Away from the crowds, Katherine Cole savours the Most Serene Republic during the feast which commemorates the birth of the Church.
On the last Sunday in May – which this year coincided with Pentecost – it was easy to forget, with the streets thronged with tourists, that normal life continued in Venice. While thousands of small boats from across the continent set off on the Vogalonga regatta’s course around the lagoon, cheered on by crowds lining the Fondamente, there were ordinary Venetians going to Mass in the churches they attend every week, whatever the season.
I stepped through the door of San Marziale primarily because the incomparable guidebook Venice for Pleasure, by JG Links, describes it as containing “Venetian baroque at its most charming and idiotic”. Who would not admit to being intrigued? It so happened that Mass was about to begin, so I sat down. The priest was chatting to two members of the congregation seated in the nave. At two minutes to go, a steady stream of locals meandered in. Thankfully a full text service sheet had been printed for Pentecost so that I was able to follow, and even respond, in Italian.
A child of four or five sat behind me; I was aware of him sliding his arms to and fro along the back of the pew, stopping just short of me. But there was no grumbling; he was taken up for a blessing and the service was over in little more than half an hour, so he hardly had time to complain of being bored. Looking through the eyes of the local people, I stopped staring about me as if I was in a gallery – despite the impressive artworks.
Tintoretto’s Saint Martial in Glory with Saints Peter and Paul glowed above an altar on my right, while the main altar is an elaborate Baroque confection in marble, attributed to Tommaso Rues: figures cling to rocks that act as a grotto-esque framing device for the icon within and which culminate in a gilded globe watched over by a triumphal Christ, Ruler of the World. Yet seen in the context of a living parish, these marvels of human creativity stood not alone but in the service of the words being uttered by priest and lay readers alike.
Meanwhile, extensive wooden hoardings around an altar on the left-hand side bore witness to the delicate balance between local and international support for the city’s churches. As the fall of small change into the collection box reverberates, the American charity Save Venice has raised enough money to restore the baroque altar of Our Lady delle Grazie (attributed to Giovanni Comin and his workshop) whose lower bas-relief panels are suffering the corrosive effects of damp and salt deposits; the panels illustrate the Creation by Rustico and the miraculous arrival in Venice of the wooden Madonna and Child in the central niche. Conservators are also restoring the spandrels depicting Saints Matthew and Mark, painted by Giulia Lama around the time of the church’s reconsecration in 1721. Lama is one of around 30 “Women Artists of Venice” whose work and reputation Save Venice is dedicated to restoring.
A little further on – right at the furthest reaches of Canareggio – is the Church of the Madonna dell’Orto. Again, the brief anecdote given by Links is intriguing. John Ruskin’s wife, Effie, wrote to a friend that “John took me to see two large Tintorettos but going in hot to a place like a well to see a death’s head crowned with leaves gave me such a shiver that I ran out of the church and I do not intend to return again.” Serendipitously I arrived at this church, with St Christopher standing over the gothic ogee-arched portal, just as Mass was beginning. I was keen to see the paintings so once again sat down – the service sheet was the same. The Tintorettos were a long way away behind the altar but the general atmosphere was light and airy, all brick and beams, and I could not understand Effie’s attitude.
The solemnity was lightened all the more by the presence of a small band with guitars. Out of the corner of my right eye, I could see Cima da Conegliano’s lovely altarpiece Saint John the Baptist with Saints Peter, Mark, Jerome and Paul (1493-5) and it was this that drew me, with its limpid clarity. The painted sky echoes Venice’s outside, while Saint John looks up as if towards the light from a south-facing window; Ruskin himself thought “the whole picture full of peace, and intense faith and hope, and deep joy in light of sky, and fruit and flower and weed of earth”. Why did he did not guide Effie in this direction?
The service was longer, on account of the musical interludes, a larger congregation and a spirited sermon; afterwards the crowd did not slip away quietly but, keen to celebrate Pentecost, stayed to converse in the sun on the brick-paved forecourt, perhaps exhorting friends and neighbours to join them for lunch. It was certainly time for a spritz, I felt, as I hurried through the ghetto to the Canareggio canal. The boats were crowding in for the last leg of the Vogalonga to cheers, the elegant Venetians standing barefoot and lifting their paddles in acknowledgement.
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