This is Giovanni Caboto as painted by Giustino Menescardi in 1762. Accuracy of detail limited by the fact that Caboto departed on his third and final voyage in 1498 and was never seen again.
Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) was not only a rockstar navigator/explorer, he was also a Venetian citizen and lived in what I consider to be something of a rockstar house: Palazzo Caboto. You’ve seen it at the top of via Garibaldi, dividing that street from the Riva Sette Martiri. And I wouldn’t be writing anything about him or the riva if I hadn’t had the chance to go inside it not long ago, thanks to an exhibit that was part of the Biennale.
As with so many Venetian houses, the builders managed superbly with the space they had available.
Some sources maintain that his family was originally from Gaeta, near Naples; another source says that “John Cabot’s son, Sebastian, said his father originally came from Genoa. Cabot was made a citizen of the Republic of Venice in 1476; as citizenship required a minimum of fifteen years’ residency in the city, he must have lived in Venice from at least 1461.”
To somebody accustomed to spending years on a ship, this could have seemed attractively normal. Except that it wasn’t moving, of course.The lions rule the waves on this bijou balcony. I’m not sure which is more ripply, the acanthus leaves or the feline tresses. Only thing missing are a few barnacles.The waves and fronds are delightful. Full speed ahead.On the landward wall are these imposing plaques.It says: “Giovanni Caboto emulated Columbus discovered Newfoundland and the northern continent of the New World. Sebastiano Caboto, cosmographer, navigator, was the first to know Paraguay pointed to the passageway to the glacial sea. To honor the great citizens who lived in this district the Comune placed this 1881.”
So much for the basic background on the indomitable Caboto.
For the first two months or so of the Biennale this year the house was hosting an exhibition by Korean artist Shin Sung Hy. My interest in contemporary art is skittish, but it was my first chance to see the house itself. So I invited myself into what was designated Gallery Hyundai.
The ground-floor entrance is all about wood, as is much of what follows — another friendly link with his trusty ship Mathew. The Biennale refers to this dwelling as Palazzo Caboto, but when you see the size of the rooms, you may want to rethink what you imagine when you hear “palazzo.”Staircases rule. The upper two floors are the exhibition spaces — I can’t say what, if anything, is to be found anywhere else in the building.Looking down the stairwell the situation is slightly less dramatic.
But I like the angles better.
Feeling a little seasick yet?
Let’s have a look at the rooms. As you would expect, they are cut into small eccentric shapes.
Reaching the first upper floor, the room in the bow of the ship — I mean house — is what I really was curious to see. Yes, I’d like to live there.Turning around, you see this. The light entering the room on the right comes from a door opening onto a small balcony.The balcony. The plaque commemorating the death of the “seven martyrs” is attached to the wall just next to the balustrade, but that’s a story for another time.Turning around, you see a room and the stairs. Yes indeed, this room is small.Leave the little balcony, turn right through the small room shown above and proceed into the adjoining room (also small) where I’m standing. Look ahead toward the “bow” of the house. I’d like to know how people here communicated their whereabouts. “I’m in the rhomboid room!”Let’s go up the stairs to the next floor. The same choice of rooms, not surprisingly; to the right is the “bow” again, pointed toward San Marco. No more parquet floor, though; it’s strictly terra cotta.And the better balcony view, pointed toward San Marco.Facing the lagoon, on this floor we see the revised remains of an impressive fireplace with a very welcome table/bench/bed protruding from it.
I could stop here, but as we consider how many renovations and alterations the house has undoubtedly experienced since Sig. Caboto last quaffed here whatever his preferred quaff was, I think he’d be most amazed by what has happened outside his two or more streetward doors in the intervening 500 years or so. Actually, I mean the last 150 years.
First of all, the vaunted via Garibaldi stretching along the flagpole side of the house used to be a canal, so he’d be missing that. It was filled in in 1807, part of the mastodontic changes the French were wreaking on the neighborhood. First it bore the name Strada Nuova dei Giardini, then was re-named via Eugenia in honor of Napoleon’s stepson, Eugene de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy. In 1866, when Giuseppe Garibaldi’s troops entered Venice (and Venice had voted to join the newly formed nation of Italy), the name changed again. The canal continues to flow beneath the pavement, however.
On the lagoon side of Cabot’s house, though, yet bigger changes were on the way. Because until the 1930’s, water was still lapping at its wall.
