Art -- Italy -- Venice; Venice (Italy) -- Description and travel
The best or most entertaining panels seem to me the first, in which the
little bald baby saint is being washed and his mother is being coaxed to
eat something; the fourth, where we see the saint, now a youth, on his
knees; the sixth, where he occupies the hermit's cell and the hermit
lets down food; the seventh, where the hermit and Benedict occupy the
cell together and a huntsman and dog pursue their game above; the tenth,
in the monastery; the twelfth, where the whip is being laid on; the
fourteenth, with an especially good figure of Benedict; the sixteenth,
where the meal is spread; the twentieth, with the devil on the tree
trunk; the twenty-first, when the fire is being extinguished; the
twenty-fifth, with soldiers in the distance; the twenty-seventh, with a
fine cloaked figure; the twenty-eighth, where there is a struggle for a
staff; the thirtieth, showing the dormitory and a cat and mouse; the
thirty-second, a burial scene; the thirty-third, with its monsters; the
thirty-sixth, in which the beggar is very good; the thirty-ninth, where
the soldiers kiss the saint's feet; and the forty-fourth, showing the
service in the church and the soldiers' arms piled up.
One would like to know more of this Albert de Brule and his work: how
long it took; why he did it; how it came to Venice; and so forth. The
date, which applies, I suppose, to the installation of the carvings, is
1598.
The other carvings are by other hands: the S. George and dragon on the
lectern in the choir, and the little courageous boys driving Behemoths
on the stalls.
As one leaves the church by the central aisle the Dogana is seen framed
by the doorway. With each step more of Venice comes into view. The
Campanile is worth climbing for its lovely prospect.
From the little island of S. Giorgio it is but a stone's throw to the
larger island of the Giudecca, with its factories and warehouses and
stevedores, and tiny cafes each with a bowling alley at the back. The
Giudecca, which looks so populous, is however only skin deep; almost
immediately behind the long busy facade of the island are gardens, and
then the shallow lagoon stretching for miles, where fishermen are
mysteriously employed, day and night. The gardens are restful rather
than beautiful--at least that one, open to visitors, on the Rio della
Croce, may be thus described, for it is formal in its parallelograms
divided by gritty paths, and its flowers are crudely coloured. But it
has fine old twisted mulberry trees, and a long walk beside the water,
where lizards dart among the stones on the land side and on the other
crabs may be seen creeping.
On the way to this garden I stopped to watch a family of gossiping
bead-workers. The old woman who sat in the door did not thread the beads
as the girl does in one of Whistler's Venetian etchings, but stabbed a
basketful with a wire, each time gathering a few more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account