Lino strung the two flags across our little street. Only we would have been likely to walk that way, so we just went ahead and bedecked the day. It’s important to recognize that April 25 is also a national holiday: National Liberation Day, commemorating the end of World War 2, so bring on the banners.
Yesterday, April 25, was the feast day of San Marco, who is, as all the world knows, the city’s patron saint. Always the occasion for grand festivizing — ceremony in the Piazza, laurel wreaths on the main monuments, high mass in the basilica, and the iridescent tradition of the “bocolo,” (BOH-ko-lo) or long-stemmed red rose, that Venetian men give to the dearest ladies in their life.
A friend with her bocolo a few years ago.This year, not even the stray petal was to be seen. Except, I suppose, near the few people who had somehow managed to reserve their rose.
Yesterday, we were bocolo-deprived. Plant matter was represented mainly by the laurel wreaths, installed a few days early. As for the bocolo, there were and there weren’t. Of course we knew that the usual freelance vendors staking out via Garibaldi and environs would be nowhere to be seen, that was to be expected. But don’t be downhearted: The Gazzettino published a little article on Friday saying that a few florists were not only going to be selling roses, they’d deliver them to your doorstep. Wonderful! But the article did not publish any names or phone numbers of these florists. Saturday — the day itself — an article appeared repeating the plan, with the names and numbers of the participating florists. Lino immediately called to order one for me (and to discover the heretofore unknown cost, which I estimated would be 3 euros for the rose and 40 euros for the delivery), only to hear “Oh no, you had to book them.”
So this little misadventure will be filed under “You had one job!”, for the florists as well as for the Gazzettino.
This year, San Marco’s day was on Saturday. Shops now are usually closed on Sunday, so this means shop-owners got a rare two-day weekend. Were they happy? Well, Luca and Massimo on the fruit and vegetable boat apparently were — early on feast-day morning, we saw the remains of some pre-feast-day festa left behind where the bananas and apples usually reside.
But no matter! We had a fine day, sunshine, breeze, empty streets, sepulchral silence broken by the occasional bellowing and screeching of dogs passing in the street or on the bridge outside our house. (If you don’t believe that a dog can screech, you haven’t met that long-haired dachshund who evidently can’t stand anything about life, and whose owner must be deaf.)
We took our usual early-morning walk along the waterfront to the end of Sant’ Elena and home again (2.7 miles, for the record), plus our ten crossings of the bridge outside — our personal stone Stairmaster. And we feasted on little kidchops — removed from young goats, not the usual lamb.
We then “went to the beach” after lunch, which is what I call our hour of sitting on the edge of the canal a few steps from our front door. We’ve had two straight weeks of sunshine, so this interlude is a high point of the day; even though we aren’t tanning in any meaningful way. we’re stoking our Vitamin D. And we look at our little boat tied to its pilings directly across the canal, and the lush greenery that is growing on the bottom of the hull, and wonder when we’ll ever row her again. The easing of some restrictions are expected to begin on May 4, but we’ll know only on May 4 if that will turn out to be true. Or, if the Gazzettino is really up to speed, we’ll find out on May 5.
Friday was “Oh my God, we have to get the shopping done because the stores will be closed Saturday and Sunday!” Lines of people here are waiting to enter the only-two-people-at-a-time bread bakery and detergent/cosmetics store. The fruit and vegetable boat (covered by the awning seen in the middle distance) also had an unusually long line. As did the wine shop and the fish stall and the butcher. In the afternoon, there were 50 people in line outside the Coop, which now is closing at 7:30 PM instead of 10:00 PM. I, with my now-finely-honed skills, did the supermarket run on Thursday evening at 7:00 PM when there were only five people in line ahead of me. Of course, by then lots of shelves had been depleted (that’s the trade-off for coming late), but I was able to get what we needed in record time. I’d rather do without a few things than spend hours standing in line, even though it may be a great excuse to be out of the house.People are willing to do this. I don’t understand it, but I respect it. They’ve obviously got reserves of stamina and patience I can only dream of. (The supermarket is about 15 more people-lengths behind me.)Friday morning, long-overdue repairs to the wall damaged by the disastrous acqua alta of November 12, 2019, were suddenly underway.Saturday morning, everything was perfect again.Friday morning, the men were cleaning the monument to “La Partigiana” with hammer and tongs, so to speak, but more obviously rakes and scrapers. Spring cleaning at last?Saturday morning (which was also National Liberation Day), the finishing touches were applied with high-pressure water. The arrangement of roses reveals the mystery of the sudden attack of cleaning — at 10:00 AM Mayor Luigi Brugnaro offered the flowers in token of the city’s respects to the dauntless women of the Resistance.After the ceremony, these offerings remain: Roses for the partisan women, laurel to symbolize victory, and two long-stemmed purple iris that represent wisdom and royalty (it says in this book). The iris are an interesting departure from tradition. I wonder if we’d have had better luck calling up to order them instead of a rose.And laurel wreaths are bestowed on the major monuments. Here, Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was important for much more than the street.
Every year the city places laurel wreaths at the most important patriotic monuments. The most elaborate one, with an aureole of palm, is placed at the tomb of Daniele Manin.
April 25, as I have reported on other occasions, is a double holiday in Venice: The anniversary of the liberation of Italy after World War II (this year marking the 70th milestone), and the feast day of San Marco, the city’s patron saint.
And gentlemen must acquire a long-stemmed red rose (the “bocolo,” in Venetian) to bestow on their lady love(s). Here, gondolier Marco Farnea buys two — one for his wife, the other for his gondola. It’s an extra-festive occasion, too, because it’s his name-day.
Either of those facts deserves reams, and reams are ready and waiting, thanks to phalanxes of historians.
I simply want to keep the world apprised — yes, I modestly claim to keep the WORLD apprised — of a date that deserves remembering. And here, it’s remembered twice.
First, the roses:
Marco pushes off with the next boatload of clients, the two roses lying at his feet.A quartet of firemen leaving the ceremony of the flag-raising in the Piazza — one is already armed with his rose.The Red Cross sells the roses at a booth in the Piazza (as well as sending volunteers around). All for a good cause.
Independent rose sellers are all over our neighborhood all day. They sell mimosa on International Woman’s Day and umbrellas when it’s raining.Yes, National Liberation Day is important, but this Venetian store makes it clear that tomorrow it will be closed because it’s San Marco’s day. Any other reason is just extra.Someone placed a bocolo on St. Paul’s altar in the basilica of San Marco. I’m baffled, but I’m still glad to see it there. And no, you’re not supposed to take pictures in the basilica. I’ll never do it again.
And second, the liberation itself, as seen in Venice.
The arrival of the Allied troops in Piazzale Roma on April 29, 1945. Lino remembers that everyone was saying “The Americans are here!” He ran with his friends to see them, and they all asked for chewing gum, and they got it, too.
The Pala d'Oro started out as a relatively modest silver panel commissioned by doge Pietro Orseolo in 976-978 A.D. It was expanded by doge Ordelafo Falier (1104), and over the centuries it grew into this ponderous rectangle 11.4 feet (3.5 meters) long and 6.8 feet (2.1 meters) high.
I can tell you precisely when was the last time I sat and looked at art. It was Easter morning, and I wasn’t in a museum.
We were sitting in the front row of the basilica of San Marco and the occasion was the elaborate festal mass. The sermon was well underway. I had had every intention of listening carefully, because it was the new patriarch’s maiden voyage and I had been curious to check his rigging and navigation skills on one of the biggest days of the year.
If you’d like to know more, you’ll need to ask someone else. Because while he didn’t drift into uncharted political or theological waters (I’m finished with this metaphor now), as his predecessor used to do, he wanted to convey a message I couldn’t follow, and he was in no hurry to finish it. It was the religious equivalent of the stationary bicycle.
To be fair, he could just as well have been reading the Government Printing Office Style Manual, because the basilica of San Marco is an Olympics-level competitor if you’re trying to get somebody’s attention. So I made the most of being installed in my seat for a while, and let my eyes wander around the opulence of the basilica itself. And where my eyes wander, my brain tends to follow.
The story of Christ's temptations is presented in its barest essentials, but nothing has been left out, up to and including Satan giving up and flying back down to Hell.
I love this lion. He's just one small part of the gleaming mosaics on the ceiling and walls, which cover about 86,000 square feet (8,000 sq/m). I'm convinced that Venetian mothers for centuries implored their daughters to marry a mosaicist. They'd have been fixed for life.
After scanning my usual favorites (the mosaic depicting the Temptation in the Wilderness, the bug-eyed lion of San Marco in the Prophets Cupola, the relief on the small marble altar outlining Saint Paul’s crisis on the road to Damascus), I let my eyes settle on the Pala d’Oro.
One usually has to pay a small fee to go behind the high altar to see this prodigy, but on major feast days it is rotated to face the nave. Of course, when you’re seated out there you can’t discern much detail, but even from a distance you can tell it’s something phenomenal.
As I gazed at it, I let my eyes slide beyond the extravagant assortment of enamel medallions, and the myriad (1,927, actually) precious and semi-precious stones, and its gleaming golden surface, dazzling though it all may be.
What I saw were the hundreds of people involved in making it, and how hard the work was, and how much it cost. I don’t mean the bills that were presented to various doges, or what its total price would be today in round dollars, if such a thing could be calculated, which it probably can’t.
I mean the money every single person earned who was involved in this project, bearing in mind that what we see is the result of additions, substitutions, and renovations over centuries. If thinking of Accounts Payable seems crass, it probably wasn’t so crass to the artists who made it. Art is many things, but toward the top of the list is the word “business.” I doubt that any more than .0035 percent of all the art in the world was made for free.
The number of individuals who contributed to this prodigious creation is similarly difficult to calculate, along with their vast amount of skill, effort, and imagination. So let’s take just one person.
I’m thinking about a master enamelist. First, there are the years he spends as an apprentice, doing the scut work, making mistakes, throwing things out, learning little tricks, getting yelled at. He learns how to work with wire, with glass, with color, with fire. After I don’t know how long, he ‘s good enough to get the commission to do five saints (let’s say).
So he goes home to give his wife the good news, and tells her how much he’s going to be paid (and when!). And they stay up late feeling happy and trying to decide how they’ll spend the money — finally buy that horse? Pay the butcher? Order their daughter’s wedding dress?
Then I thought the same things about the artist who applied the baroque pearls (years, labor, etc.). Then I stepped back one step to the merchants who sold and bought the pearls (years, labor). And the person who brought the pearls from the Persian Gulf to Constantinople. And the person who dived for the pearls. (I stopped short of imagining the oyster making the pearls, but you’re free to go ahead.)
Then I thought about the gold-leaf beaters and appliers. (This is no small thought, considering that the Pala d’Oro consists of gold in many forms: repousse’, cast, applique’, chased, stamped, matted, and filigrees, not to mention granulation and beading.) The gold merchant. His wife and kids. The camel-driver and ship’s captain who carried the gold. Their wives and kids. The gold miner. His wife and kids.
The central medallion depicts "Christ Pantocrator," a classic Orthodox/Byzantine depiction of Christ as the Almighty, or Ruler of All. This piece alone would have kept a number of people busy.
So I probably missed an excellent sermon while I was imagining spouses and offspring and extra food and new shoes and sick grandfathers and quack doctors and on and on, through the whole infinitely expanding intricacy of the connections between just about everything.
So whenever I see a few square inches of art (frescoes, mosaics, marble statues, kilim carpets, whatever), I sometimes unleash my mind and let it roll around like a Weazel Ball among centuries and countries and people.
I came back to my immediate surroundings when they passed to take up the collection. Speaking of money.
So the goldsmith comes home and his wife asks how his day went, and he says "Excellent -- I finished the wings. Tomorrow, the seraphim." I deduce that this is an image of Ariel, one of 12 archangels represented in the throng. The garment is reminiscent of the Byzantine emperor's robes.
I’m not a big fan of Carnival in Venice. The only bigness I can evince where this annual demolition derby is concerned is a jumbo-size package of the old Aristotelian pity and terror.
Last year there was a sort of dancing metal raptor to give the crowd at the Piazza San Marco some sensation of movement.
That’s not completely true: I don’t feel pity.
But this year I decided to take a different approach. When Carnival erupted last Sunday (after several premonitory tremors) I thought I’d imagine it was something that could be fun, amusing, diverting, worth the trip. Not for me — I’ve figured out how to make it fun for me but it doesn’t involve costumes or the Piazza San Marco — but just going with the idea that it could be entertaining for the thousands upon thousands of people who come to Venice expecting to enjoy themselves, at least, if not enjoy everybody else.
By which I mean, enjoy being squashed like a grape in a winepress by your fellow humans.
So far, it’s working. I had a fine time on Sunday afternoon. But that’s because I made a point of not going to the Piazza San Marco. The Gazzettino reported that some 90,000 people were there. They certainly didn’t need me, even if there had been room.
The first years I was here I did go, at least a few times, to the Piazza San Marco, the gravitational center of the festivities. It was all so new and strange, and memory reports that there weren’t quite so many thousands. Memory may be lying but it was fine anyway. Perhaps the novelty of the situation carried me over the crush, as it may well do to people today.
I dress up, I walk around, I pose, therefore I am. It doesn't exactly cry out "whirl of gaiety."
Then there was a hiatus, partly because I didn’t enjoy the winepress experience and also because what was going on there seemed strangely unfestive: Loads of people in costume (95 percent of which seemed to be identical), walking around just looking at each other, striking attitudes, or taking pictures of each other with or without tourists posing next to them. The nadir is occupied by the people in costume who charge money for allowing themselves to be photographed with your cousin or your kid. And they can make a bundle.
Another exciting moment. The details are sometimes lovelier than the whole costume. Dressing up as an ancient monument deserves a tip of the hat, or whatever she's got on her head.
Then we came to Castello and I discovered something of the way Carnival was, decades ago, before the event was trampled by the tourism behemoth. Kids and families and dogs, and relatively few tourists. And did I mention the kids?
A princess, a fairy with gauzy green wings, and an animal I still haven't identified. This is more like it.
Put an aristocrat behind the wheel and just get out of the way.
Perhaps I’m going senile, or perhaps it’s because the confetti-throwing and occasional Silly String-spraying and strolling around have no evident commercial focus, but I think the downtown version of Carnival beats San Marco in straight sets. Here, if you see somebody taking a picture of a person in costume, it’s almost certainly a besotted relative.
Still trying to get the hang of how to make it spray.
A costume, a large bag of confetti, and a parental equerry to carry it for you as you perfect your bestrewing technique. He's having more fun than ten photographers.
Dressing your kid as a skunk (probably Bambi's friend Flower) doesn't seem like a compliment, but when he's this cute it probably doesn't matter what you put him in.
Just a little bit of face paint, artfully applied by one of the many artful appliers in and around San Marco. But it's enough.
I
If you start to look around, you begin to notice how little it really takes to dress up and play Carnival. There were people who were looking great with only a hat, or a wig, or a moustache or whiskers scribbled on with a black marker– even the simplest mask imaginable just barely covering the eyes. No plumes, no sequins, no layers of painted papier-mache. It really works.
Or just a mask, and never mind the fancy garb. This is a version of the classic mask of a Zanni, the clever and/or foolish servant in comedies of the Commedia dell'Arte.
The first Sunday of Carnival (February 7 this year) was Opening Day, one of the maximum moments, as you can imagine. The others are Fat Thursday (Giovedi’ Grasso), and Fat Tuesday (Martedi’ Grasso). And the weekend between them. If the weather is beautiful — as it was on Sunday — it can feel like a party even if you don’t do anything special. If it’s really cold, overcast, windy or rainy, obviously the merriment becomes shredded and forced. This isn’t Rio.
Next chapter: I’ll be tossing out a few festive fistfuls of history, gathered from a large bag of brightly-colored bits of trivia.
Here’s a sample. “Confetti” here refers to the sugared almonds which are given to wedding guests. What speakers of English (and French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch) call confetti — brightly-colored bits of paper — here are called coriandoli (ko-ree-AN-dolee). Why?
Because back in the Olden Days, Carnival revelers would toss all sorts of things around or at or on each other — eggs full of rosewater was one hugely amusing toy to everybody except the women who were on the receiving end. People would also toss various tiny edibles, particularly coriander seeds, which were used in pastries. Then they became bits of sugar pretending to be coriander seeds. Only much later — in 1875 — did flakes of paper begin to be used instead, which is an entirely different story. People who had always called the flying fragments of food “coriandoli” merely transferred to term to the newer-fangled form.
