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Don’t look up, look down!

by Luca Marchiori April 17, 2018August 13, 2018

When visiting any city, my advice is always to look up as you walk around. Many of the most interesting details of buildings tend to be above your head, street level usually being reserved for modern shops and tarmac pavements. When visiting Venice’s Piazza San Marco, however, my advice would be the opposite since there are many interesting details that most people miss, right under your feet.

Piazza San Marco has, since 1723, been covered in a pavement of trachyte, a volcanic stone mined from the Euganean Hills near Padua, with a geometric design worked out in white marble. The project was designed and executed by Venetian architect Andrea Tirali (1657–1737). A Canaletto painting from 1723, which can be contrasted with later paintings, shows the piazza covered with beaten earth, ready for the laying of the paving stones, known to the Venetians as masegni.

Canaletto, Piazza San Marco 1723, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

Canaletto, Piazza San Marco c. 1730, Fogg Museum, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA.

The pavement itself can be viewed from the Campanile di San Marco and also from the windows of the Museo Correr at the far end of the piazza (see the photo at the top of this page). However, walking around the piazza, you can find several different items of interest at pavement level.

In the far left hand corner of the square, facing away from the basilica, you can find a some large concentric circles carved into the paving stones. These, we are told from the inscription in the centre, mark the position of a well which once stood in the square, but was filled in in the 16th century.

Circles marking the position of a the well, long since disappeared.

The inscription reads: ‘Well, filled in in the 16th century’.

Moving into the centre of the square are two inscriptions commemorating the 1625 grant of the right for two of the Venetian guilds to erect market stalls in the piazza. On one side the pitch is reserved for the guild of Calegheri (shoemakers) and on the other side the guild of Zavatteri (clog makers). It seems that the piazza was the place to buy footwear in the 17th century.

The inscription reads: ‘For the guild of shoemakers, 1625’.

The inscription reads: ‘1625, for the guild of clogmakers’.

Some people have theorised that the marble design itself denotes the position of market stalls. However, there is no evidence for this. Only two guilds are named in inscriptions whereas we know that other guilds, such as the Arte dei Strazzaruoli (second-hand clothes dealers) sold their wares in the piazza and of course wine was sold in the shadow of the campanile, which is how the Venetian word ombra meaning ‘shade’ came also to mean ‘a glass of wine’. Paintings by Canaletto clearly show that the market stalls in the square do not follow the markings. They form, therefore, just a design.

One final thing that you can see on the floor of the piazza, is located underneath the Sotoportego de San Geminian, at the far end of the square, under the Correr Museum. This commemorates the church of San Geminian (San Gimignano) which once stood at this end of the square facing the basilica. Designed by the great architect Sansovino, who contributed many other buildings to the piazza, it was demolished in 1807 to make way for the so-called Napoleonic Wing, today home to the Correr Museum.

The inscription reads: ‘On this spot in 1557, Jacopo Sansovino built the new church of San Geminiano, demolished in 1807.

April 17, 2018August 13, 2018 2 comments

Festivals history stories Venice

Festa delle Marie: 2 February

by Luca Marchiori February 2, 2018August 13, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

In medieval Venice, 2 February, Candlemas or the feast of the Purification of the Virgin, was the date of the Festa delle Marie (Festival of the Marys), one of the most important official events of the carnival.

As we saw in the last post, on 31 January, twelve rich families from around the city exhibited a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, richly adorned in clothes and jewels, in their palazzi. On 2 February, these would be taken in a grand waterborne procession to the church of San Pietro in Castello, which until 1797 was the cathedral of Venice. Here they would enter the church for a mass with the Patriarch (the archbishop) of Venice before once again being carried by boat, this time with the Patriarch, to the Riva degli Schiavoni. From here they would be carried into the Basilica San Marco for a mass with the Doge. After mass, the Doge, Patriarch and Marys would get back on the boats and the procession would go up the Grand Canal to Rialto and then up side canals to Santa Maria Formosa where there would be a third and final mass.

The statues of Mary became known as Marioni, ‘big Marys’, and it’s said that small replicas were on sale as souvenirs during the festival. These were known as ‘little Marys’ or Marionette, which is where the modern word for a string puppet comes from.

