La Serenissima, Revisited

One of my best shots from the Most Serene City: No car engines rumble, no horns break the calm sound of water lapping and people living.

With the crutch of a couple glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon, I am reading and heartily enjoying Garry Wills's enchanting book, Venice: Lion City. I didn't think I needed a reminder of why I loved Venice perhaps more than any of the great Italian cities, but reading about the mysterious, pageant-laden history of the mystical Serenissima enhances in una nuova maniera, the indelible memories that I have treasured for three years now. Wills's Venice is the perfect book to read before visiting Venice. I regret that I am reading after the fact. Wills deftly submerges the reader in the rich waters of the city's artistic and religious patrimony. I would even find his book ideal for reading while in Venice, thumbing through its pages, planted along one of its many alluring, serpentine canals, sipping an espresso and looking up from time to time to catch a gondola gliding by, or perhaps sitting near San Marco and gazing past the earthen piazza to the vast, calm sea, the womb of this great culture.

With Wills, I have come to love Tintoretto, whose paintings encase so many of the lavishly embellished palaces, halls and churches of Venice. Naturally, Tintoretto calls to mind the splendor of one of my favorite artists, Tiziano (truthfully, my untrained eyes finds them difficult at times to distinguish, so similarly do they strike me and so too is their unrivaled artistic effect on me, save Gian Lorenzo Bernini). Tintoretto's Last Supper is simply breathtaking. The delicate halos seem to lift Christ and His apostles off the the canvas.



Looking into my Word files, I came across these notes I took in the Spring of 2007 on my first thoughts upon entering San Marco. They are, naturally, rough and unpolished, but for the sake of authenticity, I preserved them (more or less intact) here.

- Showers of gold and light cascading from the massive domes

- A couple beams of light, stretched out and thin, stream through the windows in the dome and pierce the entire nave like a sword

- The bottom quarter, or half, of the basilica is marble, and darker; perhaps it serves to remind me of earth. But the upper half, (the heavens) is encased in gold and brilliant color and it is showered in light, amplified all the more by the gold. It thus markedly distinguished itself from the material world below. When I entered, the eyes and head are immediately turned upward, it’s an unavoidable motion.

- Question: Does heaven come down or am I swept up in gold and light?

- There is an unmistakable dimension of sacred mystery that sets this basilica apart from even Saint Peter’s. Prayer and meditation come more naturally to me here. The maneuvers of light and darkness, and the curious nooks and crannies profoundly stimulate the soul, if I let it. I didn’t perceive a museum quality inside this church, often an unavoidable sensation in Rome.

- Not necessarily symmetrical or uniform. It abounds with curves, grooves, more like the ebb and flow of humanity, my soul

- Shimmering gold conveys: royalty, grace, mystery, timelessness (eternity), depth, beauty

- The floor of the basilica was made of beautiful mosaics and was quite uneven and bumpy in some parts, it reminded me of mortality and the passage of time. There is a sacred bond with the present and past. This Church has seen countless people come and go down through the centuries; I am no different. One day, I will be long gone (hopefully into eternal gold and light) and this basilica will remain standing, the faithful continuing to stream in and out like the invading sun beams with the rising and setting of the sun. It is humbling and hopeful at the same time.

Another shot from inside San Marco, with a light from heaven that penetrates...and purifies.