Venetian-ness | Venice: I am not making this up

I brake for justice

April 23, 2021 4 Comments

Another great lion of San Marco, this time painted by Donato Bragadin, also known as Donato Veneziano, in 1459.

This lion is holding a book, as usual, but the message is not the traditional “Pax tibi Marce Evangelista Meus,” etc. It reads: “Legibus quibus immoderata hominum frenatur cupiditas quenpiam parere cogatis.” “Compel everyone to obey the laws by which one restrains the immoderate greed of men.”

What great ideas! Make everybody obey the laws! And put the brakes on greed! Looking at the lion’s expression, however, one intuits that he knows this is a battle that he’s not only losing, but lost. I’ve made an effort to discover what was significant about the year 1459 to inspire this painting, but haven’t found anything out of the ordinary, which is a disheartening realization: The “ordinary” is exactly the situation that the statement was referring to and it has been valid every year since the Cambrian Explosion. To review: Need for brakes, need for laws that will apply brakes, need to force people to obey the laws. Find me one person (or lion) who would disagree with that.

The Sala dell’Avogaria is fairly small, especially compared to the magnitude of the tasks the three avogadori had to deal with. The room is decorated not only with pithy sayings, but with portraits of the trio of avogadori, decked in Venetian scarlet and ready to mete out justice and pump the brakes. (Pere Garcia, on Wikipedia)

The painting was originally placed in the Sala dell’Avogaria in the Palazzo Ducale. The Avogaria de Comùn was an ancient magistrature composed of three members elected from the Great Council who were responsible for the maintenance of constitutional justice. Hence the paintings in the room were intended to reinforce the principles of good government.

So our rainbow-winged lion above is flanked by two Doctors of the Church: St. Jerome on the left of the image, and St. Augustine on the right. St. Jerome holds a white banner that says “nihili quempiam irati statuatis,” or “Do not sentence anyone for anything when you’re angry.” St. Augustine, complete with bishop’s mitre and crozier, displays this thought: “hominum uero plectentes errata illa non tam magnitudine peccati quam uestra clementia et mansuetudine metiamini,” or “In reality, in punishing the errors of men (you must) measure not so much the size of their sins as of your clemency and goodness.”

There was a marble plaque in the Sala dell’ Avogaria incised with the following reminders: “‘First of all, investigate always with diligence, sentence with justice and charity, and do not condemn anyone without having first held a fair and truthful judgment, do not judge anything on the basis of arbitrary suspicions; instead, first test and only afterward utter a sentence inspired by charity; THAT WHICH YOU WOULDN’T WANT DONE TO YOU, REFUSE TO DO TO OTHERS.’

Essentially the same simple dicta that have been expressed over the centuries and that are often inscribed in courtrooms and City Halls and anywhere else that people and the law are destined to meet.

But the lion says it best: Hit the brakes already.

“*Venezia in veste di Giustizia*” — Venice attired as Justice, a role she often played in decoration as well as life. The sword and the scales held in her hand are fine on their own, but she is often buttressed by lions. To keep order in the court? (by Jacobello del Fiore).

Venetian-ness

The fog and I

February 25, 2021 13 Comments

Most times you don’t see the fog that is enclosing you — you discern it according to how thickly it covers relatively nearby objects. As in this case I examined the end of our next-door street, which always ends in a canal but on this morning ended also in fog.

We get fog intermittently at various moments throughout the year, and my only objection to it isn’t what it does to my hair (I’ve abandoned my dreams there) but what it does to the vaporettos.

They still run, but the smaller motoscafos that circle Venice undergo an abrupt change of plan, which I totally do not understand. The boats have radar; the boats are almost always in sight of land, or channel markers, or whatever. It may be the crushing influence of the insurers that induces the ACTV to send the motoscafos up the Grand Canal instead of around the city, and iin that case making only a few strategic stops to which you must adapt (Accademia, Rialto, train station, Piazzale Roma).

Or sometimes they simply suspend operations on most of the round-the-city lines, with no notice whatever, meaning you have to reconfigure everything in order to make use of the one truly and eternally reliable transport, the trusty old #1 local.

Sometimes it comes in the night, so when you wake up it’s already there. Other times it drifts up to greet you, in an ominous kind of way.