Wooden statues of the Virgin Mary in an antiques shop in Campo Santa Maria Nova.

Since it took place at carnival time, the festival could get quite rowdy. The night before, young men from the families often paraded their Mary through the streets showing off how it was more lavishly decorated than those of the other families, which often ended in fist fights. In 1339 a law was passed banning the throwing of fruit and vegetables at the statues, suggesting that the whole thing had degenerated into a game of skittles. In 1379, Venice went to war with Genoa and every available penny was needed for the war effort. The government took this as the opportunity to abolish the festival once and for all. All that remained in future years was an annual visit by the Doge to Santa Maria Formosa for a simple mass.

A lavishly decorated statue of the Virgin Mary, evocative of the original Festa delle Marie, in the church of Santa Maria del Rosario in Venice.

More than a hundred years later, a myth was created to explain why there had been such a festival. It involved a story in which every year, the state would sponsor the weddings of twelve poor girls at the cathedral of San Pietro in Castello. One year, the brides with their dowries were kidnapped by pirates from Trieste. The whole city mobilized and gave chase, but the brides (and their dowries) were eventually rescued by the casselleri (cabinet makers) of the parish of Santa Maria Formosa. As this story only appears in the Renaissance, it is clear that it was invented to explain the festival and that the Marys had always been made of wood and represented the Virgin Mary.

In recent years a modern Festa delle Marie, which follows the myth rather than the historical version, has become part of the official Venice carnival. It involves a beauty contest for twelve Venetian girls who are carried from San Pietro in Castello to the Piazza San Marco before one is crowned the Maria of the year. This year it will take place tomorrow, February 3.

The picture at the top of this page is of an antiques shop in the Dorsoduro district of Venice, near the Accademia. The statues are eighteenth-century clothes mannequins, but for me they are very evocative of the original Festa delle Marie. They appear as ghostly reflections, projected onto the walls of the city, memories of the festival that once was.

February 2, 2018August 13, 2018 0 comment

Festivals history stories Venice

History of Venetian Carnival: 31 January

by Luca Marchiori January 31, 2018August 13, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

Like all carnivals, the Venetian Carnival started as a popular festival in which the people were allowed to let off steam by behaving in ways that they would not have been allowed to outside the period. However, from the earliest times, the Venetian government sought to control the festival and they did this by incorporating large-scale official events into the programme.

During the time of the Venetian Republic (up to 1797), the 31 January was a very important feast as it was the day in which the arrival of the body of Saint Mark in the city was celebrated. According to tradition, in 828 two Venetian merchants—Bono de Torcello and Rustico de Malamocco— who were illegally trading with the muslim city of Alexandria in Egypt, stole the body of the saint from that city to mollify the wrath of the Doge on their return to Venice. It is said that they covered the body with pork, forbidden meat to muslims, in order to deter the authorities from inspecting their cargo on leaving. Their plan worked and Doge Giustiano Participazio was so overjoyed by the arrival of the body that he ordered the building of Saint Mark’s Basilica and the Mark ousted San Todaro as the patron of the city.

In Medieval times, the feast fell right in the middle of the carnival period, which ran from 26 December until Ash Wednesday, and the celebrations were incorporated into the official carnival festivities. Every year, two parishes (or contrade) of Venice were chosen on a rotation basis to lead the festivities. On 30 January, these two contrade would organize processions around the Piazza San Marco to the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where dowry money would be distributed, at the expense of the rich residents of each contrada, to large groups young girls from poor families who wanted to get married.

The next day two more processions would be organized around the Piazza. One contrada would have a priest dressed as the Virgin Mary and another a priest dressed as the Archangel Gabriel. These two priests would come together on a stage and sing a song of praise to the Doge. All participants would again process to the Church of Santa Maria Formosa where there would be a mystery play of the Annunciation (when the Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was carrying Jesus) followed by a mass.

In the evening, six rich noble families in each of the two contrada (twelve in total) would open up their palazzi to the public to display a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary lavishly dressed and decorated in jewels at the family’s expense. The statues then became the centre of a parties. They would also, on 2 February, be used in the Festa delle Marie, (the festival of the Marys). I’ll be writing about that on 2 February.

