After some reflection, however, I believe I better understand the motives that led to this most curious set of circumstances. Moreover, some of the unresolved questions that had occupied me about your talents as a boat maker have now been answered. As much as I regret no longer having you in my service as a gondolier de xasada, I consider that business arrangements are now settled between us. You should not bear any burden of obligation toward me or toward my studio.
What became of the old gondola is of course regrettable, but you must understand that it was the price of putting this matter to rest. I did manage to salvage the oarlock, which of course no one else noticed was missing from the boat. I hope that it will bring you not only some measure of consolation but of pride, as it is the mark of a fine craftsman.
Rest assured that I shall refer my patrons to your workshop for the repair and replacement of their gondola fittings.
Gianluca Trevisan
Painter
IN VENICE, THINGS ARE not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into the neck of the Grand Canal, and, one by one, the reflection of each colorful façade appears, only to dissipate into wavering, shimmering shards under my oar.
As I head in the direction of the Convent of Santa Maria della Celestia, I try to imagine Giuliana Zanchi cloistered behind its stark walls. Has she traded her elegant gowns for the drab gray habit of the Dominicans, her opulent palace bedroom for a bare cell? I try to imagine her intoning hymns in the choir stalls for decades to come, but I fail to picture the image.
I pass the façade of the Ca’ Zanchi, the residence I have been watching at a distance for months. Her palace now stands empty, a cold, inhospitable mass of stone, marble, and wood, stripped bare, its black windows no more than gaping holes. An image of Giuliana Zanchi leaping into Trevisan’s old gondola from its quayside crosses my mind, and I feel the familiar pang of loss stab me under my ribs.
If the Councillor does not possess her portrait, it must mean that neither does he possess her innocence, nor she the money that would buy her freedom. Surely the sale of her jewels would not be sufficient to sustain her for years to come or provide a dowry worthy of a nobleman’s hand in marriage. A life in the convent is the natural solution, as much as she—and I—might wish for her a different fate.
I ring the brass bell outside the canal-side door to the convent, and a servant answers the door. Of course I know that they will not accept an unknown visitor, especially a man rowing a gondola, so I use the excuse I’ve prepared:
“I have been instructed to hand-deliver an important message to Signorina Zanchi,” I say.
“Wait here, please,” she says, latching the door back into position. I hear the murmuring of two female voices behind the door.
A nun in a gray habit cracks open the door, setting her clear, blue eyes on me. “You have a message for the Widow Zanchi?” she asks.
“No, I refer to her daughter, Giuliana Zanchi. I understand that she has taken her vows here.”
“I’m afraid you are mistaken, missier,” she says. “Signorina Zanchi has not taken her vows. She is not among us.”
I am stunned. “Where is she?”
“I am told that Signorina Zanchi has left the city. I understand that she is lodged with her cousins on terra firma while the family awaits the settlement of her father’s affairs.”
“When is she to return to Venice?” I ask.
“Of that I cannot say, missier,” says the woman. “I do not know more than what I have just told you. May I convey a message to her mother?”
“No,” I say. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“May God bless you, missier,” she says, then latches the convent door.
I row back to the studio, feeling a wave of relief followed by another pang below my ribs. Will Giuliana Zanchi return to Our Most Serene Republic, and if she does, will I find her before another man claims her as his own, or before she resolves to take her vows at Santa Maria della Celestia after all? Is there a chance in the world that she, in her reversal of fortune, might consider a life as the wife of an oarmaker?
For now, I hold onto a speck of hope, a collection of memories, and a painted souvenir.
Chapter 45
Little Antonio is barely old enough to walk, but I can already tell that he is cut from the same cloth as my mother and me. Our brother, Daniele, stands next to me at my workbench, balancing the wiggly toddler on his hip. The little boy buries his face in Daniele’s shoulder, then dares to peek at me with amber-colored eyes that are replicas of my own. A shock of dark hair falls over his forehead. I stick out my tongue at him. He giggles and mashes his face against Daniele’s shirt again. I feel my heart surge.
For two days my brother Daniele has not left my side. He confides that he is afraid I will disappear again, and he won’t stand for it. While I work, he talks of many things—Antonio’s love for the mallet, the squash that Mariangela now has growing in the garden, our Uncle Tino’s strange illness in the winter from which he has now recovered. Gingerly, he tells me of Annalisa’s betrothal to the goldsmith’s son following her father’s wishes, a turn of events for which I feel satisfied. Daniele does his best to talk to me about the boatyard, but on that subject I am a reluctant listener.
“We were able to start building boats again quickly thanks to Uncle Tino’s friendship with Master Enrico of the Squero Rosmarin, and of course the help of the guild. Last month we finished roofing the new téza,” he tells me. “There is still much to do, but for now we stay dry when it rains. Even Mariangela visits us in the boatyard sometimes,” he laughs.
I harden my expression and raise my palm toward my brother. “Daniele, I have told you. I am not ready.”