At that point, you have to plot a new overland route to your destination, and that’s where the real inconvenience comes in. As it happens, not long ago I was accompanying an elderly neighbor to the hospital for an appointment. The boat we usually take requires a mere four stops, and the fourth is right in front of the hospital. But with the fog, the music changes, as they say here when describing an unexpected and disagreeable shift in plans. So we had to A) walk further than our usual stop in order to reach a stop that still was functioning; B) disembark at San Marco; and C) walk inland.

My friend is a trouper, though. By the time a Venetian reaches 82 years old she/he may well have stronger legs than Simone Biles. I had proposed riding to the Rialto stop and walking inland from there. She counter-proposed that we get off at San Zaccaria and walk cross-lots from there. I secretly gave her ten extra points and a gold star. And a bluebird.

Happily for us, the fog lifted while we were indoors, so we took the usual four-stop vehicle and were home in a jiffy (or 15 minutes in ACTV years).

Unhappily for us, this scenario was repeated this week — two days in succession — and while I may enjoy bragging about it at the end of those days , I do not appreciate being compelled to show how strong and hardy I am. Frankly, I’ll never beat the little old lady to win the Tough as Old Boots trophy.

And a gracious good morning to you, whoever you are.

Rowing clubs hold races all year, and winter is an excellent period for the rowers (if not the spectators) because there is almost no traffic. Here two men are rowing their gondolino toward the nearby starting line out in the lagoon.

I have seen gondolas in the fog even carrying passengers, who must have been in complete now-or-never mode. As for the gondolier, at first I wondered how he could manage to follow his route with almost no visibility, then realized that he does the same circuit ad infinitum — for all I know, he just gives the boat its head and lets it go on its own.

There doesn’t seem to be any rule forbidding racing against boats you can barely see. But in the race on December 4 a few years ago in honor of St. Barbara, caorlinas carrying five dauntless men and one student from the Morosini Naval School fought their way across the Bacino of San Marco. In cases like these, the judges in the following motorboat have to deal not only with navigating “blind,” but can barely make out the color of each boat. The difference between red and orange is hard to differentiate even in broad daylight — here you might be forced to go by the word of the rowers. A situation you obviously would like to avoid.

“Amerigo Vespucci,” the Italian navy’s sail training”tall ship,” arrives on special occasions, and always on those when the President of Italy is here. It has no need of fog to look amazing, but the fog doesn’t hurt, either.

My heart goes out to her, because I would swear she had no idea when she hung out her down comforter that she was going to awake to discover that it’s become soggier than it was when it came out of the last spin cycle. If she’s going to have to rely on the sun to get it dry, it will finally be ready sometime in August.

Our ordinary canal is bordered by a rusty railing that the fog transforms into something magical. I was astonished to see how many of these there were — or are. The next day it was as if they had disappeared.

Venetian-ness

How we are (part 2)

February 16, 2021 15 Comments

I’ve been trying for a month to find some way to write a deep and detailed update on life here these days, but I give up. What follows is the best I can do.

After a year of the virus, and its varying grip on Italy’s 20 regions and 80-some provinces, all I can say is that we are not yet out of the proverbial woods, even though vaccinations have begun. There is an “English variant” now on the scene that has upset everybody’s predictions on progress. Even without this interloper, the danger of assembramenti (gatherings of people) remains paramount, though large numbers of people I see walking around seem not to be concerned. Exhibit A: Mask worn beneath the nose. Exhibit B: Mask around neck. Any time that the restrictions on gatherings are moderately lifted, the campos and fondamente clog up again with bright sparks, glasses in hand, masks lowered or even removed. And so the restrictions clamp down again. It’s like Groundhog Day.

On Saturday, Feb. 13, the Veneto returned to the “Yellow” status and Sunday’s headlines were absolutely no surprise: “Carneval movida, maxi-risk of contagion.” (“Movida” is the term for mass group socializing, usually on Saturday night.) “Saturday Yellow, immediately the movida, tens of calls to the vigili,” or local policemen. Whoever answered the phone repeatededly replied that “We don’t have enough officers on duty to send to make everybody wear their masks and stand one meter apart, even with the threat of a fine.” One wonders why there weren’t enough on duty for the easiest situation to predict since Christmas Morning, but one wonders in vain.

