Venice

by Peter Ackroyd

  Yet the turning of knowledge, and learning, into commodities had other consequences. It was said at the time that the abundance of books made men less studious. There were complaints about the “vulgarisation” attendant upon the new technology. In an age of cultural transition, there are always anxieties expressed by those who are still reliant upon the old order. The Aldine press helped to bring the classical authors within the view of a wider audience; the editions were smaller, and cheaper, than any others. For some scholars, this represented a threat to their cultural supremacy.

  The printers of Venice also became masters of musical printing, map printing and medical printing, spreading information around Europe. Books on the human anatomy, and on military fortifications, were published. Works of popular piety, light literature in the vernacular, chapbooks, all issued from the city of the lagoon. Printing linked the various strata of the literate classes of Europe together; otherwise there would have been no such general response to the teachings of Luther. The publication of maps helped to create a new international trading economy. The commercialisation of knowledge, as a consequence of Renaissance humanism, indirectly led to religious reformation and the industrial revolution.

  The Venetians did have a university but it was located twenty miles (32 km) away in Padua, the city having been taken in 1404. Venice itself would not have welcomed a large body of free-thinking students within its domain. It was also concerned with the loyalty of its own young men, and forbade Venetians to study anywhere other than Padua. So the patrician youth migrated to the mainland city in search of enlightenment, together with students from England, Germany, Poland and Hungary. Sir Francis Walsingham, the famous Elizabethan “spymaster,” and Sir Philip Sidney studied in Padua. Many of these foreigners were, by the sixteenth century, followers of the “reformed” religion of Luther and Zwingli; but their apostasy did not bother the Venetian authorities, who were in any case accustomed to the various faiths of the world.

  Padua itself was most celebrated for its schools of law and of medicine, and became in the words of Thomas Coryat a “sweet emporium and mart town of learning.” There was a chair of agriculture, and a veterinary school. There was a famous department of anatomy, to which the Venetian authorities guaranteed a plentiful supply of corpses. By the middle of the sixteenth century Padua had become the most significant centre for scientific learning in Europe. In a world of institutional faith and individual piety, it offered a secular education. That was the reason for its success. “We despise,” one Venetian of the sixteenth century wrote, “knowledge of things of which we have no need.”

  That is one of the reasons why the arts of literature, as opposed to those of painting and music, were not cultivated. There was a social and political, as well as a practical, reason for this neglect. Literature asks questions and poses problems, whereas art and music celebrate and affirm; writing may encourage disruption and even revolution, whereas art and music aspire towards harmony and balance. Francesco Sagredo was a Venetian patrician and humanist who, in the early part of the seventeenth century, became a companion and associate of Galileo. Sagredo himself had a reputation as a wit and scholar. His own testimony, therefore, may hold the clue to Venetian humanism in general:

  I am a Venetian gentleman, and I have never wished to be known as a literary man. I have good relations with literary men and have always tried to protect them. But I do not expect to grow wealthy or to acquire praise and reputation from my understanding of philosophy or mathematics but rather from my integrity and my good practice in the administration of the Republic …

  Distinguished writers have been drawn to Venice over the centuries, but the city has not nourished many writers of its own. The two most famous of its native sons are Marco Polo and Casanova, both of whom wrote what were essentially memoirs. Casanova offers an interesting case history of the Venetian genius. “The chief business of my life has always been to indulge my senses,” he wrote. “I never knew anything of greater importance.” This might be justifiably described as a main article of the Venetian creed. His knowledge did not lead him to any measure of self-awareness, except in the endless duplicity and theatricality of his nature. Despite his many seductions and attempts at rape, he shows no sign of conscience or manifestation of guilt; Casanova does not indulge in interior reflections of any kind. It is as if he were a character out of commedia dell’arte, doomed to continue with the same impersonation in every scene and in every play. It is perhaps no wonder that his story of his imprisonment in the dungeons of the ducal palace, and of his subsequent escape, is a central text in Venetian social history; he was in the prison of his unreflecting self. It is in any case rare to find, in Venetian literature, any attempt at analysis or self-criticism. There is just no interest in the subject, the fruit of a culture in which individualism of any kind was discouraged.

