I mused what it was like to go behind the walls of these Venetian mansions. There is rarely an opportunity to see their interiors unless you are one of the owners or are invited to a private party, and this usually requires ties to the Italian nobility, of which I have none. I settled for John Singer Sargent’s excellent 1897 oil, An Interior in Venice, which is the next best thing to being there. Sargent, arguably America’s greatest portraitist, was particularly skilled at rendering figures in a group setting. The painting depicts a distinguished family lounging in a living room at the Palazzo Barbaro, which Sargent often visited. In the background are tapestries, intricately carved Louis XVI furniture, large antique mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and elaborately decorated ceilings. All of the members of the fashionably dressed Curtis family – expatriates who were also Sargent’s cousins – seem unaware of the outside viewer looking in, except for one: the formidable Mrs. Liddy Curtis. She stares out of the painting, composed and vigorous, with a hint of a restrained smile. Light from the outside window highlights her lace dress, while her husband is busy perusing a folio of pictures beside her. An attractive younger couple, standing behind them, exudes sophistication and class. Sargent captures this resplendent scene with rich, lustrous colors, and it is an astonishing group portrait. But apparently Mrs. Curtis felt otherwise: she rejected the painting because she thought it made her look too matronly. From her vanity sprang our good fortune. The picture was returned to Sargent and later found its way to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where it is now on permanent display.
Palazzo Grimani is another Renaissance building that enthralls. Built in the 1550s, it was designed by Sanmicheli, a student of Palladio. The structure resembles Rezzonico in its overall shape but is more muscular and robust. Now the Court of Appeals, Grimani features a triumphal arch at the first floor, a motif repeated in the floors above. It is one of the handsomest buildings in the city and, according to Ruskin, is “composed of three stories of the Corinthian Order, at once simple, delicate and sublime, but on such a colossal scale, that the three-storied palaces on its right and left only reach to the cornice which makes the level of its first floor.”5 Observing it by vaporetto once, I noticed the worn steps at the entrance, smoothed and polished by centuries of algae and seaweed. I tried to imagine noblemen from the sixteenth century arriving by gondola, daintily alighting in the high-heeled fashion of the day. It would have required the dexterity of Martha Graham to avoid slipping and falling. But such was the age. The aristocracy rarely, if ever, walked the narrow calle that surround these palazzi. Those passageways, redolent with garbage and worse, were the byways of the lower class and servants. Venice is more democratic now and its seamier side is accessible to all. Pigeons frequently used me as target practice in these back alleys, and I’ve had to clamber over cat ejectamenta in a mad game of Venetian hopscotch (Venetians seem annoyingly complacent about their pets), simply to get from one end of the street to the other. But given the eighteenth-century standard for hygiene, which must have been a sanitary nightmare, I can scarcely complain. Edward Gibbon, visiting in 1765, described the city as “stinking ditches dignified with the pompous denomination of canals.”6 Raw sewage was routinely flung into the streets, much to the chagrin of unsuspecting passersby, and the canals were a substitute septic tank, especially vulnerable during acqua alta, or flood tide. It is no wonder the aristocracy sought sanctuary in these palaces. The wealthy not only enjoyed the luxuries of fine art and architecture, they also literally held the higher ground above the teeming masses, remaining relatively free of the unpleasant realities of everyday life. There are good reasons why the second floor of a Venetian mansion is called the piano nobile, or “noble floor.” And as Venice continues to sink – or the sea continues to rise, depending on which dire prediction you choose – this higher ground will be all the more fortuitous.
Not all of Venice’s houses are palatial. Many are nondescript brick structures, held together (barely) by iron braces, with dilapidated balconies and peeling stucco, much like the slums of Naples; and sadly, too, rampant graffiti has taken its toll. Some of these buildings are five hundred years old. A few are older. Cannaregio and the ancient Jewish ghetto, districts where tourists rarely go, are where you will find many such structures. The nineteenth-century artist James Whistler, who loved the underbelly of Venice, was inspired by these picturesque neighborhoods and came to the city in 1879 to draw them. Working mainly with pastels, he returned to London the following year with well over a hundred finished works. When they were exhibited, the critics raved. It took Whistler’s genius to elevate this unknown, often decrepit, side of Venice to the level of high art.
Gothic Fantasy, 2009
The Palazzo Ducale Courtyard, 1986. Collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
“I employed a little traveling watercolor set, the kind Ruskin may well have used … crouched over a folding stool like an archaeologist mapping a pit.”
CHANNELING RUSKIN
Thank God I am here! It is the paradise of Cities!
– John Ruskin7
Along the expansive Zattere, a promenade that is much wider than most of Venice’s narrow streets, there is a stone plaque on La Pensione Calcina commemorating the art critic John Ruskin, who once lived there. Written in Italian, it gives the date of his residence as 1877. Few figures are more identified with Venice, or more controversial. His Stones of Venice, written in 1853, is a seminal work; opinionated and provocative, it is equal parts guide, polemic, education. Given that Ruskin was a Victorian, born at the start of Queen Victoria’s reign, it is all the more striking – in an era known for its almost pathological restraint – that his treatise is so unabashedly exuberant.
I first came across The Stones in a reprint published in 1985, with an introduction by Jan Morris, the well-known travel writer. It includes reproductions of Ruskin’s watercolors, which were omitted from earlier editions. Even a cursory reading of Ruskin’s text reveals that he encompassed his subject like few before him, or since. But Ruskin was not merely not of his age; he was at heart a Romantic, linked more closely perhaps to the English poet John Keats than to his contemporary William Morris, the artist, writer, and early Socialist. Ruskin was famous, even infamous, for wandering Venice with a notebook and ruler, measuring