In the 1870s the waterfront looked like this. We can see via Garibaldi at the extreme left, but otherwise this stretch of Castello was still the realm of boatyards and squeri, as it had been at least since Jacopo dei’ Barbari mapped it in 1500.Permit me to refresh your memory on this monumental work and its insane detail of the Castello waterfront.Vaporetto service began in 1881 (notice the vaporetto steaming toward the Lido), and where better to put the dock than at the edge of via Garibaldi? (As we see, it was the only “where” there.) Or, to put it another way, on Caboto’s front doorstep. I think this image is later than 1881, though, because the ornamental stone balconies are in place here, while in the next image the windows are protected by humbler wrought iron. Too many things to keep track of.Anyway, the important point is that Caboto’s house, as seen from the steps leading to the vaporetto dock, is still keeping the lagoon at bay.An undated photograph(possibly early 1900’s) shows the boat procession celebrating the Feast of the Ascension, a remembrance of the annual ceremony of the “Wedding of the Sea,” in which the doge symbolically renewed Venice’s vows as the faithful spouse of the Adriatic, with all the rights and privileges a spouse was entitled to. Ignore the procession for a moment, though, and regard the agglomeration of boatyards still hard at work at the water’s edge. Venice was a real working-boat city until progress caught up.
But as thought Napoleon, so did Benito Mussolini. I don’t refer to politics, but to reshaping Venice. There is undoubtedly massive history behind these decisions, but in my own tiny mind I summarize the Duce’s thought as “Piffle! Away with the grotty shipyards, we want a promenade. Actually, what we want is a long stretch of pavement ideal for mooring ships. Preferably battleships, and many of them. It can also be a promenade, or whatever we want to call it, in its spare time.” And so it was.
The birth of the Riva Sette Martiri. In point of fact, it was christened the Riva dell’Impero (the riva of the empire) because Mussolini. The name was changed after the tragic execution of the seven martyrs in 1944, but older people still sometimes use the old name (in the same way that they refer to the bridge to the mainland as “Ponte del Littorio”).When he said “Get it done,” it got done. I’m fascinated by the coexistence of the hydraulic crane and the boat still powered by sail moored alongside. In the Thirties boats with motors were still in the extreme minority.Plaase admire the peata alongside, the biggest working boat in the Venetian working-boat fleet, propelled by oars. In the Thirties. Much of the entire city was built with materials brought on boats like this one. When Lino was a lad there were still peatas everywhere, working away. On a less sublime note, we can see that the grotty shipyards are gone, with their men and their skills and traditions. Progress pushes onward.The riva did serve as a mooring place for warships, but the aforementioned progress has since found other needs and uses for this gigantic walkway. Mussolini may not have given much thought to the pressing needs of ever-increasing numbers of tourists — to stroll, run, walk their dogs, moor their colossal yachts… Entertainment gets first dibs on this space now.Warships still occasionally stop by, often when an important ceremony is imminent. Here the destroyer “Luigi Durand de la Penne” is looking good.Or there are mega-yachts whose billionaire owners really like that battleship vibe. This belonged — perhaps it still does — to a Russian oligarch back in the palmy days. Note that those are not fangs or jaws on the stern, but he’d be so glad to know that you thought so.Another mega-yacht dreaming of combat.One of the best things about the riva is that it’s perfect — for a fabulous daily fee — for hosting colossal yachts. I’m not sure what Mussolini would have thought, much less what Caboto’s reaction might have been. I’m tempted to think Caboto would have said “I WANT ONE.”The traditional figurehead has been re-tooled as a hood ornament. The Maltese falcon? A carrier pigeon on steroids?Build a riva and just stand back for all those good times waiting to roll.But the fun isn’t limited to floating entertainment. For a few months each winter the traveling amusement park plants itself on this conveniently wide open space.
Not to forget the Venice Marathon, the last Sunday in October. The finish line is just beyond Caboto’s house. He had no idea that the ordinary old lagoon outside his window was going to pushed aside to make room for an entertainment multiplex.
I didn’t intend to reduce the invincible Giovanni Caboto to a mere bystander at a waterfront playground, yet that’s what happened. My apologies to his descendants, wherever they are. One could have made a good case to name the riva after him, but that didn’t happen. We’re going to pretend we did right by him via the two plaques and — bonus! — Calle Caboto, a small cross-street mortised into the maze between his wonderful house.
You get so accustomed to the buildings here being in various stages of decrepitude that you become rather lax in looking at them. You see, but you do not observe. The particular example that comes to mind concerns a seemingly amorphous glob of concrete or stone or something hard above the door of the building just across the street from us. I say “seemingly amorphous,” because Lino suddenly recognized its morph the other day.
“Oh look,” he said. “That was a house where a gerarch lived.” Unlike the usual formula, this was not a reference to someone from his past. But it was certainly from the past. Specifically, from the year beginning October 29, 1926 and ending October 28, 1927, otherwise known as “Anno V,” or Year 5, of the Fascist era.
