V EN IC E
Water
from the
•
Daniel Savoy
VEN ICE
Water
from the
ARCHITECTURE AND MYTH IN AN EARLY MODERN CITY
Daniel Savoy
Yale University Press
•
New Haven and London
Copyright © 2012 by Daniel Savoy
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by
Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law
and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Emily Lees
Printed in China
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Savoy, Daniel, 1977–
Venice from the water : architecture and myth in an early
modern city / Daniel Savoy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-16797-9 (cl : alk. paper)
1. Water and architecture–Italy–Venice.
2. Architecture–Italy–Venice–Psychological aspects.
3. Venice (Italy)–Buildings, structures, etc. I. Title.
II. Title: Architecture and myth in an early modern city.
NA2542.8.S28 2012
720.945’311–dc23
2011044473
A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library
e n d pa p e r s : Eurich Reüwich, Civitas Veneciarum (details), in Bernhard von Breydenbach,
Illustrations de Opusculum sanctorum peregrinationum ad spulcrum Christi venerandum (Mainz, 1486), woodcut,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
f r o n t i s p i e c e : Scuola Grande di San Marco, view from the Rio dei Mendicanti (detail of fig. 9)
i mag e o n p. v i : Edward Steichen, Late Afternoon,Venice, 1907 (detail of fig. 184)
W
•
Contents
p r e f a c e : Water as Urban Space
1
1
Charting the Myth of Venice
17
2
The Urban Scenography of Venice from the Lagoon,
the Grand Canal, and Selected Rii
33
Toward an Aquatic Aesthetic of the Venetian
Palace Façade
67
Palladio and the Bacino San Marco
91
a f t e r w o r d : Water as Civic Space
111
notes
116
works cite d
127
ac k nowle dg m e nt s
138
index
140
i l lu s t rat i o n c r e d i t s
143
3
4
Preface
Water as Urban Space
It is hard to believe how comfortable the [gondolas] in Venice are until you have tried them. For
they offer so much comfort to passengers who have made long trips by horse and carriage and
arrive at Marghera or at some other point of embarkation where the calm restores their exhausted
bodies that they finish the journey as though they were sitting at home. As a result, they forget
their sufferings and they are rewarded by the sight, in the midst of the waves, of many beautiful
palaces . . . I have experienced this many times myself, having been tossed around in carriages and
endured the miseries of riding on horseback.
Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi et moderni . . . , 15901
To early modern travelers who were tired and weary,
saddle-sore and bruised, Cesare Vecellio’s account of the
Venetian gondola must have sounded idyllic. Whereas
horses and carriages bump along the countryside, gondolas float through the tranquil waters of the Venetian
lagoon, soothing their passengers’ aching bodies and
relieving their sorrows. It was not the comfort of the
gondola alone, however, that the author hoped would
lure travelers to Venice. By putting visitors at ease, the
vessel also prepared them for a vision “of many beautiful
palaces” in the middle of the water, which promised to
make their long and arduous journeys worthwhile. To
travel to Venice was therefore to be physically and psyfacing page 1 Vittore Carpaccio, The Miracle of the True Cross:
The Healing of the Possessed Boy, 1494 (detail of fig. 7)
chologically transported. The journey began in the real
world of insufferable horses and carriages but ended in
an otherworldly island city, an empyrean metropolis
where people rode in luxurious boats and buildings
stood on the surface of water.
The thesis of the present book is that this impression
of Venice was the desired effect of an elaborate system
of urbanism whose purpose was to mythologize the city
in the eyes of visitors – all of whom arrived on the
water prior to the construction of the railroad bridge
linking the island to the Italian mainland in the midnineteenth century. In dialogue with the natural properties of their aquatic space, I propose, the builders of
medieval and early modern Venice devised a series of
water-oriented urbanistic practices to shape the visual
and metaphoric image of their city from the open water-
1
ways of the lagoon to the narrow canals of the island
proper. Part of a widespread project of civic glorification
(to which Vecellio’s remarks ultimately belong), these
methods produced highly illusory ceremonial and architectural constructions that transformed the lagoon into
a seemingly mystical environment.
Phantasmic rituals, palaces that appeared to float, and
climactic revelations of monumental buildings were to
create the perception among waterborne visitors of an
aquatic domain governed by supernatural phenomena.
