San Zaccaria
There are a lot of Venetian altarpieces in museums, and there were a lot of medieval ones broken up into component parts and sold off bit by bit. Both instances take the altarpiece out of the context that is was made for. This past week I finally made it into the church of San Zaccaria in Venice. I’d seen the outside before but had never dropped by when it was open. So I finally got to see Giovanni Bellini’s 1505 San Zaccaria altarpiece in its proper location with its original frame against the walls of the church. San Zaccaria was the most important nunnery in Venice in the renaissance, and they exercised a lot of discretion in their patronage of both art and architecture.
Gold on Gondola
The gondola is perhaps Venice’s most recognizable icon, and the gondoliers take great pride in their individual crafts, even though it may seem at first that they are all the same. In the details they vary greatly. These golden additions caught my eye as their gondola bounced in the wake of a vaporetto near the Bacino waterfront.
Milan Mosaic
As anyone who frequents my blog knows, my favorite medium is mosaic, and there isn’t anywhere I won’t go to find some great ones. This is a detail of a semi-dome in the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore in Milan. In the mosaic Christ is flanked by his apostles, four of whom are shown here looking up to their divine boss with appropriate admiration. The 5th century CE artist has used orange tesserae (that’s what the bits of a mosaic are called; sing. tessera) to indicate light shining from heaven. A brilliant technique.
Magnificent Mall
The Galleria of Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan might be the world’s first shopping mall (though in truth the Romans had them), built by the architect Mengoni and finished in 1877. It’s still magnificent almost a century and a half later and takes it’s place among the iron matrix wonders of the 19th century, of which the Eiffel Tower is the most famous, though it was finished a decade after the Galleria. Frescoes in the corners of the huge dome at the intersection of the barrel vaults show allegorical figures of the four continents as they were then understood: Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. Even though it’s so old, even today it looks like an architecture of the future.
Line of Ladies
This is a detail of a painting by Gentile Bellini called The Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo, which dates from 1500. The painting was commissioned by the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, a Venetian lay brotherhood that owned and venerated a fragment of the True Cross. They commissioned a series of paintings by a number of artists to show the history of the relic and the miracles performed by it, especially those in the many processions it was carried in. In this painting the relic has jumped into the canal, and only a virtuous member of the scuola, Andrea Vendramin, can catch it, demonstrating his and his family’s virtue. Witnesses to this miraculous event line the shores of the canal, here, a cortege of noble women, all dressed to the nines and reacting appropriately to the event unfolding before their eyes.
Tintoretto’s Touch
This is a detail, an even closer one, from the painting in the posting below: Tintoretto’s St Mark Saving the Slave of 1548. I wanted to get a shot that showed the painter’s brushwork, how he created a convincing sense of shiny fabric crimping on a bending elbow. It’s a complex series of white and shades of blue all done in a quick zig-zag, and yet from just a few feet it’s entirely convincing and evokes a strong sense of the fabric’s sheen, weight, colour, and texture. Note, too, the foreshortened faces. In this painting almost every figure is either completely or partially foreshortened in some way. The ‘Little Dyer’, Jacopo Comin (Tintoretto’s real name; he was the son of a dyer) showing off.
Saintly in Space
This is a detail from a remarkable 1548 painting by Tintoretto, which was once housed in the Scuola Grande di San Marco in Venice. Now it’s in the Gallery of the Accademia in Venice. The whole painting shows a miracle of St Mark as the saint flies out of the heavens to protect a slave who is being attacked for worshiping relics. It’s a classic Counter-Reformation piece, reconfirming forcefully the Catholic focus on the veneration of relics. I picked out a detail of the nude body of the slave, the broken wooden clubs and loosed rope around him. One of the most difficult techniques for artists of the renaissance was foreshortening, and only the best masters could do it well. Here, Tintoretto shows his mastery not only of the nude male figure but also its foreshortening in space.
Birds of Paradise
In Byzantine decoration the peacock is a common motif. In many cases, a pair of them eat grapes from a vase, often with vines growing from it. The vase shape is a kantharos, a Greek vase that was used for wine. The grapes and wine are a symbol of Christ (the wine signifying his blood), and thus the promise of salvation and the paradise that awaits the blessed. These peacocks are done in mosaic on the floor just inside the main portal of the magnificent church of San Donato on Murano in the Venetian lagoon. They date from the 12th century. All of the pavements of San Donato are done in splendid mosaics. In one scene, a fox is captured by rabbits, while in others knot designs and geometric motifs in coloured stones decorate the floor.
St Mark’s Horses
The famous four horses that for centuries graced the facade of the church of St Mark in Venice have now been moved just inside, replicas having taken their places out in front. They are mostly made of copper and some of the gilding still clings to them, though there are hundreds of scratches, likely made by people trying to get off what little gold there was. Indeed, it may have been Venetians themselves who did the scraping. These horses have a storied history. Where and when they were made is a mystery. Some think that they are late-Greek works, Hellenistic, made in Chios or for a Roman emperor. It’s probable they were linked to a chariot and stood at the famous Circus Maximus in Rome. At some point, either at the bidding of the emperor Septimius Severes or Constantine, they were moved to the hippodrome in Constantinople, and there they graced that legendary city for about a thousand years, until 1204 when the Venetians sacked the city and stripped Constantinople of all its finery, shipping all the loot back to Venice. The horses, too, were part of the spoils. There they overlooked the Piazza San Marco for another 800 years. Finally, they get to retire inside. If only these horses could talk.
Winning Lotto
Lorenzo Lotto (1480-56) was one of the finest Italian painters of his generation, but not so many people have heard of him because he was eclipsed by other more famous and more productive Venetian painters like Titian. But he created some marvelous works. Of his portraits this may be my favorite. It’s of a man, his identify unknown, sitting at a desk. What I’m showing here is the detail of the desk and the objects on it: rose petals, a lizard, a book, a folded piece of paper, a cap, a gold chain…. The book shows he’s learned, his clothing shows his wealth, his delicate hands his refinement and the fact he doesn’t work with them.
Riverside Relaxation
This is a detail of a 6th century CE mosaic from the church of San Lorenzo in Milan. The entire mosaic scene, much of it gone, depicted Christ in the Chariot of the Sun, an early and rare depiction of Christ relating him to the Greco-Roman god Apollo in his sun chariot. The city of Milan, in northern Italy, was Christianized early and was once controlled by the Byzantines, and some significant early mosaics still survive there. This figure was part of a bucolic scene at the bottom of the mosaic showing shepherds in grassy fields with their flocks. This fellow stretches out along the shore of a verdant spring stream.
California Winter
At the end of a mild California winter’s day, in the last week of January 2017, I took this picture while coming home from grocery shopping. Surfers were out catching waves in the sea mist and waning light of sunset. Santa Cruz is one of most lovely places on earth. I teach here only for 10 weeks of the year, but I try to enjoy every minute of the beauty that nature offers me in that short time.
Wild Wilder
My favorite walk, possibly in the world, is along the coast at Wilder State Park in Santa Cruz, California. I live in Santa Cruz for the first three months of the new year, and always make the most of the natural beauty of the area. There are lots of stacks, like this one, and arches as well along the eroded coastline. I don’t know their names, but I call this one the Smokestack Stack because from this angle it looks like the smokestack of an old ship.
