Canaletto. Octave Uzanne
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it scandalous to run into masked visitors in convent reception rooms or at gala dinners where the doge would bestow purple robes on the magistrates. Once promised in marriage, a young noblewoman might conceal her features under a velvet hood, and no one would see her face uncovered except for her fiancé and those privileged people to whom this rare favour was accorded.
9. The Grand Canal in the Vicinity of Santa Maria della Carita, 1726.
Oil on canvas, 90 × 132 cm.
Private Collection.
Though these young women lived like prisoners inside palaces with barred windows, somewhat like Oriental women, occupying themselves with embroidery and making the marvellous lace on which Venice prided itself, they were suddenly emancipated through marriage and never again knew such crippling restraints on their freedom to be alluring. Those whose behaviour remained irreproachable drew from their devotion a self-restraint imposed neither by a family-oriented mindset nor the opinion of a libertine society. Since marriage was considered a formality importing little gravity, this forgetting of all duty led naturally to an abandonment of family life. They would spend the entire day out in the open air. Casinos served as a rendezvous point. There was something for the ladies, as well as for their husbands. Their children were like pretty dolls, dressed in rich outfits and prepared with good manners. As for the adolescents, they shocked travellers with the rowdiness that Venetians found amusing.
Discipline having lost its authority in schools, total capriciousness reigned in education. That of the writer Goldoni can serve as an example. In Rimini, bored with philosophical subtleties and passionate about ancient clowns and the theatre, he found a troupe of comedians made up almost entirely of his own countrymen. Under the pretext of going to Chioggia to kiss and greet his mother, he boarded their gondola and embarked on their journey. After that jaunt, having received a scholarship to a theological school in Pavia, he took up wearing the cloth with other worldly and stylish young abbots. But instead of applying himself to canon or civil law, he concentrated on fencing and the pleasurable arts, that is to say, all the games of society that a perfect gentleman could not ignore. Nevertheless, this life of extravagance did not prevent him, when in Chioggia, from composing a sermon that conferred on him a reputation for eloquence.
As far as convents were concerned, the cloister did not prove to be an adequate barrier between the recluses and the outside world. One of Longhi’s most interesting canvases at the Correr Museum is precisely a representation of a visit by patricians to a nunnery. The impression is entirely profane. Through the barred windows, the nuns and boarders appear to lend a self-satisfied ear to the sounds from outside. For the amusement of this attractive company, whose cuffs and garments bear typically Venetian floral embroidery, a small stage has been set up in a corner, while a beggar asks alms from a group of noble lords.
10. Capriccio: the Rialto Bridge and the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, c. 1750.
Oil on canvas, 167.6 × 114.3 cm.
The North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.
11. The Rialto Bridge from the South-west, c. 1740–1745.
Pencil and ink, 26.6 × 36.7 cm.
The Royal Collection, London.
12. The Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge, looking from the South, c. 1727.
Oil on copperplate, 45.5 × 62.5 cm.
Private Collection.
13. Molo and Riva degli Schiavoni, c. 1727.
Oil on copperplate, 43 × 58.5 cm.
Private Collection.
Hardly interested in mysticism, the Venetians loved the ecstasy of religious ceremonies, the processions dazzling with priestly ornamentations, the golden dais, the unfurled banners, the doge and the patriarch, the throng of clergymen, and the six companies from the Scuole Grande.[3] For them, religion was equivalent to patriotism. Hadn’t Saint Mark’s body, which was spirited away from Alexandria, become a holy relic, a kind of Palladium? Just as the people shouted, “Siamo Venzian! e poi cristiani” (Venetian first, then Christian!), the clergy itself did not always kindly receive instructions from the Holy See. Moreover, men of the cloth had been overtaken by mistrust for the government. From the moment that a man enjoyed any benefit from the Church, be it a diploma or priesthood, he was immediately excluded from any public office and debarred from any positions he could have held. Likewise, every minister of the Republic was prohibited from appealing to the pope for a red hat, or for any prelacy.
The Inquisition still existed in Venice during the eighteenth century, but the Roman legal representatives never resembled the sinister delegates of Philip II in Spain. Moreover, three lay nobles, designated by the Senate, who had the power to annul any sentence handed down by the Holy Office, were assistants to ecclesiastical advisers. More fearsome in name than in act, this tribunal limited itself to a right to censorship only in relation to literary and artistic works. It was under this authority that Veronese was summoned to explain the presence of useless characters and improper details in his religious paintings. He used the following defence: “All of us painters are something akin to madmen and poets, acting according to the fancy and whims of our imaginations”. For his nominal “sentence”, he was forced to incorporate certain changes to the vast compositions he had painted for the refectory of the convent of Saint John and Saint Paul. One can easily foresee just how much this law of censure had become illusory during Canaletto’s time.
Trade relations brought Jews, Greeks, Muslims, and, later, Reformists, into the Piazza. The majority of European nations had a neighbourhood and a consul in Venice. For example, Jews and Greeks were stationed north of the city. However, while the Venetians wisely employed a freedom of belief in their hospitality, they rejected any doctrines. Thus, neither Luther nor Calvin counted a single one of Saint Mark’s children among their new followers. However, certain Epicurean theories, which had newly been brought to light through Cesare Cremonini’s brilliant commentaries, found more credit with them. This famous interpreter of the philosophers of Antiquity at Padua University had no fear of teaching that the soul was transmissible like the body, and thus was not immortal. Many nobles, having accepted this materialist and atheistic system, applied its conclusions to their lives. In this way, a veritable paganism was introduced not only into minds, but also into mores. This total absence of scruples had already appeared two centuries before in the influence that Aretino enjoyed. Was not his insolent pretence of posing as the arbiter of destinies tolerated? Showered with pensions and gold chains from nobles, he lived like a great lord among his contemporaries who flattered him and shuddered to see his stairs sullied by the feet of visitors who came to hear and admire him.
14. The Bucintoro returning to the Molo.
Oil on canvas. The Bowes Museum,
Barnard Castle.
15. A Regatta on the Grand Canal, c. 1733–1734.
Oil on canvas, 77.2 × 125.7 cm.
The Royal Collection, London.
The Nobility
These patricians, however, jealously guarded the secret to their nobility, the oldest in all of Europe. Certain families could still boastfully count among their ancestors those who had elected the first doge in the seventh century. One of his successors, Gradenigo, attained a truly revolutionary success for the aristocracy by abolishing, in 1297, the custom of annually renewing the Grand Council. He then declared as irremovable all those who had been a part of the Council for four years and granted the male descendents the right to sit in the same role as their fathers. This was the origin of the famous libro d’oro,[4] in which the names of permanently noble families appeared.
See Guardi’s painting in the Louvre that depicts the Corpus Christi procession at Saint Mark’s Square.
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