Thus building their city to be seen from the water, the
Venetians may have attempted to reify a central tenet of
their legendary civic ideology, now known as the “myth
of Venice:” that their city was a miraculous creation
founded by God on the waves of the sea.2
The Urbanistic, Political, and Social
Framework of the Canals
This argument hinges on the belief that the canals of
pre-modern Venice were areas of urban space – architectural environments within the city fabric whose buildings were designed in relation to their surrounding
topography and the eye of the beholder. In this view, the
waterways were not merely utilitarian routes of transportation but integral components of a unified land and
aquatic-based spatial network, as central to Venetian daily
life and civic identity as the Piazza San Marco, the campi
(neighborhood squares), and the calli (streets).3 A foundation for this reading can be found in a wealth of modern
critical literature, which has collectively shown that the
canals were vibrant public spaces. As in the land-based
city, the activities that occurred in these spaces were
closely regulated, betraying the intent of private individuals as well as the government in shaping the social,
polictical, and urbanistic fields of the water both locally
and citywide.
The Venetians’ urbanistic relationship with their aquatic
environment began with their desire to transform the
roughly seventy original islands of the central lagoon into
the densely packed urban fabric of Venice visible today.
Exhaustively reconstructed by Elizabeth Crouzet-Pavan,4
this laborious process reached its zenith between the
eleventh and mid-fourteenth centuries. Initially, secular
and ecclesiastical vicini (landowners) vigorously drained,
dredged, and filled marshes and piscinas (stagnant pools of
water) through their own initiative and at their own
expense. At the forefront of this ambitious land reclama-
2
tion were the religious orders. The Benedictines in the
sestiere (district) of Dorsoduro, the Franciscans in San
Polo, and the Dominicans in Castello all launched largescale reclamation campaigns in their respective parishes.
As each island was enlarged and its embankments shored
up, the land and aquatic-based zones of the city took
shape simultaneously. Even though some large waterways
like the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal largely
retained their natural contours, new calli and rii (canals)
were created and pre-existing ones filled, redirected, and
narrowed, their circuitous courses generally dictated by
the uneven pressures of urbanistic expansion swelling
outward from each island center.5 By around 1346, when
Venice was mapped in the Chronologia magna, the city
had largely coalesced into the present landmass (fig. 2).6
Venice’s formation was not wholly the result of private
enterprise, however. In the thirteenth century, the communal government began taking an active role in urbanistic projects. Capitalizing on and encouraging private
growth, authorities charged residents licensing fees to
conduct reclamation while providing financial incentives
to eliminate swamps or piscinas that obstructed further
development.7 In some cases, the government also organized such projects. One of the largest undertakings was
the creation of the Giudecca Nuova, the eastern half of
the present island of Giudecca.8 The Great Council
began apportioning lots to monasteries and individual
vicini around 1328, after which time the island was
extended roughly to its current position adjacent to the
island of San Giorgio. Another governmental initiative
was the formation of councils to oversee the water. The
earliest dates to 1224, when a document mentions two
officials “apositi pro ripis et pro viis publicis et pro viis
de canali.”9 In 1282, this and several other groups were
consolidated into the judicial body of the Giudici del
Piovego, which was charged with regulating reclamation
efforts and maintaining public rights of way on land and
water.10 Its duties included dredging and clearing canals
of silt, enforcing uniform building lines,11 and preventing
the erection of structures that might impede boat traffic.12
In 1501, these responsibilities fell to the newly constituted Magistrato alle Acque, an organization that supervised numerous smaller councils.13 The most powerful of
these subsidiary bodies was the Savi ed Esecutori alle
Acque, which was originally composed of three savi
(wise men) but was augmented by fifteen senators in
1505 to combat the increasing amount of silt filtering
into the lagoon from its mainland tributaries (fig. 3). In
addition, this council took control of the day-to-day
2 Plan of Venice, ca. 1346, from the Chronologia magna, redrawn from a twelfth-century original, Biblioteca
Marciana, Venice
maintenance of the canals, from cleaning them of reported
“filth” to overseeing commercial activities, such as loading
and unloading merchandise at busy fondamente (quaysides).14 The lasting authority of this body is demonstrated by the case of the patrician Fillippo Bembo, who
as late as 1596 had to ask its permission to enlarge the