“Yes, I know. I can understand that you are not ready to see the squero or even hear about it. It stands to reason,” he says. “But you cannot delay seeing our father, Luca. It is only right.”
I lay down my file and walk to the front of the oarmaker’s shop, where the old remero has placed my oarlock in a prominent window facing the street. I run my hand over its smooth, polished arc. Behind it stands a cluster of two dozen oarlocks carved in a more old-fashioned manner, each beautiful piece wrought with the master’s collection of rasps, saws, blades, and sanding blocks. Daniele sets our little brother down on the floor, where he races under a table on his hands and knees. He picks up a scrap of sandpaper that has fallen to the floor and waves it in the air.
“Antonio will make a fine replacement for me in the squero.” I laugh nervously and return to my worktable. I have begun to block out a new oarlock—a copy of the one in the window—that the old oarmaker insists I begin right away. At the guildhouse, our fellow remeri have begun to whisper about my new way of fashioning the arc and proportions of the oarlock. Gondolas carrying a few of our more curious colleagues have already begun to appear at our ramp.
“Surely you are kidding?” Daniele replies. “Together the Vianello brothers will make the most beautiful boats—and oarlocks—Our Most Serene Republic has ever seen!” My brother laughs too, then his expression hardens. “Luca, he will be here soon. I will admit, it took some convincing, but Father agreed to walk here from the squero after the midday meal. You must understand; you cannot postpone the inevitable.”
I turn the newly shaped oarlock over in my hands as I let my brother’s words settle into my heart, then I lay the oarlock gently on the table. I walk to the door of the oarmaker’s studio and rest my forehead against its wooden planks. I close my eyes and lift my left hand—my “correct” hand—the one I was always meant to use. The wood of the oarmaker’s door feels cool and smooth against my palm. My brother comes to stand behind me. I feel his strong hands press on my shoulders. For the first time in my life, I feel peace wash ov
er me.
In my mind’s eye, I see our father walking up the alley to the oarmaker’s studio—my studio. I imagine his familiar, purposeful stride carrying him toward me, toward this moment that must be as inevitable as my brother has said. I feel I can almost hear him breathe, his chest heaving from the trek.
My father stands on the other side of the door now, lifting his right hand. On either side of this narrow barrier my father and I stand like reflected images. Our hands are the same: large knuckles, flat, smooth nails, his skin more lined, mine smoother but worn now from labor. We are separated by the hardness of the oak planks, the hardness of life, the hardness in our hearts. We are mirror images nonetheless.
I am so lost in my vision that when the knock comes, I doubt that it is real, but my heart, which skips a beat, confirms it. I open my eyes and take a deep breath.
Gently, I open the door.
Author's Note
The story of The Gondola Maker germinated inside my head while I was busy researching another book called Made in Italy. The contemporary Italian artisans I interviewed, one after another, told me how important it was to them to pass on the torch of tradition to the next generation. I began to wonder what would happen if the successor were not able or willing to take on that duty. The characters of the gondola maker and his heirs began to take shape.
Luca Vianello and the other characters in this novel are figments of my imagination. Still, it was essential to me to portray them inside a world that was as authentic and historically faithful as I could make it; any shortcomings in this area are mine alone.
Constructing the backdrop for The Gondola Maker was a joy thanks to the wealth of historical sources from which to draw. Renaissance Venetians were well aware of their position in the world, and their culture is voluminously documented in primary sources. David Chambers and Brian Pullan assemble one of the most valuable compilations of these sources in their Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630. Primary sources for a handful of Venetian painters are collected in the now-dated but excellent Sources & Documents of the History of Art series edited by my former teacher at Yale, Creighton Gilbert and his co-authors, Robert Klein and Henri Zerner. The artists’ contracts, conflicts, lawsuits, and incidental reports shaped my understanding of the complex relationships between Venetian painters, their patrons, and the public. My depiction of the artist Gianluca Trevisan and his workshop is set within this transitional period in the history of art when the status of a handful of artists rose from that of mere laborers to reach unprecedented heights.
Even though Venetian boatmen once numbered in the tens of thousands, because they were members of the lower class they remain relatively silent in historical documents except for random incidental accounts. I am grateful for the scholarship of Dennis Romano, whose work shaped my understanding of the private lives of domestic servants and other members of the Venetian lower class. Patricia Fortini-Brown’s work immersed me in the material world that Giuliana Zanchi would have occupied, with its infinite variety of fine objects from paintings to tableware and platform shoes.
The sixteenth-century gondola was a simpler contraption than the elaborate boats now synonymous with Venice. To my knowledge no complete Venetian gondola made prior to the mid-1800s survives intact; only a handful of iron prows from the Renaissance era have endured the humid Venetian climate that destroys anything made of wood, even of the highest order of craftsmanship.
As an art historian I am trained to view every work of art, even a photograph, as a “re-presentation” rather than a faithful recording of actuality. Nonetheless the earliest depictions of the Venetian gondola let us imagine what the craft that Luca Vianello restored in The Gondola Maker could have looked like. A sketchy carving on an altarpiece erected by gondola makers in 1628 inside the Church of San Trovaso depicts the familiar arc of the gondola with its spiky iron prow decorations, the ferri, on either end, and a covered passenger compartment, or felze.
