A Wanderer in Venice | Page 8

for a minute or so, I was passing on when a figure emerged from a cool corner where he had been resting and held out his hand. He was a cunning old rascal with short-cropped grey hair, a wrinkled face packed with craft, and a big pipe; and after a moment's perplexity I recognized him as the model. He pointed to himself and nodded to the picture and again proffered his open palm. Such money as I have for free distribution among others is, however, not for this kind; but the idea that the privilege of seeing the picture in the making should carry with it an obligation to the sitter was so comic that I could not repulse him with the grave face that is important on such occasions. Later in the same day I met the artist himself in the waters of the Lido--a form of rencontre that is very common in Venice in the summer. The converse is, however, the more amusing and usually disenchanting: the recognition, in the Piazza, in the evening, in their clothes, of certain of the morning's bathers. Disillusion here, I can assure you.
On the south wall of S. Mark's, looking over the Molo and the lagoon, is the famous Madonna before whom two lights burn all night. Not all day too, as I have seen it stated. Above her are two pretty cherubs against a light-blue background, holding the head of Christ: one of the gayest pieces of colour in Venice. Justice is again pinnacled here, and on her right, on another pinnacle, is a charming angel, upon whom a lion fondlingly climbs. Between and on each side are holy men within canopies, and beneath is much delicate work in sculpture. Below are porphyry insets and veined marbles, and on the parapet two griffins, one apparently destroying a child and one a lamb. The porphyry stone on the ground at the corner on our left is the Pietra del Bando, from which the laws of the Republic were read to the people. Thomas Coryat, the traveller, who walked from Somerset to Venice in 1608 and wrote the result of his journey in a quaint volume called _Coryat's Crudities_, adds another to the functions of the Pietra del Bando. "On this stone," he says, "are laide for the space of three dayes and three nights the heads of all such as being enemies or traitors to the State, or some notorious offenders, have been apprehended out of the citie, and beheaded by those that have been bountifully hired by the Senate for the same purpose." The four affectionate figures, in porphyry, at the corner of the Doges' Palace doorway, came also from the East. Nothing definite is known of them, but many stories are told. The two richly carved isolated columns were brought from Acre in 1256.
Of these columns old Coryat has a story which I have found in no other writer. It may be true, and on the other hand it may have been the invention of some mischievous Venetian wag wishing to get a laugh out of the inquisitive Somerset pedestrian, whose leg was, I take it, invitingly pullable. "Near to this stone," he says, referring to the Pietra del Bando, "is another memorable thing to be observed. A marvailous faire paire of gallowes made of alabaster, the pillars being wrought with many curious borders, and workes, which served for no other purpose but to hang the Duke whensoever he shall happen to commit any treason against the State. And for that cause it is erected before the very gate of his Palace to the end to put him in minde to be faithfull and true to his country. If not, he seeth the place of punishment at hand. But this is not a perfect gallowes, because there are only two pillars without a transverse beame, which beame (they say) is to be erected when there is any execution, not else. Betwixt this gallowes malefactors and condemned men (that are to goe to be executed upon a scaffold betwixt the two famous pillars before mentioned at the South end of S. Mark's street, neare the Adriaticque Sea) are wont to say their prayers, to the Image of the Virgin Mary, standing on a part of S. Mark's Church right opposite unto them."
CHAPTER III
S. MARK'S. II: THE INTERIOR
Vandal guides--Emperor and Pope--The Bible in mosaic--The Creation of the world--Cain and Abel--Noah--The story of Joseph--The golden horses--A horseless city--A fiction gross and palpable--A populous church--The French pilgrims--Rain in Venice--S. Mark's Day--The procession--New Testament mosaics--S. Isidoro's chapel--The chapel of the Males--A coign of vantage--The Pala d'oro--Sansovino--S. Mark's treasures--The Baptistery--The good Andrea Dandolo--The vision of Bishop Magnus--The parasites.
Let us now enter the atrium. When I first did so, in 1889, I fell at once into the