exterior staircase of his palace on the Grand Canal.15
It is in the fifteenth and sixteenth-century records of
the Savi ed Esecutori that the first official designations
of the canals as “aqua publica” and “aqua comuna” are
found.16 That said, there can be little doubt that the
waterways were public long before that time. Not only
do the endeavors of the early vicini and the Piovego
suggest that citizens freely occupied the water in the
medieval period but this much can be gleaned from
contemporary literary sources. In the words of the
Venetian chronicler Martino da Canal, writing in the
third quarter of the thirteenth century, “when the citi-
3
3
Cristoforo Sabbadino, Plan of Venice, 1557, Savi ed Esecutori alle Acque, Laguna 14, Archivio di Stato, Venice
zens find themselves in the squares, they can return
home by land or by water.”17 As on land-based streets,
however, public access to canals could be temporarily
restricted during ceremonial occasions. In the fourteenth
century, for example, the State passed numerous laws
prohibiting private boats on the Grand Canal from
crowding and proceeding ahead of the water procession
of the Festival of the Twelve Marys.18
On these public waters, residents from all socioeconomic categories engaged in a variety of pursuits.19 The
popolani, who accounted for roughly ninety percent of
the population and included merchants, fishermen, artisans, shopkeepers, and unskilled laborers, occupied the
canals on a daily basis. Much of their travel was work-
4
related, consisting of deliveries to Rialto or shops elsewhere in the city in their own boats (fig. 4). They also
navigated the canals in as many as thirty-seven traghetti,
or gondolas, that ferried people from one specified location to another.20 In his De origine, situ et magistratibus
urbis Venetae (1493–1530), the Venetian patrician Marin
Sanudo identified three such services: traghetti per guadagnar, or traghetti for hire; traghetti da viaggio, which shuttled
people to and from the mainland; and traghetti da bagatin,
which conveyed people across the Grand Canal and the
Giudecca Canal.21 The cost of these vessels was probably
based on distance. It is known from Vecellio, at least, that
a short ride across the Grand Canal was particularly
economical (as it still is today). Continuing his promo-
tion of the Venetian gondola in his De gli habiti . . . , the
author commented that “there are so many ferry stations
that the poor with only a bagattino [low-value Venetian
coin] can be ferried from one side of the Grand Canal
to the other.”22
According to the Friulian ambassador Cornelio
Frangipane in his In Laude di Venezia (1550), the popolani
also found time on the water for relaxation:
[In Venice] there are countless pleasures, delights, and
conveniences, most incomparable of which are the
boats, in which an elderly person, a weakling, and a
courier can easily deliver goods to their shops, wherever they are located in the city; . . . one can read and
sleep in [one’s] boat, and operate it in any number of
ways. Only in Venice are there these marvelous and
peculiar things.23
In addition to quickly and effortlessly delivering goods,
people read and slept in their marvelous boats.24 At the
same time, these vessels made the canals accessible to
people from all walks of life; whether young or old,
strong or weak, one benefitted from the conveniences of
the water.
People on the canals could also be unruly, requiring
the government to enforce a code of conduct. As Dennis
Romano has shown,25 consistent action was taken against
the questionable etiquette of gondoliers. Often congregating in large numbers outside water entrances, they had
a reputation for rowdiness, vulgar language, and lewd
behavior, which by one account included making obscene
gestures at women with their oars.26 In the 1540s, censors
promulgated laws forbidding gondoliers to use offensive
language, gather in groups of four or more, and carry
weapons, although the armed oarsmen in Jost Amman’s
contemporary Procession of the Doge to the Bucintoro on
Ascension Day might suggest the ineffectiveness of such
legislation (fig. 5).27
Despite their disorderly behavior, gondoliers chauffeured the most affluent members of Venetian society
around the city. These individuals included cittadini, who
were mostly merchants and secretaries of the Great
Council, and zentilhuomini (gentlemen), or hereditary
members of the Great Council and the Senate.28 Their
privileged form of travel was described by Sanudo:
There are two ways of getting about in Venice: by foot,
on the dry land, and by boat. Certain boats are made
pitch black and beautiful in shape; they are rowed by
Saracen negroes or other servants who know how to
4 Eurich Reüwich, Civitas Veneciarum (detail), in Bernhard von
Breydenbach, Illustrations de Opusculum sanctorum peregrinationum
ad spulcrum Christi venerandum (Mainz, 1486), woodcut,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
row them. Mostly they are rowed with one oar, though
Venetian patricians and senators and ladies are usually
rowed with two oars. In summer the cabins have a high
