A Golden Book of Venice. Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
for the Madonna's oil, I ask you? Ebbene non! There are the fines—and these, it must be confessed, might be fewer, for the saints are tired of keeping us out of mischief. And little there is for one's own madonna, if one would make gifts!"
"This, then, for thine own madonna," said the artist pleasantly, tossing him a considerable coin. "And may she make thee wiser; for, by thine inventory, which it doth not harm thee to rehearse, thou hast a good memory."
"Eccellenza, there is more, if you be not weary. There is the government tax; it takes long to gather—ask the gastaldo! There are the soldiers for the navy; how many good men does that leave for the traghetto service? And a license is not little to buy for a poor barcariol who would be his own man; one pays three hundred lire—not less. Does it drop into one's hand with the first fare? One must belong to the Guilds—it is less robbery!"
"But for your gastaldo, your great man, for him it is much honor—"
"Eccellenza, believe it not. If the taxes are not there for the provveditori, it is the gastaldo who pays. When the money is little it is the gastaldo who pays much. And the toso—all his faults blamed on the traghetti! Ah, signore, for the gondolier it is a life—Santa Maria!" He threw up his hands with a feint of being at a loss to convey its hardships.
"Come non c'è altro!" said the Veronese, laughing; "there is none like it."
"Ebbene—va bene!" the gondolier confessed, joining heartily in the merriment, his grievance, which was nevertheless a real one, infinitely lessened by confession.
Suddenly the old man rose and bowed his head, and both gondoliers crossed themselves. The Veronese also bared his head and made the sign of reverence, for they were passing the island of San Michele, toward which a mournful procession of boats, each with its torch and its banner of black, was slowly gliding, while back over the water echoed the dirge from those sobbing cellos. Here, where only the dead were sleeping, the sky was as blue and the sea as calm as if sorrow had never been born in the world.
Before them Murano, low-lying, scattered, was close at hand, the smoke of its daily activities tremulous over it, dimming the beauty of sky and sea.
"His Excellency knows Murano? The Duomo, with its mosaics? Wonderful! there are none like them; and it is old—'ma antica'! And the stabilimenti?—it is glory enough for one island! Ah, the padrone wishes to visit the stabilimento Magagnati?"
Paolo Cagliari had not known what he would do until the old man's suggestion seemed to make his vision less vaguely inaccessible, and before they reached the landing he had learned, by a judicious indifference which sharpened his companion's loquacity, that Messer Girolamo lived there alone with his daughter, who went about always with a bambino in her arms—the child of a dead sister.
There could be no doubt; yet, to keep the old man talking, he put the question, "She is very beautiful, the donzella?"
"Eccellenza"—with a pause and deprecatory movement of the shoulders—"cosi—so-so—a little pale—like a saint—devote. For the poor? Good, gentile, the donzel of Messer Girolamo. Bella, with rosy colors? Non!"
With the Venetians there could be no sharp distinction between the decorative and the fine arts, as the fine arts were employed by them without limit in their sumptuous decorations; and that which elsewhere would have been merely decorative they raised, by exquisite quality and finish, to a point which deserved to be termed art, without qualifications.
The Veronese, who had been knighted by the Doge, could scarcely go unrecognized to any art establishment in any quarter of Venice, and with unconcealed pleasure Girolamo bowed low before this master who had come to do him honor; displaying all that the initiated would hold most precious among his treasures—that design, faded and dim, almost unrecognizable, of those early mosaics of the Master Pietro—he held nothing back. It was a day of honor for his house, and the two were alone in his cabinet.
The Veronese had a gift of sympathy; his heart opened to those who loved art and had conquered difficulties in her service, and the talk flowed freely. "I believe," he said, as together they laid away the parchment, "that in our modern mosaics we should keep to the massive lines of these earlier models—greater dignity and simplicity in outline and coloring. It is a mistake to attempt to confound this art with painting."
"It is good, then, for our art, Messer Cavalière, that at San Donato, our mother church, we workmen of Murano have our Lady in that old Byzantine type; there is none earlier—nor in all Venice more perfect of its time—and the setting is of marvelous richness and delicacy."
"It is most interesting," said the Veronese. "Sometimes a question has come to me, if an artist cannot do the all, is he most the artist who stops below his limitation or beyond it? A question of the earlier hint, or the later realization."
"Between the mosaic and the painting, perhaps?" Girolamo questioned, greatly interested.
"Nay, not between the arts, but of that which is possible to each. It is not a Venetian question. Here all is warmth, color, beauty, joy; here art is the expression of redundancy—it hath lost its symbolism."
"I know only Venice—the Greek and the Venetian types. But I have heard that the Michelangelo was in himself a type?"
"He was a prophet," the Veronese answered reverently, "like the great
Florentine—a seer of visions; but at Rome only one understands why he
was born. He was a maker, creating mighty meanings under formlessness.
His great shapes seem each a mystery, wrestling with a message."
"I had thought there was none who equaled him in form—that he was even as a sculptor in his painting."
"And it was even so. When I spake of 'formlessness' it was not the less, but the more; as if, before the visions had taken mortal shape, he, being greater than men, saw them as spirits."
"Never before have I talked with one who knew this master," said
Girolamo, "and it is a feast."
"Nay, I knew him not, for it was not easy to get speech with him, nor a favor a young man might crave. But once I saw him at his work in San Pietro, where he wrought most furiously and would take no payment—'for the good of his soul,' he said, that he might end his life with a pious work. The night was coming on, and already his candle was fastened to his hat, that he might lose no time. They had brought him a little bread and wine for his evening meal, for often he went not home when the mood of work possessed him; and beside him was a writing of the man Savonarola—this and the Holy Evangel and the 'Inferno' fashioned his thoughts. He lived not long after that, for we were still in Rome when they made for him that great funeral in Santa Croce of Florence, the rumor of which is dear to artist hearts. He was great and lonely, and he knew no joy; there hath been none like him."
"And the Tintoretto, at Santa Maria dell' Orto?"
"He, too, is a furioso, wonderful in form—and the Michelangelo had not the coloring of our Jacopo. But the terror of the Tintoretto is very terrible and very human. The Michelangelo fills a great gloom with phantasms—they question—and one cannot escape."
"It hath been a morning of delights," Girolamo said with grave courtesy when the talk had come to an end. "I thank the master for this honor."
"Nay," answered the knightly Veronese; "it is I who have received. And more, yet more would I ask. I know not if in this chamber of treasures I may leave the trifle which I came to bring for the bambino?" he added with hesitation, as he placed upon the table his little inlaid box of baubles and his bunch of spicy flowers. "Yet it was a promise."
And while Girolamo listened in astonishment he told abruptly the story of his meeting with Marina and the little one, unconsciously weaving his thoughts into such a picture as he talked, that Girolamo recognized the inspiration and was already won to plead his cause.
"This," continued the artist, unfolding a letter, "is the order which hath been sent me by Fra Paolo Sarpi,