Still, these boats must have remained relatively somber thanks to sumptuary laws that decreed that all gondolas be painted black. We can envision these dark, elegant boats with the help of a series of beautiful wall paintings executed by Vittore Carpaccio in the 1490s for the Church of Saint Ursula, now preserved in the Accademia in Venice. Not only Venetians but also foreign visitors must have been impressed by these distinctive boats, since printmakers such as the Swiss artist Joseph Heinz the Younger and the Dutch author and statesman Nicolaes Witsens disseminated views of the gondola in woodcut prints and engravings that made their way across Europe. A woodcut by the Swiss artist Jost Amman portrays a gondola with a fore and aft oarlock, rowed by two oarsmen, in “Grand Procession of the Doge of Venice,” published in Frankfurt in 1597. More elaborate oarlocks, upholstery, carving, and the peculiar asymmetrical form of modern gondolas that allow for more effective rowing, all developed from the 1700s onward.
I am grateful to the handful of modern historians, mostly Venetians, who have chronicled the development of the gondola through the centuries. Carlo Donatelli describes the boats’ technical, engineering, and hydrodynamic evolution. Giovanni Caniato and Gianfranco Munerotto have made significant documentary contributions to the history of Venetian boats, including the gondola. Caniato has also pulled together comprehensive documentation of the history of Venetian oarmakers, and I am grateful for this important and unique contribution. Guglielmo Zanelli has chronicled the history of Venetian ferry stations, or traghetti, like the one where Luca found his first gainful employment after fleeing the boatyard fire. I am grateful to the Museo Arzanà in Venice for their efforts to assemble the remaining fragments—oarlocks, tools, seats, and other pieces—of historical Venetian boats.
The famous “Barbari map,” an enormous woodcut by Jacopo de Barbari dating from 1500, shows an aerial view of Venice that gives us an appreciation of the huge number of gondola boatyards, or squeri, in the city at that time. Today vestiges of only a few historic squeri survive. The most well-known of these is the Tramontin boatyard still in operation today in the Dorsoduro quarter, but there are others that are not as well-known or no longer used for their original purpose. The organization and inner workings of the historical Venetian squeri are well-understood thanks to the rule books, or mariregole, that each Venetian trade guild was required by law to maintain. From these important documents, we learn intricate details about the making of gondolas in centuries past. Giovanni Caniato and Guglielmo Zanelli have published important work on the Venetian squero that helps us understand what daily life in a gondola boatyard for a journeyman like Luca Vianello would have been like.
Scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the late medieval church of San Giovanni Battista in Brágora, where Luca and Giuliana meet on several occasions. The composer Antonio Vivaldi was baptized there, an event noted in the church record book in 1678. The church also houses important works by Venetian painters Cima da Conegliano, Bartolomeo Vivarini, and Palma the Younger. If I were to choose a spot for a clandestine meeting at dusk, I can hardly think of a more perfect setting than this quiet, beautiful gem of a church.
The Gondola Maker begins with an incident in which a gondolier hurls a stone at another gondola ferrying the French ambassador, resulting in a distinctly Venetian act of justice: the public boat-burning that Luca witnesses. This incident, along with many others that play a role in this story, are based on specific events documented in the Venetian historical record. My hat is off to the historian Dennis Romano for extracting these juicy morsels from the Venetian archives—from boatmen punching a hole in the bottom of a boat and filling it with rocks, to the stealing of oarlocks and jewelry, to the arrangement of complicated associations with tavern owners and courtesans, to gondoliers’ notoriously foul language. These fascinating glimpses underline not only the checkered history of the Venetian gondola, but also the consequences of pride and the universal passions that drive our human nature.
As always, truth is stran
ger than fiction.
Bibliography
Caniato, Giovanni. Arte degli squerarioli. Venezia: Associazione Settemari, 1985.
———————————. Giovanni Giuponi: Arte di far gondole. Venezia: Associazione Settemari, 1985.
Chambers, David and Brian Pullan, eds. Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Davis, Robert C. Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal: Workers and Workplace in the Preindustrial City. The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Dei Brazolo, Quirino. La gondola: fasi della sua costruzione. Dosson (Treviso): Zoppelli G & C., 1979.
Donatelli, Carlo. The Gondola: An Extraordinary Naval Architecture. Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1994.
Farr, James R. Artisans in Europe, 1300-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Fortini-Brown, Patricia. Art and Life in Renaissance Venice. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1997.
——————————————, “Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites,” In Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297-1797. John Martin and Dennis Romano, eds. (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 295-338.
——————————————. Private Lives in Renaissance Venice. Yale University Press.
Gilbert, Creighton, Italian Art 1400-1600. Sources & Documents in the History of Art. H.W. Janson, ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980.
The Gondola Maker Page 24