covering to keep off the sun, and a broad one in winter
to keep off the rain; the high ones are of satin, and the
low sort green or purple. There is such an infinite
number of boats that they cannot be counted; no one
knows the total. On the Grand Canal and in the rii
one sees such a continual movement of boats that in
a way it is a marvel. There is easily room on them for
four people, comfortably seated within. The basic cost
of one of these boats is 15 ducats, but ornaments are
always required, either dolphins or other things, so that
it is a great expense, costing more than a horse.29
The elevated status of the Venetian was signified by the
gondola, with the ethnicity and number of its gondoliers
providing additional distinction (fig. 7). Similarly, people
embellished their gondolas with a variety of extravagant
accoutrements to distinguish their station. This practice
was explained in greater detail by Vecellio:
5
5 Jost Amman, Procession of the Doge to the Bucintoro on Ascension Day, with a View of Venice (detail), ca. 1565, woodcut,
British Museum, London
The nobles of Venice . . . and other citizens and rich
or prosperous people, usually have their own boats or
gondolas, with various servants; one of them, who
controls the whole boat, is called the Fante di poppa
(the sternman), and the other is called the Fante di
mezzo (mid-boatman). He most often attends to other
services for his master, while the first one, whose only
task is to care for the boat, cleans, repairs, and readies
it whenever and however it is needed. He also has the
job of polishing the delfini, which are the pieces of
ironwork at the prow and the stern of the boat, so
shiny that they look like silver, and of taking off and
putting on the felce, which is the canopy of rascia or
serge; and also of seeing to the seats, which are usually
made of wood although many people cover them with
padded leather stuffed like cushions. The cover that we
have called the felce is attached with white silk ropes
to the benches and forms an arch over the boat; the
whole boat is black, except when gentlemen on pleasure jaunts cover the benches and prows of their boats
with beautiful carpets.30
Ornamentation might include polished delfini, cushioned
seats, and different types of felci. Formed by two wooden
arches connected by thin rods, these canopies were
6
draped with satin, rascia (wool), or serge (twill or silk
fabric), all richly colored. As in the urbanism and social
decorum of the water, however, this decoration was
monitored by the government. In the mid-sixteenth
century, for instance, the Magistrato alle Pompe discouraged excessive displays of wealth on gondolas with sumptuary legislation. One law enacted in 1562 carried a fine
for felci with painted, gilded, or carved supports.31
Felci shaped the visual environment of the water in
other ways. In addition to providing decoration, they
framed the visual field of the spectators below them.
Depending on the season or presumably the will of the
passenger, they could be lowered to provide a semiprivate space from which to inspect one’s surroundings.
One observation by Frangipane is particularly telling:
“one can make good time in the canals, and travel while
seeing and recognizing other people without being seen
or recognized [oneself].” His remark immediately conjures up an image of noblemen or women stealing furtive
glances at fellow waterborne spectators from behind their
vessels’ protective canopies. In his De gli habiti . . . , in
fact, Vecellio illustrated the brides of Venice, who customarily traveled the city in gondolas, in exactly this way
(fig. 6).32 If drawn down on all sides to enclose the boat
entirely, moreover, felci could provide absolute privacy.
This option may have been chosen by numerous highranking visitors who are designated in the ceremonial
records as having arrived in the city “incognito.”33
Alternatively, these awnings could be elevated or taken
off completely. As depicted in multiple late fifteenthcentury paintings by Vittore Carpaccio, the passengers of
gondolas enjoyed both near and distant views of their
surrounding environment (figs. 7 and 8).
In this domain, however, spectators gazed at much
more than their fellow travelers and the decorations of
their gondolas. As many commentators have shown,34
and as will be discussed in later chapters, waterborne
viewers were joined on ceremonial occasions by elaborate ephemeral constructions and lavishly ornamented
boats. On a daily basis, furthermore, their visual environ-
top 6 Cesare Vecellio, The Clothing of Boatmen and the Comfort
of their Boats, De gli habiti antichi et moderni . . . (Venice, 1590),
fol. 122
bottom left 7 Vittore Carpaccio, The Miracle of the True Cross:
The Healing of the Possessed Boy, 1494, oil on canvas, Galleria
dell’Accademia, Venice
bottom right 8 Vittore Carpaccio, The Reception of the English
Ambassadors (detail), 1495–1500, tempera on canvas, Galleria
dell’Accademia, Venice
7
now would like to know is what these differences are,
precisely, and how they can add to our understanding of
the lagoon’s distinctive urban environment.