On Feb. 11, this was the utterly predictable report: “Arrival of the Veneti in Venice: Mass gatherings and masks lowered.” (Note: “Arrival” isn’t the right word but I can’t find a better one. To give some idea of the impact implied, calata is the word used for dropping anchor.) Therefore, the rule is that from 15:00 (3:00 PM), you are forbidden to drink standing around. If you’re going to drink, you have to be sitting at a table. That’s until 18:00 (6:00 PM), that is, because that’s when the bars close. Too many people milling around with glasses in their hands and masks completely pulled down. Not sure if table rule will be only on weekends, or every day.

The year has been entirely color-coded, as Italy has struggled to maintain control of the contagion (and its social, economic, and medical consequences) by applying restrictions according to their level of contagion: Yellow is the least dangerous, Orange is the middle ground, Red is obviously the most dangerous (and at least one doomed region was labeled Dark Red for a while — I think that may have meant something like bomb-shelter-type quarantine).

Handy reference for what we can do, and how, and where.

But the restrictions kept changing, reacting to the bettering or worsening of the epidemic’s numbers. We have spun through variations of life involving the hours that shops/bars/restaurants could be open (restaurants closing at 6:00 PM was obviously problematic, though takeout was the stopgap solution), to the number of persons permitted to enter a shop (from one to as many as six), to whether you would even be allowed to enter at all. Oh — and sitting at tables inside was obviously risky, and sitting at tables outside not much less risky, so as recently as last week you bought your coffee at the cafe’ doorway and stood there drinking it al fresco. Except you weren’t supposed to be standing — assembramenti! — so you had to keep moving to avoid the potentially contagious assembramenti (gatherings of people), so you wandered away with your little paper cup, sipping the rapidly cooling teaspoons of espresso, looking for a trash bin. I gave up coffee abroad because the always-dependable cafe bathrooms were no longer available.

Permission to travel between towns, provinces, and Regions continued to mutate. Schools open, schools closed. Public transport restricts the number of passengers permitted during “rush” hour (“Six people can board,” I heard the marinaio call out as we left the vaporetto), but at other times there have been vaporettos that were completely empty. Except for us, I mean. Not made up.

Sunday, late morning, between the Giardini and Sant’ Elena. Feast your eyes, but just keep in mind (if you want to) that all these seats represent minus-signs on the ACTV budget. Just another link in the losing-money chain.

Some museums are beginning to reopen, though obviously with fewer visitors because cross-border travel is still generally forbidden. Venetians (or Italians) who’d like to see some of their artistic patrimony without scrimmaging through masses of tourists, this is your big chance. Most of the museums are open only Monday through Friday; the Guggenheim and Palazzo Grassi only on Thursday and Friday.

Today is Mardi Gras, but this year’s Carnival has been almost entirely online — that is, whatever remnants of the Old Celebrations they managed to retain. We did see some tourists (mainly from the Veneto) over the past few days, on and off, some of them in costume. But I can confirm that seeing a few random dressed-up people does not a Carnival make, especially when they are walking along streets in the late afternoon, where the few businesses that were open are beginning to close. Curfew for bars and restaurants is 1800 (6:00 PM) and slightly later for other enterprises. Supermarkets are open till as late as 8:30 PM.

The last weekend of Carnival did have its brighter moments, especially Sunday when the sun and the tourists combined to bring a whiff of normalcy to the city.

Sunday morning we rowed to the Rialto, an idea that clearly had occurred to many others, including a heartening number of gondoliers. It’s been months since a gondola with passengers has been seen. There was also a wonderful assortment of regular Venetians, either in their rowing-club boats or out rowing their own, like us. And it’s always a treat to see a kid with an oar, as in the boat furthest to the right.

And this one, too, with two people — presumably father and son — out in their little *s’ciopon*. Gosh: There were two kids rowing around? Where will it end?

Friends from Arzana’, the association dedicated to the recovery of old Venetian boats, rowing a *batela buranela*. We caught up with them down by San Marco. I apologize for the quality of these images — cell phone cameras and sunshine don’t work together very well.

I don’t know them, but they are clearly on a private boat. If there is one positive side to all these troubles, it’s that the pandemic has created space where people can come out and row around in the Grand Canal again. No longer is it surging and roiling with taxis, which over the years increased to a number that effectively took over the entire canal (I’m referring to weekend activity; obviously there continue to be barges during the week). Everyone who was gradually elbowed out by all the waterborne tourist traffic has been able to return home, in a way. It makes you feel like you belong here again.

We went out for a late-afternoon walk today; there was very modest activity in via Garibaldi. Carnival barely touched the city as it drifted past, unable to land. As always, it was the children who made it happy.

