Venice: S. Marco

In Venice and Venetia Edward Hutton began his exploration of the fabled city and its environs at S. Marco, the incredibly beautiful chapel of the Doges.

  

If St. Mark’s strikes us first by the Byzantine character of its architecture, its crowd of domes, the vast width of its façade in comparison with its height, it impresses us next, I think, by its strangely lovely colour, the gold and blue and green and red of the mosaics, colour which changes with every change of the sky, which is one thing in the blaze of a summer morning and quite another on an autumn afternoon after rain, when the sky is still full of cloud and the wind comes in melancholy gusts out of the pale gold of a watery sunset. I do not know under the influence of which sky, or at what hour of the day or of the night the church is most beautiful; I only know it is always beautiful: in the golden summer heat or standing amid the winter snow, or in the spring or late autumn when the Piazza has been flooded by the gale in the Adriatic; but I think I love it best when the sky clears in the evening, after a day of rain in early autumn, when some delicate and pure light has suddenly fallen upon the world, and the great façade seems for a moment to be made of pearl and mother of pearl, to reflect every colour and shadow of a beauty that belongs to the sea….

At such an hour in the flagstones of the Piazza, still wet after the day’s rain, the great façade backed by its domes, the flagstaves that stand before it on the pavement, are reflected there as a ship might be at the same mysterious hour to the grey-blue sea; it is as though some vast ship, only by conduct of some star, made her way upon the waters; a ship of pearl in which a thousand vague colours burn and fade and are merged into the grey twilight into the night and it is gone.*

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*Edward Hutton: Venice and Venetia, 1911, p. 49-50. 

Edward Hutton: S. Zaccaria, Bellini Madonna

The church of S. Zaccaria in Venice is situated not far behind S. Marco and the Doge's Palace. As Hutton noted it is gloomy inside but when you drop a coin in a box, Giovanni Bellini's masterpiece lights up in dazzling splendor. It is wonderful to see a painting where it was originally meant to be. Notice how Bellini's faux columns match the real columns. Here is Edward Hutton's description.

The present church, with its beautiful façade, dates from the fifteenth century, and is a spacious though rather gloomy building. Eight Doges lie therin, but its great treasure is the famous altarpiece by Giovanni Bellini of the Madonna and Child enthroned with four saints. It is one of the finest of his works. Completed in 1505, it is in the new manner which came to Bellini in his age as a new vision of the world, caught perhaps from the enthusiasm of his young disciples, who were to revolutionize painting. Our Lady and the Holy child are still enthroned in that niche with which we are so familiar, but there is something new in the picture which assures us, as it did Vasari, that it is a work in the “modern” manner. Perhaps we find it in the figure of S. Lucia, who stands on the right of the throne, her fair hair lying all gold across her shoulders, the lighted lamp in her hand, the curved palm branch, too, the sign of her martyrdom. Beside her is S. Jerome, his Bible open before him, the father of monasticism. To the left stand S. Catherine of Alexandria and S. Peter. *

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*Edward Hutton: Venice and Venetia, New York, 1911, p. 96.

Edward Hutton visits the Frari

At the time Edward Hutton visited S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in the first decade of the twentieth century, Titian's Assunta had been removed and placed in the Accademia. Nevertheless, two of the greatest paintings of the Venetian Renaissance were still in place. Here is his description.* 

Giovanni Bellini: Pesaro Altarpiece

Here, too, stood one of the great treasures of the church, an altarpiece by Giovanni Bellini, painted in 1488, one of the loveliest of his works. It still carries its original Renaissance frame. In the midst is the Blessed virgin, enthroned, with her little Son, standing on her knee. At her feet are two music making angels of pure delight, while on the side panels are four splendid saints on guard—S. Peter, S. Nicholas, S. Paul, and S. Benedict. Nothing that was ever in the church can have been lovelier than this quiet altarpiece. … (134-135)

Titian" Pesaro Atarpiece

 The great and beautiful thing which recalls us to this aisle of the Frari again and again is Titian’s famous Madonna del Pesaro….Under a vast and beautiful Renaissance arch, through which we see a great sky full of snow-white clouds, between two mighty pillars, the Madonna sits enthroned, her little Son standing on her knee laughing with and blessing S. Francis, behind whom is S. Anthony. Bending a little to her right, Madonna holds her child with both hands gently, firmly, and receives the homage of Bishop Jacopo, who is introduced by S. Peter, beyond whom a bearded warrior, leading a Turk and a Moor in chains, uprears the standard of the Borgia. On the right of the picture beneath S. Francis kneel the family of the Bishop, three old men, perhaps his brothers, a youth, and a fair-haired child who gazes sweetly out of the canvas, while above one of those great white clouds has sailed into the great portico across the height of the pillars, and upon it, like children on a toy ship, are two winged angelini bearing the cross. I suppose there is no other work of Titian in Venice which is so consummate a work of art or so wonderfully original a composition as this. Its humanity and quietness, the beauty of its colour too, its inexhaustible perfection are the chief reasons why one continually returns to the Frari. (134-137)

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Edward Hutton, Venice and Venetia,  London, third edition, 1929, first published 1911.

* The Assunta is now in its rightful place above the main altar. It had been removed to the Academmia in 1816 but restored to the Frari in 1916. Its 21 panels measuring 690 x 360 cm were restored in 1994.

Tintoretto's Paradise

On his visit to the Doge's palace Edward Hutton saw Tintoretto's Paradise but expressed his disappointment. *

I confess at once that while in the Antecollegio Tintoretto seems to me to be one of the great painters in the world, a true poet and creator of beauty, here I am altogether at a loss. The vast canvas, almost black and altogether without order or arrangement in its composition, means absolutely nothing to me, it moves me not at all, I get from it no pleasure, nor do I understand it…. For others this picture may be, as I gather it was for Ruskin, a profound revelation of beauty and joy. Me it cannot affect. I am, let me confess it, merely confused and tired by its dim ocean of figures… and if this be Heaven I had looked for a happier place and one full of light. Who for a moment would exchange this our dear world for that far ocean of murky gloom? Let us go to the great window and standing there look at the sunlight lying on the city, the dancing waves of the lagoon, the happy morning joyful along the Schiavone, the shady trees of the gardens, the adventurous Fortuna, the cold magnificent Salute, the joy of S. Giorgio of the rosy tower, the life of the ships at the Zattere quays, the ways of the little people in the Piazzeta. Is not this a heaven of heavens in comparison with that solemn  black chaos within doors?—that pretentious and prideful study in anatomy and movement that has no thought at all of anything in the world or above it save the wonderful capacity of Messer Jacopo Tintoretto? Yet he is but typical of them all. After the Bellini Venice neve possessed a religious painter. Not one of them all, even the greatest, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, is anything but a mediocrity beside Angelico, or Gentile da Fabriano, or Sassetta, or half a dozen Sienese I could name. **

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* I can certainly understand his feelings. Often, I have stood in Museums in Italy and elsewhere and preferred to turn my eyes from the masterpieces on the walls to look our the windows at the scenery. The view from the Uffizi in Florence is one example, as is the view from the Ca' Doro in Venice.

**Edward Hutton, Venice and Venetia,  London, third edition, 1929, first published 1911, p. 82.