One of many representations of the fasces and axe. The birch rods bound together represent strength in unity (easy to break separately, impossible to break when together), and the axe represents the power of capital punishment which the Roman magistrate, preceded by a “lictor” bearing the fasces, held over the Roman citizens. The fasces and lictors date from the first kings of Rome (beginning in 753 BC) and may have been adopted from an Etruscan custom. In this and many other aspects the Fascist Party showed its desire to recover the power and glory of ancient Rome.
The clump of material, now that I look closer, retains the outlines of the fasces with the axe-blade which was the primary symbol of the National Fascist Party.
As for the gerarchs, there were 12 ranks ranging from the Secretary of the party to a humble “capo nucleo,” or head of a unit. I haven’t pursued the subject any further than this, though I’m guessing that it was not the Secretary of the party who lived out here on the fringe of civilization.
Over time, I’ve noticed (with Lino’s help, usually) a few other traces of the period between 1921 and 1943. Pictures follow with what bits of elucidation I can provide.
The fasces and axe as carved on the tomb of Marcus Calpurnius Rufus in Ephesus. He was the son of an important imperial priest during the reign of the emperor Tiberius and a high-ranking senator under the emperor Claudius.
The gymnasium of a former school in Dorsoduro; the central door is surmounted by an eagle that seems to consider itself not just any ordinary eagle. The eagle was one of the most potent symbols of Rome, hence its importance to Mussolini.Someone saw fit to remove the fasces which were once clutched in its talons. Lino regrets that. Making no political statements, he says simply that “That’s part of our history too.”It would have looked something like this.The covered walkways of the “Fabbriche Vecchie” and “Fabbriche Nuove” at Rialto bordering Campo San Giacomo de Rialto (the open space facing the Grand Canal) is a trove of stenciled and fading Fascist graffiti. One of the more legible ones reads “W Roma Intangibile” (Evviva, or long live, intangible Rome). This phrase was first used by the King of Italy, Umberto I, on Sept. 20, 1886 (more about this after the photographs). The important thing to grasp here are the repeated references to Rome, the Fascist Party’s lodestone, pole star, and general fixation. Benito Mussolini saw himself as the founder of a “New Rome.”I can make out the “W Roma” but am only guessing at “Intangibile” beneath it.At the top I can make out the by-now usual “Roma Intangibile,” and beneath the white oval there is “A Roma ci siamo e ci resteremo” (We are in Rome and there we will remain).Clinging desperately to the plaster is the unconquerable “W Roma Intangibile.”I have stared my eyes out on this one and cannot deny or explain that it says “W Nicolo Contarini.” (Long live Nicolo Contarini.)Nicolo Contarini was the doge of Venice during the hideous plague of 1630. But I don’t think that has anything to do with this graffito. According to Wikipedia (translated by me), he was “universally considered a man who was upright and just…distinguished for his capacity to manage the public administration with extreme ability and honesty. During the clashes under his predecessor, even though disapproving the doge (Corner), he never showed himself to be an extremist, and this made him win the affection even of his adversaries.” If for some reason I’ve read this fading inscription incorrectly, I’m still glad to have had an excuse to discover a man who deserves to be remembered.
Here is what I have managed to learn about “Roma intangibile.” The expression seems to have resulted from a mashup of events and remarks. We begin with the “Capture of Rome” (“Breccia di Porta Pia“), on September 20, 1870. It was the final event of the Risorgimento; the Papal States were defeated, and the way was open to the unification of Italy under its first king, Vittorio Emmanuele II.
In 1875, Umberto I (King of Italy from 1878-1900) referred to Rome as the “unbreakable seal of Italian unity.” In 1886, he used the term “Rome, an intangible conquest.” (This deserves much explanation and exegesis, which is beyond me. Just stay with me here.) It is at that point that the principle of “Intangible Rome” entered history.
The phrase caught on; in fact, it became so popular that in 1895 a certain Carlo Bartezaghi, an enterprising industrialist from Milan, created a bronze medal showing the she-wolf (symbol of Rome) and the motto “Roma Intangibile.” He led people to believe that it was an ancient object and managed to fool a number of numismatic experts for a while, but that’s beside our point. The term became part of the popular lexicon.
In 1900, Vittorio Emmanuele III, in his first proclamation to the Italian people, recalled “…the unity of the Fatherland that is epitomized in the name of Roma intangibile, symbol of greatness and pledge of integrity for Italy.”
Fading monuments have such a melancholy aspect, not so much because they’re fading but because they used to matter, sometimes a lot, and now they’re fading.
I’m fresh out of pictures of Rome, tangible or otherwise, so I’ll have to stay in intangible Venice.
