Art -- Italy -- Venice; Venice (Italy) -- Description and travel
The second dome tells the history of Abraham, and then three domes are
given to the best story in the world, the story of Joseph. The first
dome treats of his dream, showing him asleep and busy with it, and the
result, the pit being a cylinder projecting some feet from the ground.
Jacob's grief on seeing the coat of many colours is very dramatic. In
the next we find Potiphar's wife, Joseph's downfall, and the two
dreaming officials. The third tells of Joseph and Jacob and is full of
Egyptian local colour, a group of pyramids occurring twice. On the wall
are subsidiary scenes, such as Joseph before Pharaoh, the incident of
Benjamin's sack with the cup in it, and the scene of the lean kine
devouring the fat, which they are doing with tremendous spirit, all
beginning simultaneously from behind.
The last dome relates the story of Moses, but it is by an inferior
artist and does not compare with the others. The miracle of the manna on
the wall is, however, amusing, the manna being rather like melons and
the quails as large as pheasants. On the extreme left a cook is at work
grilling some on a very open fire. Another inferior mosaic on the north
side of the atrium, represents S. Christopher with his little Passenger.
It is a pity that Titian's delightful version in the Doges' Palace could
not have been followed.
The atrium is remarkable not only for its illustrations to Genesis. Its
mosaic patterns are very lovely, and its carved capitals. The staircase
to the left of the centre door of the church proper leads to the
interior galleries and to the exterior gallery, where the golden horses
are. Of the interior galleries I speak later. Let me say here that these
noble steeds were originally designed and cast for a triumphal arch, to
be driven by Victory, in honour of Nero. Filched from Rome by
Constantine, they were carried to his own city as an ornament to the
imperial hippodrome. In 1204 the great Doge Enrico Dandolo, having
humiliated Constantinople, brought the horses to Venice as a trophy, and
they were transferred to the service of the church. Here, above the
central portal of the cathedral, they stood for nearly six centuries,
and then in 1797 a more modern Constantine, one Napoleon, carried them
to Paris, to beautify his city. In 1815, however, when there was a
redistribution of Napoleonic spoils, back they came to Venice, to their
ancient platform, and there they now are, unchanged, except that their
golden skins are covered with the autographs of tourists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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