8. The Grand Canal from the
Fondamenta della Croce, c. 1734.
Pencil and dark ink, 26.9 x 37.6 cm.
The Royal Collection, London.
Il Carnavale
Over a period of six months, the carnival attracted throngs of close to thirty thousand foreigners to Venice. Its theme: down with serious matters, long live freedom and folly! Yokels and patricians alike seemed to be overtaken by the same vertiginous activities, consumed by parades of people dressed up as astrologers, doctors, lawyers and gondoliers. Among the clowns, who wore huge cone-shaped hats, the most nimble of the bunch advanced on their hands, others danced about while playing barrel organs and the whole group whirled about to the sound of lively music. The people, free to loudly express their condemnation or approval, followed each group with shouts, catcalls, applause and jeers. At Saint Mark’s Square, the major neighbourhood for masks, one wandered about without advancing through the dense crowd. The seven theatres reserved for the carnival proving to be inadequate for the festivities, harlequins performed their tomfoolery in the open air and comedic improvisers amused spectators with their buffoonery. At the smaller intersections, feats of strength and sleight of hand were organized. At the end of the carnival, there remained nothing but a few scattered passers-by appropriately armed with axes and cutlasses to defend themselves against the bulls that were led through the streets, fighting in certain places.
On Fat Thursday, the butchers’ festival, a bull was beheaded with a single blow of the sword, a barbaric amusement established to commemorate an old victory over the Patriarch of Aquileia. The latter, accompanied by twelve clergymen captured at the same time, was to be beheaded in Saint Mark’s Square, but, for some reason, this public execution did not take place, and twelve pigs and a bull were substituted for the condemned in order to appease the public. That same Thursday, the doge watched the Strengths of Hercules,[2] a game consisting of the construction of a human pyramid with a base of eight men locked arm in arm and capped with a child. In addition, an acrobat equipped with wings glided down a rope stretched between the top of the bell tower and the Doges’ Palace balcony. Taking this aerial route, he arrived in front of the doge, offered him compliments and flowers, and then showered poetry and sonnets upon the crowd, enjoyed even by the least literate. A war of fists was another gift of lively amusement for the spectators. In this bizarre jousting match, two sides advanced atop a narrow bridge with no parapet, namely the Saint Barnabas bridge, and each forced his way through, knocking his adversaries into the water. Seeing the fighters fall like grapes into the water, the spectators beat their hands together as wildly as possible.
The whole of Venice was consumed in this rejoicing, in the enthusiasm of the crowd, in this emulation of which paintings and engravings give us a rather sketchy idea, in the joyful stamping of feet and cheering for the conqueror, in the freedom reigning sovereign over the city, encouraged by the incognito mask that, for the moment, suppressed all decorum and social inequality! The mask was a constant custom in Venetian mores. A mask was required to enter the gaming rooms, or ridotti, densely crowded with men and women. It was not unusual to see costumed nobles walk into the Doges’ Palace, removing their domino in the Grand Council’s antechamber. No one considered it scandalous to run into masked visitors in convent reception rooms or at gala dinners where the doge would bestow purple robes on the magistrates. Once promised in marriage, a young noblewoman might conceal her features under a velvet hood, and no one would see her face uncovered except for her fiancé and those privileged people to whom this rare favour was accorded.