Masks

I'm not Catholic and I don't live in New Orleans, so Mardi Gras has always remained a mystery to me.  That said, I once worked with a very bubbly Catholic woman who made giving up something for Lent sound so fun that I sacrificed meat one year just to keep her company.  I told you about her before.    But I'm not writing so much about Lent just now as about masks.   

In her book, Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, the author talks about Venice under the heading 'Masquarades'.  She says that in the 1700s it was the habit of the nobles of that city to go out disguised for about half the year - between early October through Lent.  

 

The costume of the upper classes included a black capelet, black tricorn hat and a white half mask.  Some women chose a moretta, a black oval mask which they kept in place by clinching a button on the mask between their teeth; this mask and their silence was thought to be even more disturbing.  Children were frightened of these creatures.  The nobility found their anonymity to be quite freeing.  

However, according to two other sources, the wearing of masks dates back to the 1200's.  

 

Another tells that Carnival (another term for  the celebrations preceding Lent)   

is likely an English corruption of carne vale (Late Latin, literally "farewell to meat"), the name Venetians gave to pre-Lenten revelry as early as 1092.

Apparently, over the years things got ever more decadent. Venice with it's incredible wealth and unique appearance attracted travelers from all over the world.  Gambling and sex could be found everywhere; after all, everyone was anonymous.  [Never mind anonymous sex, how did one collect one's gambling debts?]  Women's clothing became more revealing.  Even nuns and monks are said to have joined in.  Rome turned a blind eye so long as the money kept coming in.  

In the late 1700s, thanks to Napoleon, Venice found itself under the thumb of Austria, their neighbours to the East.  Under the Austrians the whole mask-wearing and anonymous partying  was discouraged.  

Things apparently calmed down a bit, particularly as Venice no longer had a monopoly on trade from the east.  By then, however, masked balls had become popular in the rest of Europe and even amongst the colonials of the US.

Mask wearing continued in Venice until the 1930's when Mussolini banned the practice altogether.  In 1951, a wealthy art collector held a masked ball and in 1979 Venice revived it's Carnival.

So, being neither Catholic nor in a place that celebrates Mardi Gras (the most exciting thing they do here is make pancakes), why did I decide to write about masks and all?  So I could show you these photos I took in Venice, of course!

Intensive Night!

I saw this poster in Verona and it struck me in the face.  I can't recall seeing anything remotely similar -- any advert selling a beauty product to men, not like this -- in the UK.  According to Toad, cosmetics for men have definitely arrived in the US.

Given what women have done to themselves over the centuries in the name of beauty,  I was thinking it's about time!  I had to get home to Google translate before I could fully appreciate the ad:

Stomach and Abdomen 

Intensive Night

Reduces circumference while you sleep in 4 weeks' treatment

I'm sure it really works...aren't you?

Murano

Venetian glass is a big deal 

and it is beautiful.   

 

There are of course many shops selling glass objects.  

Bill reckoned the American eagle was aimed at a very specific market.

We spent out last day at Venice on the island of Murano.

View Larger Map

We visited a glass museum where photos were not allowed.  

 

Someone sneaked a few anyhow (and you know what a timid rule-follower I am...).  

 

 

I settled for jotting down names from the information panels throughout the displays, eg

 

Guiseppe Briati

Osvaldo Brussa

Antonio Mota

Raffaello

Marcantonio Raimondi

There are some wonderful examples of beautiful glass objects here (v. tempting...)  

 

The history of glass making at Murano is beautifully explained here (along with a lot of other beautiful and interesting things to see).  I scribbled some notes at the museum but other than something about stiff competition with Bohemian glass (more popular because it was thicker and could be more easily engraved with the newer technology, wheels instead of diamonds) and the development of lattimo (milk glass), my notes don't make a great deal of sense, so this link is a far better bet.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what some of the glass shapes were as there were a huge variety of oil lamps.  One could either be sat on a table or hung by a removable screw on (glass) hook at the top.  

There was a neat cruet set for vinegar, oil, salt (practically my favourite food groups) and a candle holder.

"Chandeliers in the wind" used glass shapes like ribbons drifting in a breeze.

We saw tiny hollow tubes which were then cut into beads.  Glass beads have weight and substances that plastic simply can't match.  

As with all the museums we visited, we browsed the book and gift shop.  I noticed that a number of the coffee table books about glass art were by female authors, surname Barquier, another name prevalent amongst glass makers.  

 

Bill found a book about where to eat in Venice and noted the address of a restaurant he'd read about previously, call Vesuvio.  

Apparently it's the last restaurant in Venice with a real wood-burning pizza oven.  We left the book, but had dinner there that evening.  Not sure I fully appreciated the subtle difference between a pizza cooked in a "real" oven, but there you are.

When we'd finished at the museum we shopped for a glass souvenir.  Bill ended up with cuff links.  I bought Christmas gifts.  

 

We enjoyed wandering the relatively quiet streets in Murano. 

We found a supermarket and found packaged salads complete with oil, vinegar, salt and plastic cutlery. Bread, sausage and salad served as a satisfying lunch.

We sat in one of the shaded porticoes of this church, next to this bridge.  

Somewhere in the distance a toothless old man played an accordion and when we found him Bill added some money to his hat for 'making his lunch even more perfect.'

 

Evening in Venice

We fell into the habit of going walkabout after our evening meal.  

 

This was for several reasons.  

One was that the warm evenings were too delicious to miss.
  

Another was to walk off some of the huge amounts of food we consumed.  

Finally, places change into somewhere else after sunset.  


 

There are fewer people about. 

 

It seemed to me that more of the locals were out and about. 

