Venetian Painting [antikvár]

THE BEGINNINGS THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES The Venetians loved gold before they loved art. It was their first love that led, by slow degrees, to their second. Daring and successful merchant seamen, whose cupidity was never satisfied, brought gold back to their island, from conquest after conquest, aboard galleys designed as much for fighting as for trade. Venice used this gold for the lavish adornment of the church of her patron saint. It was a building which, like the galleys, served a dual purpose, in this case that of both sanctuary and warehouse. The presiding saint was the apostle and evangelist Mark, whose emblem is the lion. The Venetians, by a touch of genius, gave the creature wings, to bear it overseas and bring them victory in the East, whither their adventurous voyages were directed. It was imported wealth only which rendered Venice beautiful during the first centuries of the city's achievement of power. In the heart of that extraordinary fortress, surrounded and defended by the rampart of a broad expanse of water, the proud basilica of San Marco stands like a vast trophy erected from the spoils of the Byzantine Empire. Originally constructed after the pattern of the Greek churches, the walls of the building gradually assumed, both within and without, a sumptuous dress of rare marbles, which had been found both in the neighbouring cities of the ancient Byzantine exarchate and in those of the more distant Levant. By the end of the twelfth century skilled craftsmen were being imported by Venice from Constantinople 'not as prisoners of war,' according to Diego Valeri, 'but as courted and honoured guests.' They arranged rich mosaics of many-coloured stones on the outer walls of the building and inlaid the vaults and domes within in similar style to enchanting effect, so as to resemble a night sky thickly sown with stars. Venetian apprentices accompanied the Greek craftsmen on the scaffolding and were taught the art of mosaic-work by them, so that eventually native schools of inlayers came into existence. It was, no doubt, with a view to preserving valuable trade secrets that the Maggior Consiglio of the Most Serene Republic decreed, about 1290, that both Venetian and Byzantine workers in mosaic should reside on the island of Murano, where glass-blowing factories have been established ever since. Many of the craftsmen from the East were also icon-painters. In addition to teaching their apprentices the technique of mosaic-work they showed them how to lay solid gold grounds on wooden panels and to set hieratically stylised sacred figures against them in ritual attitudes. The transition from icon to reredos was an easy one. The