  The true literature of Venice was neither tragic nor confessional. There was some epic poetry, but it is wearisome. There was in reality very little poetry of any kind, once more emphasising the low value placed upon self-expression. The real literature was popular and demotic or it was historical and journalistic. The historical tradition was grave, detailed and prosaic. The popular tradition was in love with fantasy and superstition, with wonders and apparitions, with elements of the exotic and the fanciful.

  How else to explain the huge popularity of the plays of Carlo Gozzi, the most famous of which is The Love for Three Oranges in which three beautiful princesses are born out of three enchanted oranges? It was taken from an old woman’s tale to quieten children, and Gozzi said that he wrote it simply to “please so thoughtless a nation as the Venetians.” The Venetian audience applauded the first performance “frantically,” according to an Italian critic, Giuseppe Baretti, leading him to declare in The Manners and Customs of Italy that “The Venetians … do not greatly care for the labour of searching after truth, and their imagination runs too often away with them, while their judgment lies dormant.” Gozzi’s dramas were fantasias of the eighteenth century, with magicians and monsters, knights on horseback and devils in red costume. They were a curious mixture of magniloquence and parody, lamentation and farce, thus continuing the Venetian tradition of commedia dell’arte in a more sensational setting. That form is the distilled essence of literary culture in the city.

  There was much interest in letters and diaries, too, as if the quotidian life of the city was of paramount importance. To keep a record—this was the Venetian style. Many Venetian patricians maintained diaries of daily events, covering many years and encompassing many volumes. They were not concerned with their individual reflections, in the manner of other diarists, but only in recording the tidings of their city. Nothing was too trivial to be beneath notice.

  One of them, Marino Sanudo, wrote some forty thousand pages in minute handwriting. It was a way of celebrating, and commemorating, the city. Some of the more bizarre passages of Venetian history can also make their way into these narratives. On 31 August 1505, Sanudo wrote that

  today the execution took place of the Albanian who foully murdered Zuan Marco. First, his hand was cut off at the Ponte della Late. And note that this resulted in a curious incident: while his wife was saying farewell to him, he moved forward as if he wanted to kiss her. Then he bit off her nose. It seems that she was responsible for revealing his crime to the authorities.

  If there is not much poetry in Venice, there is a great deal of song. The folk songs of the city, however, bear no resemblance to the expression of high deathless passion in other folk traditions; there is no pity, and no tragedy. There is pathos and sentimentality. “Would you weep if I were dead?” a mother asks her infant child. “How could I help weeping for my own mamma, who loves me so much in her heart?” Sentimentality is the enemy of true feeling, and suits a city where the mask is pre-eminent. But the folk songs are also filled with gaiety and optimism, a joyful seizing of the day that might be related to the mercantile tradition of the city. There is also an element of shrewdne
ss allied with the fantastical. It was once believed that cities could not create or nourish folk songs—that such songs flourished only in rural areas—but Venice disproved that pastoral myth. In these songs there is much local patriotism, but no politics; there is also satire, and obscenity. Like the Venetian liking for “sweet and sour” in food, the songs are a mixture of acid and honey.

  No city in the world has produced so many proverbs as Venice. They go with the capacity of the citizens for sharp retort and instant wisdom. There were many singular expressions reflecting the life and spirit of a mercantile culture. One of them notices with pride that, “Money is our second blood.” The conservatism of the people emerges in such phrases as “Novelty pleases those who have nothing to lose,” “The first sin is to be born desperate,” and “He who loves foreigners loves the wind.” Many of them refer to the unique situation and quality of the city and its inhabitants. “Venetians first, then Christians,” “The lord of the sea is also the lord of the land,” “As soon as a law is made an evasion is found,” “Venetians are born tired and live to sleep,” “Venice is a paradise for priests and prostitutes.” To make an impression—to make a splash—is “to drown yourself in a big sea.” “He who looks for help at a gaming table will grow long hair like a bear.” “God wants us injured but not dead.” “Wine is the milk of the old.” This litany could go on for ever, but it is wise to recall another proverb, “The first sign of madness is to remember proverbs.”

