Stones of Venice | Page 6

it regards the city itself. They are little more than a semblance of
precaution against the attack of a foreign enemy.]
SECTION XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I
would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in
which the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the
aspect which the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in
their true connection with the history of the state.
1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of
Venice as far back as 1418.
Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the
sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith
animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of
Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or
sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His
larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial
rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made
subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of
the Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection
between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who
surround her.
Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and
Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the
school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their
artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own
natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up in

faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the vital
religion of Venice had expired.
SECTION XIV. The vital religion, observe, not the formal. Outward
observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were
painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling before the
Madonna or St. Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure
gold of the Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in
the ducal palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith:
there is a curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of
one of Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal.
The eye is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of
Venice was in her wars, not in her worship.
The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects
which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
portraiture.
The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century
had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
SECTION XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must
here give a general idea of its heads.
Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495,
says,--
"Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les gallees y
passent à travers et y ay veu navire de quatre cens tonneaux ou plus
pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit en tout le
monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les maisons
sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les anciennes toutes
painctes; les aul tres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes ont le devant de
marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, à cent mils de la, et encores
maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le devant.... C'est la
plus triumphante cité que j'aye jamais veue et qui plus faict d'honneur à

ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus saigement se gouverne, et où le
service de Dieu est le plus sollennellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust
bien avoir d'aultres faultes, si croy je que Dieu les a en ayde pour la
reverence qu'ilz portent au service de l'Eglise." [Footnote: Mémoires de
Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii.]
SECTION XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion