My personal account of living real life in real Venice, and more
Just when you think Venice can’t get any more amazing, you meet the last man in Europe who is beating gold leaf by hand. Of course he would be in Venice, and — why not? — he works in the old building where Titian lived. Nope, totally no need to ever make anything up.
https://craftsmanship.net/the-last-master-of-handmade-gold-leaf/
I wanted to title this post “My Name is Red,” even though doing so would have meant stealing it from Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk. I was happy to exploit him because his novel of that name is one of the most extraordinary books I’ve ever read. Anybody who can start a story with “I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well,” has my vote.
Back to red. For some reason I notice it early and often. I have no theory as to why; maybe it’s that red has been throwing itself in front of my face. It is, after all, one of the more assertive colors in the spectrum.
Venice and red have a long and glorious coexistence, and I do not refer to the torrents of hemoglobin spilled in its incessant wars. (Speaking of bloodshed, did you know that arterial blood is bright red, while venous blood is a dark maroon? If anyone wants to know my source, it isn’t Johns Hopkins Hospital — it’s “13 Ways to Make Fake Blood.”)
No, the marriage of Venice and red takes us back to the Great Days, when Venice’s claim to fame was supported, among other things, by a number of exceptional products: glass, of course, and there was teriaca, a three-weird-sisters preparation believed to cure everything you can name, and many that you can’t even imagine.
And then there was the sumptuous color known as “Venetian red,” first documented in 1753, though I assume it had already been in use for a number of centuries.
“The skilled dyers of Venice, in particular, were known for their ability to create gorgeous red dyes,” writes Amy Butler Greenfield in her book, “A Perfect Red.”
“The deepest and most resplendent reds,” she goes on, “collectively known throughout Europe as ‘Venetian scarlet,’ were the envy of all who saw them. Throughout Europe, dyers tried to imitate these reds without success, perhaps because no one thought to add arsenic, an ingredient used by the Venetians to heighten the brilliancy of their dyes.” Perhaps the arsenic supply was being diverted to other uses.
Like any trade secret upon which fortunes were built, Venetian dyers did everything to conceal their recipe, to the point of inventing macabre tales of specters haunting the dyeworks, to keep the curious at bay. (I would have thought the stench alone would have been enough of a deterrent. But what I call “stench” was clearly the ravishing odor of money.)
Although I did find a recipe for Venetian red dye, I’m not going to share it, partly because it’s pretty complicated and not something you should consider trying in your kitchen, and partly because I’m convinced that whatever result you obtain wouldn’t truly match the refulgence of the original.
Then there were the Venetian painters, who also found a way to make red their own. Even on canvas, “Venetian Red is a pure iron oxide with real wow factor,” as Matisse Professional Artist Acrylics and Mediums puts it in its catalogue.
“It gets its name because the natural iron oxide deposits inland from Venice were this color which was midway between the deeper violet iron oxides found near Pozzuoli and the common red oxides found elsewhere,” Matisse continues. “The Venetian painters used this color with flair and particularly as a result of Titian’s usage of it, it became a famous color throughout Italy…This same shade of red oxide is found in the stone age cave paintings in France and when discovered they were clearly as vibrant as the day they were painted 16,000 years earlier…”
I would continue this treatise but feel my mind wandering away into foggy byways of minutiae. And anyway, maybe you don’t care about red, even though eight seconds of research reveals that it represents just about everything in human existence: fire and blood; energy and primal life forces; desire, sexual passion, pleasure, domination, aggression, and thirst for action; love, anger, warning or death; confidence, courage, and vitality.
I forgot to add danger, sacrifice, beauty, national socialism, socialism, communism, and in China and many other cultures, happiness.
Also hatred and sin.
If you have any urges left over, you can distribute them among the greys and fawns, or devote them to cornflower, saffron, or Mughal green. I’m taking the high road.
Venice used to be famous for cats, but they have somehow relinquished their mythic stature. When I came to Venice back in 1804, there were still scattered outposts where old ladies would leave food for the stray cats, near makeshift little huts. Now the only place I can be sure of seeing a feline is either roaming the cloister at the city hospital, or on or near a few windowsills in the neighborhood. The once-abundant freelancing cats have been rounded up and stowed in a pound on the Lido.
Instead of cats, there are dogs.
When Lino was a lad, families were still large and didn’t have extra food to waste on a dog just to play with. The only dogs who were given room and board had to work for it, like retrievers or hounds. No need for a guard dog, that’s what grandmothers are for. Or, as Lino put it, “What was there for a dog to guard? Most people didn’t even have tears to cry with.”
Nor was there extra money to spend on trips to the vet, not to mention the wardrobe. Now not only are there dogs everywhere, many of them dress better than I do, though they tend to belong to people (often, but not always, women) who confuse them with human children. I once saw a woman on the vaporetto, holding her dog on her lap, cradling it like a baby. No, the dog wasn’t sick. I can’t remember if it was wearing a bonnet.
I amuse myself by tracking the changing fashions in the world of Fido and Rex (though here people tend to like the name Bobi). Like other fashions, it’s hard to discover a reason for it, but evidently either you can get tired of a dog faster than your nose-ring or skateboard, or you just really need to be like everybody else. Or you didn’t care about your dog in the first place.
First, there were Afghan hounds. It seems strange now, but this is true. Then all of a sudden everybody had boxers. They traded these in for beagles. Then came a rash of Jack Russell terriers. Now that I think of it, it’s been a while since I saw a beagle — they used to be everywhere. And the Jack Russells are mysteriously fading away too.
Now we have a mixed bag, with a few of the above (not the Afghans, those are long gone), joined by a few French bulldogs, an English bulldog, a couple of Rottweilers, Golden Retrievers, Labradors, a batch of Shih Tzus, assorted terriers, and a smattering of spaniels of various sorts. There are also plenty of mutts, I’m glad to note. They never go out of style.
There is an organization which seeks homes for abandoned dogs, and their notices taped on municipal surfaces are very touching and very repetitive. There is a photo of the dog, of course, with its name and a paragraph describing its sad past — and some of these dogs have been through torture — and a description of the dog and its character. This is the repetitive part. You’d be amazed how many dogs are “sweet.” Hulking, tiny, old, blind, their primary trait is sweetness. This is wonderful, especially if true, but it does make all these animals sound like animated stuffed toys. If you want to sell an apartment in Venice, the crucial word is “luminoso” (full of light). If you want to donate a dog, you’ve got to call it sweet. I realize that “cranky, demanding, and incontinent” won’t inspire many offers, but still.
This passion for dogs is far from being some new aberration, at least according to centuries of Venetian art. It’s pretty clear that the patricians have always been dog-crazy. Look at any number of Venetian paintings, even at random, and you’ll see that where two or more are gathered together, there will be at least one dog.
When I go to a museum or church or palace here, I don’t admire the brushwork or the color scheme, I play Find the Dog. It’s a very satisfying game because you know there is at least one, and often more. It’s like a treasure hunt.
Someone might tell me that the dogs are there in their purely symbolic capacity, like other animals in European art such as peacocks or bees. Dogs, as we all know, typically represent fidelity, obedience, protection, courage and vigilance. All excellent traits which would be valued here, as anywhere. Scholarly sources don’t mention its symbolizing sweetness but they are obviously not well informed.
But by the way most dogs are depicted, they don’t seem symbolic at all. Most of them have got more personality than many of the people around them — just like now.
What started me on all these ruminations is the fact that, for however much the dog might be adored here, it remains the quintessential insult-figure. “I cani di ta morti” (your beloved deceased family members are dogs) is absolutely the worst thing you can say to a person here, so bad that you don’t say it unless you intend to make that person your enemy forever.
This is occasionally modified to “ti ta morti,” which I think means that you have left a small window open for future reconciliation. Or at least haven’t branded yourself as irredeemably vulgar.
You can substitute “porceli” (pigs) for dogs, which is the only way you can make the insult worse.
You don’t have to say it to the person, you can also merely say it about the person. “Why did your boss make you work last Sunday?” “Because she’s got morti cani.” If the situation warrants it but I don’t want to utter the death blow, I soften it by merely referring to the person and his or her behavior as having or being M.C. In any form, it’s such a useful expression that I wish there were a corresponding phrase in English, but I haven’t found it, or managed to invent it, yet.
I will have to pursue further research on the subject of insults because I am under the impression that the main force of the phrase doesn’t come from the dogs, but the fact that the insult is aimed at your family. In Rome, the corresponding vilification is “i mortacci tua” — again, an imprecation against your dead relatives.
Your typical insulting Anglo-Saxon doesn’t tend to invoke either death (unless it’s yours) or your relatives (unless it’s your mama). Therefore death and your family status appear to carry a freight of meaning here which must come from some extremely deep Mediterranean source. Perhaps the Phoenicians devised it, along with the alphabet.
I sometimes wonder what dogs say about each other. “Your dead relatives are humans,” probably.
Stay on the safe side and don’t ever refer to dogs or people in the same sentence. Especially not if you observe how much the animal and its owner resemble each other.
