A birthday in Venice - It's all about ME

To Venice with most of the family to cold sunshine and bright blue skies for my husband’s birthday the week after New Year 2019.  As he said 'It's all about ME!' Extraordinarily in the alarming number of years he has clocked up at the beginning  The rest of the family of course consider themselves old hands almost anywhere in Italy where some have studied history of art or Italian and others been marched forcibly round churches and galleries on the mother led, ice-cream fuelled, cultural holidays of their childhoods and adolescence. of another decade, he had never been to Venice, nor indeed my even older ex-husband who came with us.

This was a trip of two parts, less of the cultural activity for those there for a short weekend before rushing back on Easyjet to work and small children and more for those with an extra day or two to spare.  The husbands were not disappointed, the one in particular by an important visit to Harry’s Bar for the most expensive Bloody Marys or Bellinis available in those iconic surroundings, albeit not a visit to Cipriani’s famous hotel, another landmark from the past, now the Belmont Cipriani; the other by the discovery that Venice really is built on water which, photographic evidence notwithstanding, he had never quite believed.  Well one lives and learns even in old age and he was given the full dose of delightful storytelling Carpaccios in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni if not quite in the Accademia where the St Ursula cycle was ‘in restauro’; of Tintoretto in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which is altogether too much to digest in one short visit, and everywhere else the ‘little dyer’, otherwise recently given back his real name,Jacopo Comin, starred in his home town.

The Giorgone Tempest in the Accademia too, hiding its light under a bushel since it is always so much smaller than expected.  We failed to get to San Zaccaria for one of the greatest Bellini altarpieces but saw others hither and thither, the glorious triptych in the Frari at the third attempt, thwarted previously by Sunday mass and a Monday funeral, and a less well-known Sacra Conversazione altarpiece in a side chapel of the second Franciscan church in Venice, equally vast and less visited San Francesco della Vigna which is full of further treasures including the only confirmed painting by Fra Antonio da Negroponte, a glorious Virgin and Child surrounded by a garden of flowers and birds. Just on the left of the back door of the church, it is easy to walk past in the chilly January gloom and only revealed in all its wonder after scrabbling about for the necessary 50 cents for illumination.  Even then there is almost too much detail for the eye to absorb – definitely one to visit and re-visit like the Carpaccios and the Bellinis, where a resigned looking San Sebastian skewered by the longest arrows is a favourite flanker in a Sacra Conversazione. San Francesco was deserted aside from a burly Franciscan priest presumably in his thermals, sitting at a desk to keep an eye on the postcards for sale and an almost life-sized nativity scene in the nave with kings newly arrived the day after epiphany. 

And we walked our feet off, thank god for the old Clark’s boots that have seen service round India and Central Asia and had to be tucked firmly under the chair in respectable surroundings like Harry’s Bar, and for an equally old but less decrepit down filled coat and a Rialto market acquired fake fur hat of perfect proportions to cover the ears.  On our last day, my husband and I ascended the campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore  to gaze down on Venice spread like a mediaeval map below including a close view of the adjacent and more contemporary huge swimming pool of the Cipriani where I stayed now and then with my grandmother in my adolescence during her annual visit. In those days Venice was still home to human relics of the past who had washed up there in their old ages and included the likes of the Oswald Moseleys; various middle European princes whose family estates had long since disappeared behind the Iron Curtain and odds and ends of aesthetic art historians and writers living in high ceilinged apartments in one or another palazzo up and down the Grand Canal or tucked away in the back streets of the Giudecca.

We ate Sunday lunch in almost the only open trattoria on the Giudecca after a palladian interlude in Santa Maria della Salute and the Redentore, both of which for all their exquisite proportions go a fair way in my view to chilling more than uplifting the spirit in much the same way as does the nearly contemporaneous cavernous space of St Paul’s Cathedral.  Mind you, if that trattoria was no more than it said on the tin, we ate astonishingly well in general, expensive yes but not as exorbitant as present Venetian tourist legend would expect.  Our major festive dinner, a 7 or 8 course feast at the Osteria di Santa Marina was a triumph aside from a minor slip up with cold and heavy raw tuna rolls and involved a delectable pudding, mainly cream and meringue, with the ubiquitous birthday candle for my husband.  Our last two evening were a repeat performance 2 minutes from the Hotel Palazzo Paruta, San Marco, where we all stayed in box like but cosy rooms on a Booking.com deal, at Bacaro da Fiore, not to be confused with the better known and far grander Da Fiore but perfect territory and excellent food and wine for a very short walk on 2 icy winter’s evenings after a heavy sightseeing day. 