The Spatiovisual Conditions of the Waterways
9 Scuola Grande di San Marco, completed by Mauro Codussi,
ca. 1490, view from the Rio dei Mendicanti
ment was dominated by architecture. Indeed, the vast
majority of the city’s most acclaimed buildings can either
be seen from or are located directly on the water (fig. 9).
Similar to the campi and the calli, then, the canals were
public spaces within the city center, urban environments
of habitual social and visual exchange whose urban formation, maintenance, and visual field were the result of
careful planning in the public and private spheres. At the
same time, the canals are in many ways different from
their contiguous land-based spaces; walking through a
campo is not the same as floating along a canal. What we
8
Recent scholarship on the early modern Italian city has
shown that urban planners (here encompassing everyone
from builders to architects and patrons) opportunistically
and on an incremental basis developed reasoned urbanistic practices to exhibit their buildings to viewers in
principal squares and streets.35 Although invariably mathematical in theory, these practices differed according to
the pre-existing conditions of their local environment,
such as previous architectural structures, ancient street
networks, and geographical features, including rivers,
escarpments, cliffs, and plateaus.36 In the most complex
examples, notably those discussed in Florence by Marvin
Trachtenberg, planners negotiated their surrounding
topography to fashion ideal views of monumental architecture.37 In creating the Piazza della Signoria and the
scenographic framework of the Palazzo Vecchio, they had
to contend with the divergently aligned streets along
the Arno River to the south and the Roman street grid
to the north. Following the Arno along the southern
border of the piazza and splitting the difference, so to
speak, between the Arno and centurion plan to the north
(fig. 10), planners were able to construct a perspectival
view of the Palazzo Vecchio. The northwest corner of
the square was extended to a point equal to the height
of the palace tower, which was fortuitously located at
the intersection of the piazza and the Via dei Calzaiuoli,
the main artery connecting the space to the religious
center of the city. The corner was then squared, establishing a 90-degree horizontal viewing angle of the
palace and a 45-degree vertical viewing angle of its tower
from that pivotal junction (fig. 11). Arriving in the piazza
and standing at or near the vertex of those angles, spectators were presented with a privileged view of the
Florentine governmental palace.
On the canals of Venice, too, the environment influenced urbanistic practice. But although one can isolate
similarities between the canals and certain land-based
spaces (especially in Venice), their topography was largely
different. In addition to being urban spaces that contained pre-existing architectural structures and transportation networks, the canals were geographic features that
exhibited natural spatial, visual, climatic, temporal, expe-
left 10 Plan of Piazza della Signoria, Florence, illustrating
divergence of ancient Roman street grid and Arno River, from
Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, 1997, fig. 132
right 11 Horizontal and vertical viewing angles of the Palazzo
Vecchio, Florence, from Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the
Eye, 1997, fig. 227
riential, and conceptual properties, hereafter referred to
collectively as spatiovisual conditions.38
Perhaps the most unusual spatiovisual quality of the
Venetian waterways is their spatial form, which tends to
be conceptualized differently today from in the past. For
early modern Venetians,39 “Venice” encompassed the
lagoon as well as the city proper. This body of water was
occupied daily by fishermen, salt farmers,40 and people
traveling to and from the mainland. It also contained
some of the city’s most venerable monasteries,41 several
of which included innovative buildings. San Francesco
del Deserto in the northern lagoon is where Saint Mark
purportedly had his vision that Venice would be his final
resting place;42 San Michele in Isola, also to the north,
is the first Renaissance church in Venice.43
Traveling through this space, spectators navigated a
visual environment unlike those in other centers. What
is perhaps most striking is its vastness. Spanning approximately 550 square kilometers, it affords views toward the
horizon in every direction (fig. 12). The openness of the
lagoon also exposes it to the mercurial weather patterns
of the Adriatic Sea. On a clear day, the city proper can
be seen from roughly six to eight kilometers, while on
an overcast day it is invisible from close range (figs. 13
and 14). A similar situation holds true within the main
island. Although the Grand Canal may be regarded as an
“aqueous street,” this natural waterway is far wider than
its mainland counterparts. As a result, spectators are provided unusually broad vistas through dense city fabric,
which constantly change with the winding course of the
waterway (fig. 16). This feature of the environment was
praised by Vecellio, who could have been referring to the
Grand Canal when he lauded the site of Venice for the
“sweeping panorama of its many splendid palaces.”44 On
the Bacino (or Bay of) San Marco, the nucleus of Venetian
aquatic space roughly circumscribed by the Piazzetta to
the north, the island of San Giorgio to the east, the
Giudecca to the south, and the Punta della Dogana (or
customs house) to the west, the viewer is similarly offered
sweeping views of the Venetian cityscape (fig. 17). As in
the lagoon, moreover, one’s visibility on these interior
waterways could vary drastically depending on weather.
