From "Feverish Hedonism" to the Cult of the Picturesque

':..no other nation ever died in such feverish hedonism. Venice whirled towards her fall, in the reign of the 120th doge,"

Jan Morris

The immense wealth accumulated and husbanded by Venice over successive centuries meant that her fall to second, then third class status was protracted and barely acknowledged by visitors until the 18th century. For example the notorious carnival lasted a year and the impoverished nobility ran gaming houses to maintain their customary lifestyles. During this social chapter of abandonment to pleasure in the face of economic and political decline, the gondola changed relatively little, yet socially it became a far more significant object.

The myth of the city perpetuated during the Renaissance became a seductive backcloth for the playground of Europe, but this was gradually to devolve into a myth of an artificial, voluptuous and tragic city in decay, that has contributed to its hold on the civilised imagination.

At the zenith of political and mercantile power, visitors were suitably dazzled, yet by the beginning of the 18th century, the Austrians, by such humiliating neglect helped to create a fantasy of irredeemable decadence. For it is this notion of Venice as an historic theme park, for better or worse, on which the city now survives, with the gondola as one of the key attractions.

There are an abundance of 18th century pictures depicting the gondola in its final stage of development, by vedutisti such as Canaletto (though not always clearly). Since then the dimensions have remained practically the same (see Appendix 2), but the sheer was less pronounced, the hull more slender and it was still perfectly symmetrical. (These dimension were recorded by the Naval architect F.H.af Chapman: Architectura Navalis Mercatoria (1768) who may well have measured a gondola presented by the Venetian Republic to a Northern European court).

[Pictured Below: Canaletto's "Bacino di San Marco" c.1725]

[Pictured Below: Canaletto's "Rio dei Mendicanti" c.1723 -most likely a commision by a Venetian as the area is not one visited by the grand tourist and the painting is a more realistic account.]

As the brothels and gaming salons closed down in the mid 19th century, a revival in interest in the city occurred in the form of "Grand Tourists" who painted incredibly powerful literary portraits of a 'legendary' city to the uninitiated readers. They portrayed the gondola as an ancient form and perpetuated a mythical history of Venice, yet ironically this was the period that the boat was to undergo its most radical changes of the form to date (as described later).

The gondola fitted perfectly with the popular Victorian notion of the beauty of death, especially in a city which was seen to symbolise the decline of the bourgeoisie (the last aria of an operatic death scene).

The gondola was able to manifest a duality, being both "heavenly" and "earthly", as both a "sweet interval of pleasure" (according to an 18th c. French traveller) and a suitable vessel for the final journey of silence. This multi-layered interpretation of the city reflected Neitzsche's "Olympus of Illusion" where "a hundred deep solitudes taken together form the city of Venice- that is her charm. An image for the men of future" (cited by Manfedo Tafuri).

Romantics such as de Musset declared that you cannot say that you've experienced all the mysteries of love if you've never been in a gondola on a moonlit night, whereas others could liken it to a coffin. Extraordinarily two essentials of life: love and death, were both symbolised in one artefact.

[Below: Accounts of the gondola by Grand Tourists-]

"How Light it moves, how softly! Ah, Could life, as does our gondola, Unvexed with quarrels, aims and cares, And moral duties and affairs, Unswaying, noiseless, swift and strong, For ever thus glide along! How lightIy we move, how softly! Ah, Were all things the gondola!"

Clough. Arthur High: extract from 'Dipsychus' (1852), written as an allegory.

"the sight of the gondola itself had shocked me a bit: for despite all I had heard of these conveyances, painted black on black; the actual sight of one was still a rude surprise: when I had to go under the black awning, my first thought was a revival of a fear of cholera that I had previously mastered; it decidedly seemed to me as if I were taking part in a funeral procession during an epidemic."

Wagner, Richard: My life (1870-81) re. an experience in 1857

"the sea, those azure, fathomless depths of crystal mystery on which the swiftness of the poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the kindling surface and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into a dust of gold..."

Byron: 'Marino Faliero' (1820), A reference to Turner's encapsulatlon of Venice.

"That singular conveyance, come down unchanged from ballad times, black as nothing else on earth except a coffin - what pictures it calls up of lawless, silent adventures in the plashing night; or even more, what visions of death itself the bier and solemn rites and last soundless voyage! And has anyone remarked that the seat in such a bark: the arm-chair lacquered in coffin black and dully black-upholsterer, is the softest, most luxurious, most relaxing seat in the world? Aschenbach realised it...... 'the trip will be short,' he thought, and wished it might last forever."

Mann, Thomas (1923): Death In Venice