The picture at the top of this page, by Jacopo Tintoretto, depicts the body of Saint Mark being stolen from Alexandria by Bono and Rustico. The place in which this is happening, bears a certain resemblance to the Piazza San Marco, with the now demolished Church of San Gimignano at the far end.

January 31, 2018August 13, 2018 1 comment

Festivals history People Photos stories Venice Venice today

Carnival in Venice

by Luca Marchiori January 26, 2018August 13, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

Tomorrow, 27 January 2018, is the official start of what is probably the most famous carnival in the world, the Carnevale di Venezia. Soon the calli and campi will be full of people, mostly tourists and mostly French, sporting costumes ranging from the outlandish to the opulent, and posing for photographs evocative of the final century of the Venetian Republic.

People are already warning of overcrowding, but I have to say that compared to July, the city usually isn’t that overcrowded, save for the days on which big events are planned. And I do enjoy seeing the costumes, many of them made by artisans here in Venice, outside the shop windows where they live for the rest of the year.

Beautiful, authentic, 18th-century costumes in the Piazza.

Carnival is a European tradition which dates back to ancient times. It’s thought to derive from the Roman winter festival of Saturnalia. Nowadays, the word has come to refer to any large costume festival—such as the Notting Hill Carnival in London—and in the USA the word is often used to mean a funfair. But in Europe it means the festival that takes place between Christmas and Lent, the latter being the period in which christians observe austerity for forty days and forty nights.

In Medieval times, Carnival in Europe became a period of misrule, in which people were allowed, unofficially, to get away with pretty much anything. The institutions of church and state were often mocked openly and people overindulged in public. The tradition of wearing masks developed so that people could go about their carnival behaviour incognito, without fear of retribution from the authorities come Lent. In a time when most of the continent was ruled by kings, who could not be removed at elections, this was part of the social contract: the people could let off steam and mock authority for a few weeks a year in return for obedience and public order for the rest of it.

The origins of the word itself are as obscure as the origins of the festival. The most likely explanation, however, is that it derives from the latin phrase carnem levare, ‘taking away meat’. This refers to the fact that during Lent christians fasted and were forbidden from eating meat, eggs, and dairy products in particular.

Carnival is of special importance to me. When I was at University my bachelor’s dissertation was entitled Carnival in Renaissance Venice through the diaries of Marin Sanudo. This is how I first became acquainted with this most fascinating record of Venetian renaissance life.

Over the next few weeks I will be bringing you pictures and reports from this year’s carnival as well as giving you some of the history of the Venetian Carnival, particularly during the medieval and renaissance periods.

January 26, 2018August 13, 2018 2 comments

history Language People Venice

Great Venetians: Pietro Bembo

by Luca Marchiori January 16, 2018August 13, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

Regular readers of Luca’s Venice will be aware that Venice retains its own dialect or language which is quite distinct from standard Italian. They might not be aware however that when the Italian people got together to choose which of the many varieties of the language to adopt as the common and literary language, it boiled down to two: Tuscan, because it was the language of the poet Petrarch, and Venetian because Venice was the contemporary centre of the European printing industry and one of the most important political powers.

In the end Tuscan was chosen, mostly due to the arguments set forth in the book Prose della volgar lingua written by the sixteenth-century humanist writer, poet, and grammarian, Cardinal Pietro Bembo. What is extraordinary however, is that Bembo was not Tuscan, but Venetian and argued against the adoption of his own language.

Pietro was born in 1470, into the illustrious and noble Bembo family. As a child he moved to Florence with his father, Bernardo, who was sent there as the ambassador of the Venetian Republic. It is there that he learnt Tuscan and began his life-long love affair with that language. After graduating from the University of Padua, he spent time in Ferrara, where he is reputed to have had an affair with the Duke’s new daughter-in-law, one Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI.

It was in Ferrara that Bembo wrote his first book Gli Asolani which contains a conversation about love, which supposedly took place in Asolo at the court of his fellow great Venetian, Caterina Corner (who will be the subject of a future post). The book was written in Tuscan, using the language of the poet Petrarch as a model. Just after the book’s publication (ironically in Venice) he fled Ferrara to avoid a terrible outbreak of plague and ended up in Urbino in Le Marche.

