Art -- Italy -- Venice; Venice (Italy) -- Description and travel
The painters have chosen from Dandolo's career the following scenes:
Dandolo and the Crusaders pledging themselves in S. Mark's; the capture
of Zara; the request of Alexius for help; the first capture of
Constantinople by Dandolo, who set the banner on the wall; the second
capture of Constantinople; the election of Baldwin as Emperor; the
crowning of Baldwin by Dandolo.
I said at the beginning of this precis of a gigantic campaign that it
was not of great profit to Venice; nor was it. All her life she had
better have listened to the Little Venice party, but particularly then,
for only misfortune resulted. Dandolo, however, remains a terrific
figure. He died in Constantinople in 1205 and was buried in S. Sofia.
Doge Andrea Dandolo, whose tomb we saw in the Baptistery, was a
descendant who came to the throne some hundred and forty years later.
Mention of Andrea Dandolo brings us to the portraits of Doges around the
walls of this great hall, where the other Dandolo will also be found;
for in the place adjoining Andrea's head is a black square. Once the
portrait of the Doge who succeeded Andrea was here too, but it was
blacked out. Marino Faliero, for he it was, became Doge in 1354 when his
age was seventy-six, having been both a soldier and a diplomatist. He
found himself at once involved in the war with Genoa, and almost
immediately came the battle of Sapienza, when the Genoese took five
thousand prisoners, including the admiral, Niccolo Pisani. This blow was
a very serious one for the Venetians, involving as it did great loss of
life, and there was a growing feeling that they were badly governed.
The Doge, who was but a figure-head of the Council of Ten, secretly
thinking so too, plotted for the overthrow of the Council and the
establishment of himself in supreme power. The Arsenal men were to form
his chief army in the revolt; the false alarm of a Genoese attack was to
get the populace together; and then the blow was to be struck and
Faliero proclaimed prince. But the plot miscarried through one of the
conspirators warning a friend to keep indoors; the ringleaders were
caught and hanged or exiled; and the Doge, after confessing his guilt,
was beheaded in the courtyard of this palace. His coffin may be seen in
the Museo Civico, and of his unhappy story Byron made a drama.
One of Faliero's party was Calendario, an architect, employed on the
part of the Doges' Palace in which we are now standing. He was hanged or
strangled between the two red columns in the upper arches of the
Piazzetta facade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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