The mother’s matching mask is a nice touch.

Time to go home. Just follow the clouds.

Venetian-ness, Water

O Christmas Screen, O Christmas Screen…

December 6, 2020 22 Comments

Seen from afar, it’s the Little Christmas Tree that Could. The bright glow in the glum is admittedly rather pleasant.

You might wonder how a Christmas tree could possibly make people mad (though considering the year almost past, you might not). Whatever your Yuletide habits, a lot of Venetians would have welcomed a honking big Norway spruce to its traditional place in the Piazzetta, some looming aromatic conifer loaded with scintillating lights, sumptuous ribbons, glittering glass baubles, etc. It would have been greeted with open arms, many smartphones, and shining faces.

But because we haven’t had enough computer screens in our lives this year, now we have the Christmas Screen.

It’s art, naturally, art that, from afar, sort of resembles a tree, though this structure isn’t even alive. But it does have the consolation of being, as I mentioned, art, groaning beneath loads of symbolism and verbiage.

Installed in the usual position last Thursday, this structure is the creation of artist Fabrizio Plessi, sponsored by the Assicurazioni Generali. No way of my knowing who had the final, or even the first, word in the discussions that led to this creation. It can’t be to attract tourists, because at this point in the evolution of the pandemic it would be easier to attract a Great Auk than a tourist.

It’s tree-ness, on closer examination, is looking a bit eccentric. Also, it’s moving. Literally.

The public has not been amused by a novelty that appears to be more like a refugee from the Biennale than a festive fixture.

The artist explains: “It’s a message of hope.”

The public responds: “A heap of scrap metal.” “Hanging ingots.”

Anything wrong with this picture? In addition to everything else that’s wrong about this tree, Lino notes that it’s between the two infamous columns of “Marco” and “Todaro,” historically the place for public executions. I realize it’s not precisely between the columns, but to him that’s where it is. Not good.

“This year we need a message of light,” Sig. Plessi told La Nuova Venezia. “The 80 modules represent the flow of that many different cultures.” Furthermore, it would seem that the installation symbolically unites earth, water and sky.

“I understand whoever would have preferred a traditional tree,” Plessi continues, “but this is a message of hope. The use of digital in this context becomes spiritual emotion and expresses itself in the only possible language today, permitting us to reach others even if they are physically distant.”

Not sure about you, but while this is the sort of hot air that keeps the Biennale aloft for months on end, it doesn’t do anything for the spirit of Christmas. My own view is that the more you explain something, the less that something actually communicates. If you have to tell people what to think or feel about your creation, you’ve acknowledged that the creation is mute.

If there’s one city that isn’t suffering for lack of works of art, it would be Venice. But there’s always room for one more.

There is more. “This tree is well planted in tradition, but it is also a tree that wants to talk to the world,” says Simone Venturini, the city councilor for Tourism. “Personally I find it marvelous because it shows that Venice knows how to be, together, the city of great history and of the future. It shows that you can make contemporary art without waiting for the Biennale.” Of course you can, as long as you have a sponsor. I don’t want to put a pricetag on Christmas, but this installation, along with 50 kilometers of strings of lights in the Piazza San Marco and on the mainland, not to mention the lights shining on the Rialto bridge, cost a total of some 800,000 euros. So he could also have said that you don’t need to wait for the Biennale in order to spend money. I knew that.

Many years ago a homeless man at the entrance to the subway in New York stopped me with this request: “Hey lady, could you spare some change for an old wino?” How could I say no? His candor was irresistible.

If Mr. Plessi had said, “I like to make art using digital stuff. I don’t know why, I just like it. Maybe because it’s shiny. So here’s sort of a tree made of digital stuff. Kind of made me think of Christmas. Hope yours is happy, in spite of everything,” I’d have started a Fabrizio Plessi fan club.

And yet, at some magical moment in the last four days, some indomitable soul(s) did what they could to put things right. “Thanks, we brought our own….”

Despite the condensation on the plastic, the cardboard sign is clear. The “opera d’arte” (work of art), is straight ahead. Christmas, on the other hand, is down and to the left.

This is what some people (not tourists, I’m thinking) consider Christmas.! I’m just sorry there aren’t any fish to stick in the branches, like the baby owl in New York and the baby koala in Australia.. In any case, Christmas has been saved. This time.

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