  It is a curiosity of Venetian culture, too, that it is the home of the “rise” tale, a version of folk literature in which a young man or woman battles against poverty and by an advantageous marriage (usually to royalty) becomes rich beyond measure. It is the fairy story of a mercantile society, dreaming of the impossible. One of these stories, the tale of Costantino and his cat, travelled through the English-speaking world as Puss in Boots.

  There was always a problem with the Venetian dialect in which these folk tales were generally written. It was not considered to be a serious, or proper, language for literary art. By the end of the thirteenth century the major works of Venetians were being written in the then fashionable language of Provençal. It is a reflection of the fashion for Gothic architecture in Venice during the same period. This literary French then developed into a form of Franco-Italian, the language in which Marco Polo dictated from a Genoese prison in 1298 the memoirs of his exotic journey. It may seem strange that Venetians would write in French rather than a version of Italian, but there is a more recent example to throw light upon this curious cultural phenomenon. In the nineteenth century the upper classes of Russia conversed and wrote in French, considering their native language to be too “low” for refined speech.

  In the sixteenth century, too, the Venetian language was demoted in favour of the more literary Tuscan language that had been fashioned three centuries earlier. The language of Dante, and of Florence, became the language of polite literature. The Venetian dialect was reserved for populist drama and popular song. Epics, and histories, were composed in Tuscan. The models of polite discourse were Petrarch and Boccaccio, asserting the dominance of a foreign and archaic tongue over the living vitality of the native dialect. This is perhaps not entirely unexpected. In other cultures, too, a highly stylised or liturgical language has the mastery over the demotic; written Anglo-Saxon was a very different thing from native English. The Venetian dialect was still used for public purposes, however. It was the official language of public administration and of the courts of law. The laws themselves were composed and published in Venetian.

  And of course it was—and is still—in use among the people of the city. It varies between districts but, like every other European language, it is becoming standardised and flattened all the time. Is it indeed a language, or is it a dialect? This is a question about which experts differ, but spoken Venetian has very ancient roots indeed. It is a native development out of the low Latin in use in the early centuries of Roman dominion. Each region of the lagoon had an indigenous population that used the common language differently. So the sound of Venetian must surely derive from the speech of the early Veneti. Certainly it is a language older than Italian.

  The sound is distinctive. It has been said that the sea-mists and northern winds have changed the timbre of Venetian voices, so that they are harsher than the liquid and sonorous accents of the rest of Italy. The sound of sixteenth-century Tuscan, for example, was described even by one Venetian as “sweeter and more pleasing, lively and fluent.” Yet Venetian, the expression of a predominantly mercantile society, is also more powerful and energetic. It can be loud, and it has been said that the Venetians have the loudest voices in all of Italy. It can be raucous, and in the fourteenth century Dante reported that a Venetian woman sounded very much like a man. It has a chantlike or sing-song quality, known as cantilena.

  So its phonetics differ from those of “standard” Italian. Madre becomes mare, signore becomes sior, figlio becomes fio. Words and phrases are run together, so that the name of the church of S. Giovanni Grisostomo became Zangrisostomo. There was a habit of eliding the last syllable of proper nouns. So the patrician name of Faliero became Falier, having previously metamorphosed from Faletrus and Faledro. Santo becomes San. Bello becomes beo, and casa becomes ca’. It increases the melodic disposition of the words. In that manner sotto il portico becomes sottoportego. It is more rapid, and perhaps more alive, than other Italian dialects; it is, for example, rich in colloquialisms.

