice, though, save in the matter of glass, there is no more sign of awakening here than elsewhere in Italy. Numer- ous and well reproduced are the specimens of the works of the great masters brought before us by Mr. Yriate in this volume, which begins with "La Peinture," the first having given an account of " L'Architecture " and "La Sculpture." Amongst the works of the earlier schools are included some interesting Mantegnas, notably a sheet of sketches of the Madonna and Child, fac-simile from " l'Album " in the library at Padua ; and an outline of the glorious " Vierge de la Victoire," so well known, in her bower of wreaths and fruit. Amongst the Bellinis is placed a picture by Le Chevalier Chevegnard, in illustration of the story which tells how Giovanni Bellini, disguised as a Venetian patrician,
• Valise: Bujtoire, Arts, Industries, La Ville, La Vie. Par Charles Yriate. Tome IL Paris: Rothschild. Londres sat for his portrait to Antonio da Messina, that he might by that means learn the secret of the art of oil-painting, brought by him from Jan Van Eyck. Without pretending to give an exhaus- tive history of Venetian art, M. Yriate touches on the chiefs of schools and their leading characteristics of style ; the Vivarinis and Crivelli, of whose works we fortunately possess excellent ex- amples in the National Gallery, Cima da Conegliano, Marco Basaiti, Moretto, and the great Carpaccio, whose name ushers in the still greater ones of Giorgione, Tintoret, and Titian, with their portraits and representations of their greatest and best- known works, and some less-known drawings, one of which, a group of saints, by Titian, resembles another drawing now exhi- bited in the Grosvenor Gallery (878). Readers of M. Yriaters Patricien de Venise, a sterner forerunner of this luxurious work will be pleased to come upon a view of the Villa Barbaro ; and amongst the works of Veronese, upon several of the decorations so delightfully described to them in the account of that "palace of art," the whole of the ceiling of the grand gallery, and several- smaller parts. The decline of art after these great times is melan- choly to follow, and less interesting, but there is a delightful view of Burano from an etching by Canaletto ; and a portrait of La Rosalba, the celebrated pastel portraitist.
It is more pleasing to turn to the splendid annals of the art of printing, together with the literary freedom of Venice, which was singularly great at all times. Remarkable more for historical and what may be called practical than for imaginative literature, the Venetians early instituted an official historian, who kept the annals of the State, besides the private diaries of public servants, which were numerous, notably that of Marino Sanuto (1495-1535), con- sisting of fifty-seven volumes in folio ! In the history of travels and discoveries no name is more widely known than that of Marco Polo, and perhaps rather less so those of the brothers Zeni, who, a century before Columbus, sailed westward as far as Greenland and touched the coast of Labrador. The freedom of speech on religious matters was great, and we read in the life of Petrarch of devoted followers of Aristotle (by the light of Averroes) who much offended the devout poet by their openly expressed con- tempt for the doctrines of Christianity. Four of them, indeed, who had passed much time in his society, finally declared him to be "a good man, but illiterate." The Church indeed had little political hold on Venice in those days, or even much later, though we find Paul Veronese brought before the Inquisition on the charge of introducing irreverent and irrelevant figures in a sacred picture. The artist's defence is characteristic ; he had not erred from any irreligious intention, he merely put in what he thought "would look well." The printing-press was early established, and soon printing-offices became so numerous that more editions of works were issued in Venice than in all the rest of Italy. The name of Aldus heads the list of illustrious printers, some of whose portraits and fac-simile specimens of their ornamental work enrich the pages of this chapter.
In connection with literature we come upon the drama, which was never great in a literary or poetical sense, though as early as the fourteenth century we find the tragedy of " Ezzelino," by Alberto Masato, of Padua, and other tragedies in Latin, written on the model of /Eschylus. In the next century Secco Pelentone, also of Padua, produced the first comedy in Italian prose, "La Catinia," a work little known, and at the pre- sent day very rare, of which M. Yriate says, "II eat des plus singuliers du point de vue de la langue et des mceurs." Sacred dramas and miracle plays were not much in favour, but secular dramatic performances soon became accessories to fetes, and the first public theatre was opened in the sixteenth century. The various kinds of imperfect drama, improvised and half-written, gave way in time to the lyric drama, which developed into the opera of modern times, the first real opera being publicly performed at the Theatre San Cassiano, in 1637. The subject was "Andro- meda," and the words by Benedetto Ferrari, the music by Fran- cesco Manelli, the Venetians, to whom all amusements were important, having carefully preserved these facts. Fifty years later there were a dozen theatres open, and not long after they were counted by thousands.
In a Republican State, where all things were transacted in council, orations were a matter of great importance, so that in 1463 we find even a woman addressing an oration to the Emperor Frederic III. on his visit to the city. But she was the celebrated Cassandra Fedele, one of the two women whose names appear in Venetian history, the other being "Kate the Queen," the fair Cornaro of Cyprus. In the Patricien de Venise, M. Yriate has devoted a chapter to the position of the women of Venice during the city's most flourishing periods, and
all his research goes to prove that except as the ornamental part of State shows, she never appears in public life, and even of her private life, the only traces that can be found, relate to dress and decoration. In no other country can we read history without coming upon the influence, direct or indirect, of the women, at least of the upper classes ; but even as a mother of noble sons at Venice, she never appears. One of the best known pictures of the " patricienne " is this, drawn from a contemporary print of the fair dame, coifed with the celebrated solana or crownless hat, drying and bleaching her hair in the sun, to produce the golden colour so much admired by the painters, and probably by the society of the day. John Evelyn, in the seventeenth century, has given us the same picture in words, and also describes the ridiculous high chopines upon which it was the fashion for the great ladies to struggle about, supported by two maids. M. Yriate gives us a drawing from one of these interesting absurdities, and also a reason for the use of them ; for it seems that when a stranger remarked to a vener- able Senator that slippers would be more convenient for the ladies, he said "they would only be too convenient." The Dogaresse was only more of a State lay figure than the Doge him- self, to whose position and character an interesting chapter is de- . voted, delightfully illustrated by engravings from a contemporary print of the whole of the grand procession of the Doge on the day of his coronation, in which all the functionaries of the State are represented.
Amongst the industries of Venice the most important were, of course, the glass and mosaic works of Murano, an interesting account of the gradual rise and decline of which forms a chapter, richly illustrated, together with an account of the lace point de Venise, of which fine specimens are given us. The care taken by the Government to promote these industries by rewards to the successful (so that a master glass-worker might marry into a noble family), and punishments of workmen who went to foreign lands, show their importance. In the section "La Vie," M. Yriate takes us into the ins and outs of the town, and shows us the life of to-day, from the ladies in their gondolas to the bigo- lante fetching water from the well in the ducal palace ; and fills out the picture of the Venice of which they dream to lovers of Byron, Shelley, Sand, and Browning.
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