Within the Bacino, for example, winter fog can even
limit one’s view of the Piazzetta (fig. 15).
In comparison with these expansive waterways, the rii
of the city center are exceedingly narrow. Meandering
through the main island, they offer a more intimate
spatial experience (fig. 18). Protected from the wind that
often whips across the lagoon, they are much quieter,
recalling the image of people reading and sleeping in
9
their boats sketched by Frangipane. Also worth mentioning is the transition between these rii and the Bacino,
Grand Canal, and lagoon. Famously, there was no wall
around the main island that isolated it from the lagoon;
the channels of the lagoon coursed through the city
proper and the canals of the city proper flowed into the
lagoon (see fig. 3). Traveling between these two domains,
one often undergoes drastic, sudden spatial reversals. The
experience may be compared to entering a square from
an incoming street but the transition can be far more
extreme. If one filters into the Bacino or lagoon from a
small rio, for instance, the progression can be from claustrophobic to seemingly infinite.
The canals also exhibit unusually dynamic visual properties. Objects in the environment are reflected in the
surface of the water and, conversely, the water refracts
sunlight onto those objects (fig. 19). As Paul Hills has
observed,45 the light and color of reflections differ
according to time of day and weather. Under the clear
blue sky of midday, the surface of the water appears
glassy and slick, the variegated colors of its reflections
constantly contracting and expanding with the undulation of the waves (fig. 20). After a storm, the water turns
opaque and green (fig. 21). This fluctuation of the visual
environment is further stimulated by the perpetual move-
left top 12 View of the Venetian lagoon, looking south
left center 13 View of Venice from the lagoon on a clear day
left bottom 14 View of Venice from the lagoon on an
overcast day
15 View of the Piazzetta on a foggy day in January
10
16 View of the Grand Canal
17 View of the Bacino San Marco
18 View on the Rio di San Zulian
ment of the water, which includes not only its surface
but its volume. As Marc’Antonio Sabellico remarked in
his Del sito di Venezia città (1502): “What is even more
wonderful [than the canals themselves] is when the
waters recede every six hours, and change the aspect of
the place, such that if you navigate the canals . . . and
everything in every place is discovered, in a moment it
will be covered by the water.”46 The tide therefore regularly conceals and reveals the physical form of the city,
literally changing its appearance by the hour.47 The visibility of the sculpted vegetal motif along the base of the
late fifteenth-century Palazzo Gussoni on the Rio della
Fava, for example, depends entirely on when the viewer
happens to be floating past it (fig. 22).
The same perpetual movement characterizes the spectator on the water. Unlike pedestrians in a piazza, who
12
can theoretically stop at will, waterborne spectators travel
in hydrokinetic motion. Although certain viewers on the
mainland might have temporarily experienced this sensation when riding a horse or other conveyance, all
viewers on the Venetian waterways were in constant flux,
whether rich or poor or on the Grand Canal or a small
rio.48 Consequently, objects in the visual field are perceived in reciprocal motion, their speed varying according to their proximity to and the speed of the boat (the
closer the moving viewer is to the stationary object, the
quicker is the perceived motion of that object49). Also
unlike pedestrians walking in a piazza, though a bit like
passengers of certain land-borne modes of transportation, passengers on the Venetian waterways can enjoy an
uninterrupted visual engagement with their surroundings. Rowed through the canals in a seated position, they
19 Reflections on the Grand Canal
20 Reflections on a canal
21 Reflections on a canal after a storm
22 Pietro Lombardo, Palazzo Gussoni, 1481, base at high and
low tide, Rio della Fava
are freed from the peripheral distractions and somatic
self-awareness of walking and consequently are often
visually absorbed in their surrounding environment (fig.