  The economy of utterance has another effect. It creates what observers have called the infantine or “babyish” quality of Venetian speech. Byron described it as the language of naivety—he also compared it to the Somersetshire version of English—while the French writer George Sand said that it was destined for the mouths of infants. Two adjectives will be used instead of a superlative to express magnitude, like a child calling out “bella bella.” Plural subjects have singular verbs, so that in English it might be translated as “the boys does this” and “the girls weeps a lot.” Grammar is not the strong point of Venetian speech. Harsh consonants are elided, so that fagioli becomes fasioi. The “g” ordinarily becomes “z” as in doze rather than doge and zorno for giorno. It is in some ways a simple language, lacking sophistication. But that does not make it any the less charming.

  24

  Colour and Light

  It was known as Venezia la bella, an incomparable union of art and life. A Byzantine historian of the fifteenth century compared it to an exquisitely proportioned sculpture. In its setting upon the waters, it was born to be painted and engraved. Some have even suggested that it looked better on paper and on canvas than it ever did in the light of day. In the drawings and paintings of Venetian life, from those of Jacopo Bellini in the middle of the fifteenth century to those of Francesco Guardi in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the setting and architecture of the city take precedence over the activities of its inhabitants. The physical space, and the stone face, are preeminent. Who can remember any of the human figures in Canaletto? In the many images of the public processions of Venice, the spectators and the participants become part of the architecture; the buildings themselves seem to embody the harmony and joy of the people. The stone is a monument to human will but, in the process, the stone itself becomes revered. The presence of stone—walls, stairways, balustrades and alcoves—is very noticeable in Venetian painting.

  The city might have been composed by a painter seeking symmetry and contrast, weighing the vertical against the horizontal, combining shapes and colours in the most harmonious whole. Latin elements are balanced against Greek elements, Gothic against Byzantine, in order to symbolise the sway of different empires. The sight lines are perfect, as in the stage scenery for a play or for an opera, and the perspective subtly diminished. The details and motifs are carefully mingled. The co-ordinates of the public buildings were appraised in the light of Renaissance theories of numbers, so that the vistas have a mystical or magical enchantment. It was another form
of power.

  Guardi’s paintings of the city are called vedute or views, emphasising the primacy of the eye in the city. Everything is for display. The first album of Venetian “views,” a series of relatively inexpensive engravings, was published in 1703. Generations of travellers noted that the absence of dust in Venice guaranteed that the great houses and churches would remain relatively bright and clean. One of the reasons why there were, and are, so many balconies and terraces in the city was to provide vantage points from which the beautiful scenario could be observed. It is sometimes hard to know whether the art imitated the reality, or whether the architecture was inspired by the paintings. In Tintoretto’s “Paradiso,” placed in splendour within the ducal palace, the figures of saints Theodore and Mark, of Moses and of Christ, are arranged one to another in the same positions as their respective principal churches in Venice. So a civic aesthetic is immortalised in paint. Public space becomes artistic space.

  Venice was pictorial in another sense, with the frescoes of Tintoretto and Giorgione and others adorning the outward walls of the principal houses. There was a unique appetite in the earliest cities for wall painting, as in the frescoes of Bronze Age Knossos or in the wall paintings uncovered in the ruins of the world’s first city, Catal Huyuk in Mesopotamia. It is as if the conditions of urban living prompted the desire for colour and display. In Venice, the essential city, that desire was given full expression. A traveller from the court of Burgundy in 1495, Philippe de Commynes, noted that most of the great houses along the Grand Canal had painted façades; so he dubbed Venice urbs picta, or painted city.

  In the early part of the sixteenth century Pietro Aretino described Venice as if it flowed from the brush of Titian. “Ever since it was created by God,” he wrote in 1537, “never has the city been so embellished by such a lovely picture of lights and shades … Oh how beautiful were the strokes with which the brushes of nature pushed back the air, separating it from the palaces in the same way as Titian does in painting his landscapes.” The lights and darks “created the effects of distance and relief.” The city then becomes a living painting, a work of art in its own right. Yet if a city is a work of art, does it in some sense cease to be a living city? Whistler commented that the people and buildings of Venice “seem to exist especially for one’s pictures—and to have no other reason for being!” This of course has been the fate of Venice in more recent years, and it raises questions about its ultimate authenticity.