On our last day, I was determined to get to one of my favourite churches in the world, Santa Maria Assunta.  Sadly my husband’s train fever got us as far as a walk through those of the glass factories and outlets on the main canal in Murano before we turned back to base for it must be admitted a final and unexpectedly excellent lunch in the Osteria Al Ponte las Patatina in San Polo not far from the Frari where we chanced to sit at a table next to glass artist Amadi Bruno whose shop is more or less next door in Calle Saoneri.  We only resisted the lure of exquisite glass peas in pods and other perfectly modelled and entirely delectable glass fruit and vegetables due to an earlier purchase from Alessandro Merlin another old time artist whose wonderful erotica and fish painted ceramic dishes cost practically nothing to make unique presents and most pleasing souvenirs. Both workshops can be explored online and acquisitions made and posted although it is certainly more fun to visit and choose in person. 

In ideal circumstances for minimum crowds possibly a week further in January might be the absolute ideal for a Venetian visit.  We were there for the Epiphany holiday and the last days of school holidays but still, aside from the Piazza San Marco, streets were generally quiet, no queues for the Accademia, minimal for the basilica itself and the most crowded site was probably the Guggenheim with its narrow passages and tight little rooms.  To his disappointment my husband found it hard to conjure up the image of Maria, Marchesa Casati, former owner of the truncated Palazzo in that rather sterile space surrounded by works of the great surrealist artists that are only in a few cases their best exemplars.  For myself, Alexander Calder’s highly decorative twirly silver bedhead always sticks in the memory as something desirable although I don’t suppose I should reject a number of paintings if they arrived gift wrapped on my doorstep, not least for the stories behind them and their makers.

What did I discover that was new on this occasion?  Well somehow familiar but perhaps from so long ago I had forgotten, the Giandomenico Tiepolo, Tiepolo junior in other words, paintings from the family villa in Zianigo, now exhibited together in special rooms in the Ca’ Rezzonico where the 19^th century collection includes mannerist horrors besides the Canalettos, are a complete joy.  They include the punchinellos with which the painter was obsessed as well as splendid scenes of street entertainments and walks with the family dog or a portrait of him alone.  Venetians it seems were no less fond of the dogs, who appear in one after another painting down the centuries throughout their history, than they are now where one after another winter coated pedigree breed and even the odd wolf, coat unnecessary in their cases, trots proudly through the streets with its owner. 

Beyond the grand palace, we came upon the Evangelical Lutheran Church hidden quietly upstairs in a charming pink early 18th century building, the Scuola dell'Angelo Custode in Campo Santi Apostoli.  Its treasure, avoiding the fluffy baroque altarpiece of the Madonna in Glory by Sebastiano Ricci is a much more satisfactorily austere little portrait of Luther himself from the hand or studio of Lucas Cranach, whether father or son is lost to time.  As a rough balance on the other side of the altar there is a small Titian of Christ, hung as casually apparently on any old nail and presented to the church it is said when it was in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Hidden treasure then indeed.  

Finally at the end of a fifth day, a return to the immaculate airport by the Alilaguna orange line across the lagoon and a flight unmarred by problems until London when to no one’s surprise the Gatwick Express was running late due to problems with a signal.  Our journey out was straightforward too with an OTS minibus collecting everyone from different waypoints, a slight hold up and irritable telephone conversation when the Venetian taxi failed to arrive.  Only slightly delayed we make it to Piazzale Roma by road for the altogether too short Riva taxi trip down the Grand Canal to the Sant’Angelo vaporetto stop to arrive in proper style a couple of hundred yards from the hotel before launching ourselves in search of splendid Cantina de Mori for cicchetti and wine at, I fear, tourist prices, and follow up afternoon cocktails on the terrace of the Gritti Hotel where all unnoticing in the last of the winter afternoon sun, everyone froze to the marrow.