Venice: S. Giorgio and the Giudecca

In 2010 I presented my paper on Giorgione's Tempest at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America held that year in Venice. The venue was a converted monastery on the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore right across from the Piazetta. Here is part of Edward Hutton's account of his time spent visiting S. Giorgio and the Giudecca. He often toured on a gondola.


Let no one imagine, however, that when he has seen these two churches he has done with the islands of S. Giorgio and the Giudecca or exhausted all that they have to show. No impression could be more false than this, for the wise traveler will find in their byways more of the real Venetian life as it must have been lived by the common people for many centuries than he is likely to come upon anywhere else in Venice, who has not wandered down their deserted alleys along the great sea-wall, or waited there for sunset, looking out over the wide and lonely lagoon to the Lidi and the sea, does not know Venice at all, but has been deceived by a city which more than any other in Italy has become a showplace for Germans and the barbarians and the sentimentalists of all ages.

For me at least the Giudecca has a charm I find nowhere else; for beautiful though the Riva or the Fondamenta delle Zattere can be in the early dawn and morning or in the evening twilight, neither the one nor the other has the gift of quietness or any garden at all, save the Giardino Publica at the Riva’s end, which, as one soon finds, is rather a park than a garden. But in the Giudecca all that you miss in Venice to-day may be found. You cross the often turbulent tide of the great sea lane that divides it from Venice, you creep all up the wonderful great road where the big ships lie at anchor and you may hear on a summer evening so many of the songs of the world, you pass quite by the Redentore and S. Eufemia della Giudecca, which stands up so grandly against the gold of the sky, you come to the Rio di S. Biagio and turn into it, quite full, as it seems, with fishing-boats, its quays laden with sea tackle and nets and baskets and the ropes and gear of the ships, among which the children play the games they have always played, dressed in rags of all sorts of colours, their dear tousled heads bending over toys, as we say, the great symbols of life after all and the affairs of men, a tiny ship or a doll, and I know not what else, intent upon their innocent business.  In the doorways, in the windows, their mothers gossip and laugh softly, awaiting their men, whom you find everywhere on board these many little vessels, mending nets or sowing at a sail or stepping a new mast or splicing an oar or painting a name.

Your gondola passes quite among these humble folk; their wide eyes of the sea gaze almost shyly into yours, you hear the children’s voices, a boy with bare feet runs towards you begging for soldi, a great bare-legged girl of sixteen insolently throws you a flower, the women stop their talk to watch you, the sailors give you greeting, till suddenly you pass out from between the houses, the quays and their various life, the noise and tumult are gone, and before you the great grey lagoon stretches away and away forever … the whole world here is caught in a smiling and serene light, a touch of gold is on the blue and grey of the waters that lap softly or impatiently about your boat as it turns in answer to the oar. As in a dream you glide along the seashore of the Giudecca.

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