From Urbino he travelled to Rome where he became secretary to Pope Leo X. Following the Pope’s death he returned to Padua and eventually to Venice where he was commissioned to write an official history of the Republic and became librarian at the Biblioteca Marciana. It was during this period that Prose della volgar lingua was published.

In 1539, surprisingly since he wasn’t even a priest, he was made a cardinal by Pope Paul III. He quickly got ordained as a priest and then spent time as a papal administrator in various Italian cities. He died in Rome on January 18, 1547 and is buried there in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, next to the Pantheon.

The portrait at the top of the page was painted by the Venetian painter Titian and shows him in his cardinal’s robes.

January 16, 2018August 13, 2018 1 comment

Festivals history People Venice

Santa Lucia

by Luca Marchiori December 13, 2017August 13, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

Today 13 December, is the feast of Santa Lucia, or Saint Lucy. She is a very popular saint, venerated all over the Christian world, especially in Scandinavia where girls dress in white carrying candles on their heads singing a hymn to the saint. 13 December used to coincide with the winter solstice and so the celebrations are probably based on an older festival of lights. It’s interesting that the name Lucia derives from the latin word lux meaning light.

The church of San Geremia, resting place of the body of Santa Lucia.

For anyone who has arrived in Venice by train, the name of Santa Lucia is oddly familiar. This is because its the name of the main train station, Venezia Santa Lucia. But the reason for this, and Venice’s link with the saint goes back much further than the advent of the railways.

On 12 April 1204, the Venetian army, led in person by Doge Enrico Dandolo, who had been waiting for payment from the Byzantine Emperor for having carried a large number of troops from Venice to Constantinople as part of the Fourth Crusade, finally lost patience and attacked and sacked the city itself. In the aftermath, the Venetians took almost every thing that wasn’t nailed down in the city and many things that were.

Inscription on the outside wall of San Geremia proclaiming the presence of the body of Santa Lucia. This is visible only from the Canal Grande.

Modern Venice would look very different had this looting not taken place: the four bronze horses of San Marco, a lot of the sculptures on the facade of the basilica, the golden altar screen (pala d’oro) and many of the hundreds of small byzantine sculptures adorning Venetian palazzi, were part of the haul.

Also taken were many relics, one of the most important of which was the body of Santa Lucia, an early Italian saint from Syracuse in Sicily. When she died, her body had been kept in Syracuse before being transferred to Corfinio in Abruzzo, thence to Metz, then Luitberg, and finally to Constantinople where the Venetians found it.

She then lay in the church dedicated to her at the opposite end of the Canal Grande to San Marco. Her head was removed and given as a gift to the King of France in 1513. In 1861, her church was demolished to make space for the train station and the body was moved up the canal to the church of San Geremia, where it remained until 1981. Then it was stolen. For five weeks its whereabouts was unknown, until the police found it on 13 December, her feast day.

The shrine and body of Santa Lucia.

In 2004, Lucia went on her travels once again. This time to her home town of Syracuse for a visit before returning to Venice, where she can be seen once again in the church of San Geremia.

So who was Santa Lucia? Born in 283 Lucia was born into a wealthy family and brought up by her mother after the death of her father. As a teenager, Lucia became a Christian and dedicated her virginity to God and planned to give her dowry to the poor. When her mother fell ill, she was afraid for her daughter’s future and so arranged a marriage between her and a wealthy pagan.

Lucia prayed to Saint Agatha who appeared to her in a vision. She said that her mother would recover and that she herself would become as venerated in Syracuse as Agatha was in her home town of Catania.

Lucia’s mother recovered and allowed Lucia to start giving her dowry away. When her betrothed heard of this, he grew angry and denounced Lucia as a Christian to the local authorities. To cut a long story short, she was eventually put to death and declared a saint and martyr by the early church.

Votive candles in the shape of Santa Lucia’s eyes.

A later version of the story says that she had her eyes put out before death and for this reason she has become the patron saint of the blind and people with vision problems as well as eye doctors and opticians. She is sometimes represented in art carrying her eyes on a plate. Also, votive candles in the shape of her eyes are often burned to accompany prayers for help with vision problems.

At the top of this page you can see a painting of Santa Lucia receiving communion just before her martyrdom. This was painted by Giambattista Tiepolo and is in the church of Santi Apostoli.

December 13, 2017August 13, 2018 1 comment