23). This is the condition that partly enabled Vecellio’s
hypothetical visitors to witness the sight “of many beautiful palaces” in the middle of the water upon arriving
in the city.
Finally, water, in Venice and elsewhere, contains a
peculiar conceptual dimension. It possesses an innate
metaphorical richness whose countless associations, from
purity to cleanliness, fertility to the cycle of life, the raw
power of nature to heroic journeys, and on and on, have
been traced through the millennia.50 Having a public
space composed of this highly charged element was
advantageous for an early modern city. To be sure, many
public spaces in pre-modern Europe contained meanings; yet the referent of those meanings resided predominantly in the buildings surrounding the spaces and
14
in the memory of the events that occurred in them.
In addition to these architectural and event-oriented
sources, the waterways of Venice carried a boundless
store of meanings in their material substance. The moment
the settlers of Venice rowed into the lagoon, they entered
an environment already charged with meanings and
naturally disposed to producing new ones. Once they
began formulating their civic identity, they were free to
adapt, modify, or invent associations with the water as
they saw fit.
The waterways of Venice are therefore central to what
is increasingly being defined as a “psycho-spatial” or
“somaesthetic” urban experience, in which the perceptual faculties of the viewer turn on a mind–body connection.51 Although some urban experiences on land can
produce similar effects,52 the combined spatiovisual
appurtenances of the canals structure a form of spectatorship particular to and most intensely felt on the water.
As viewers navigated Venice, the space, atmosphere,
reflective surface, movement, and conceptual richness of
the canals, as well as their own somatic sense of fluid
motion and visual attention, fundamentally shaped their
perceptions of the city. Of course, the Venetians and their
visitors did not employ this terminology to describe their
aquatic space. However, as has been shown and will
continue to be in the following chapters, they not only
articulated these interrelated phenomena but also celebrated their contrast with lived experience on the mainland (and often in relation to architecture). They were
highly sensitive to the conditions of their lagoon and
how they could be exploited for the purpose of civic
image-making. Then as now, they capitalized on the
novelty of their aquatic setting in presenting their city
to the world.
An Environmental Urbanism
This book proposes that the Venetians designed the
architectural and ceremonial environment of their waterways in concert with these spatiovisual conditions, operating within the same sphere of agency that structured
the political, social, and urbanistic framework of the
space. Around the turn of the thirteenth century, when
they began devoting their aesthetic energies to waterfront façades more fully,53 Venetian architectural planners
can be seen treating their aquatic domain as an asset in
the project of civic self-definition.54 Like their counterparts on the mainland, they did not codify their practices
23 Vittore Carpaccio, The Miracle of the True Cross: The Healing of the Possessed Boy, 1494 (detail of fig. 7)
in written texts but worked pragmatically and incrementally, constantly adapting to new situations and refining
their methods. However, their environment encouraged
different urbanistic approaches. As the city took shape in
the medieval and early modern periods, planners of elaborate waterfront buildings designed their façades in relation to the natural and artificial conditions of their
aqueous sites. There are some instances where the desire
for architectural display may have prompted the modification of the waterways but spatial alteration for the
purpose of architectural display, which was common on
the mainland, was comparatively rare. As will be seen,
moreover, even though practices became increasingly
mathematical in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
they were still keyed to the spatiovisual properties of the
water. Rather than ignore these stimulating properties,
Venetian planners used them to produce sensational
effects. Through measured urbanistic practices, they took
advantage of their visitors’ unusual sense of space, movement, and visual attention to heighten the natural wonder
of their aquatic setting.
In the broadest sense, the intention of this “environmental urbanism” was to overwhelm the viewer.
Sentiments of awe, disbelief, and delight can be traced
throughout the literary reception of Venice.55 Yet, as I shall
argue, the Venetians were not content simply to impress
visitors. A close examination of their water-oriented
urbanism in relation to the cultural discourse on their
aquatic setting suggests that they deliberately attempted
to blur the line between architecture and nature. In this
way, they built a city that was both natural and made, real
yet illusory, a reflection of their water-related identity.
15
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Yale University Press • New Haven and London
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