The quality of the light makes everything seem a bit surreal, or more cozy or sometimes eerie.  

Bill likes to explore the funny little alleys and closes.  



I thought they had amazing names:  
 
 

Corte Bragadin, Campielo dei Fiori, Sotoportego Zulian.  Who thinks up such words?




Sometimes we could get just a glimpse of how Venetians lived, the light shining out of windows and doorways showing just a bit of decor inside. 

I do this at home as well.  As the nights draw in I'm often running in the posher streets, hoping the residents will have forgotten to close the curtains just yet, gawping at the grand interiors on display.  



I've tripped up more than once not watching where I'm going.





I did think watching one's step was a good idea, mind, having found this amazing little street that just ends in...canal. 
I wonder how many people have taken just that one step too far!

 Do the locals laugh when they hear a splash?
 

More Venice

I'm sure it's impossible to share adequately about Venice, but I'm going to try to hit the highlights of what we saw.  I know we missed a good deal of what was on offer and I hope we'll go back one day.  The man at the Hotel Ariel Silva wanted us to know that we could rent an apartment not far from the hotel; the nightly charge for an apartment that sleeps 6 is the same as for the small hotel room.  (On the other hand I see we might have done better had we known to book directly with his hotel...see, I just saved you loads of money right there).  

So let's start with the Piazza de San Marco (I have to be careful not to type pizza!).  There is found the Doge's Palace and the Bridge of Sighs.  I heard something about the Bridge of Sighs sometime when I was a child and the name stayed with me, but I'd no idea where or what it was until we came to see the real thing. 

My first glimpse of the Doge's Palace looked like fairyland to me.   Once inside, we started taking photos until we saw the sign that we couldn't.  I did notice that many people took photos anyhow and sat on benches where signs said not to and that the guards were either texting on their phones or asleep (!).  

I was sad not to be able to take photos of the 42 pillars with ornate capitals that had been renovated and rehouses.  It sounds dead boring, but the sculptures (of the hats associated with the various trades, the 7 sins, the zodiac symbols, the races of man, etc) were lovely especially considering the material of the pillars looked like concrete (but it was marble).  

Perhaps they thought we'd be more likely to buy a tourist book as a memento.  After careful consideration, we did not; this is partly a frugal choice and partly to do with limited packing space.   I was counting on the internet to help me out and I'm happy with my choice.  If you want to see the inside of the Palace without paying the entry fee or punishing your poor feet, check this out (thank you, Wikipedia!).  The references at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry are all spectacular and worth seeing without all those pesky tourists.

If you were actually interested, you could find more about Doges, but just from what I recall a Doge was  head administrator of the city, elected by a panel of the very wealthy members of a council.  The Doge had very little real authority, but perhaps quite a lot of influence. 

Strangely, once elected he had to spend the rest of his life in the Palace, only going out if accompanied by something like 8 council members.   The Palace is a combination of the legislative and judicial functions of government and perhaps the Doge could be compared to a President, or maybe a President-Practically-in- Prison (come to think of it, we've had a few of those).

There were 76 Doges over roughly 1,000 year's time and all their pictures, bar one, appear in the huge great senate hall (the largest in Europe) in the Palace; a black drape is painted over his allocated space.  He was convicted of treason against the city of Venice, and condemned to "damnatio memoriae", removal from remembrance   (Which is what I do with the people I have most detested in my life - pretend they never existed). 

From the recorded lecture we got as we dutifully drifted from room to room (it's a BIG place) it sounded as though he was the only bad apple in the bunch, but apparently more than one got into hot water during their lifetime term.   Doges lasted up until the time of Napoleon, whose name crept up a lot on this trip, in Verona, Venice and elsewhere.   There were at least two significant paintings the recording told us about that once belonged to the Doge's Palace but are now - thanks to Napoleon helping himself - found in The Louvre.

An important symbol in Venice is the Lion of St. Mark.  From what I gathered, St Mark visited Venice and there was a prophecy that he would return.  However he died in Alexandria.  Some Venetian men stole St Mark's body from the Turks and buried him in Venice and so the prophecy came true.  The paintings show the lion as the symbol of the strength and power of Venice, his forefeet on the land and his hind feet in the sea.  Venezia is always represented as a woman, dripping with jewels and surrounded by symbols of her wealth.  Neptune generally figures large somewhere in there, given the source of Venetian wealth was the sea.

As it happens there was a new prison built next to the Palace, the first purpose-built prison, so they say.  The Bridge of Sighs, or 'Ponte dei Sospiri' in Italian (doesn't 'sospiri' just sound like a sigh?), is what connects the Palace with the prison and was so named by Lord Byron (a good friend of my namesake).  It underlines the Palace as more of an administrative building, like having police holding cells next door to the courthouse.   I would guess they all heave a sigh when they realise they are about to be locked up.  

I can't won't show you my photo of the Bridge of Sighs.  You'll have to see it here instead.  This is because it was all covered up with an advert (over scaffolding, I suppose, but who knows?) and I'm not going to help the advertisers out here.   I've never heard of them and I'm sure you can live without their product; I have.

[Warning:  more pictures follow than you probably care to see!  On the other hand, if you wish, you can click to make them larger...]

By the time we finished at the Doge's Palace, I didn't care that our ticket entitled us to see 3 other museums or some such.  

I was sighing to sit down.  

So we hopped on a vaparetto (having bought a 36-hour ticket) and rode all the way around the circuit, both merrily snapping pictures of everything at least three times.  

 It all seemed so magic, I couldn't help but try to capture it.  The day I begin to be blase about travel is the day I'm going to stay home.

You'll no doubt be bored to tears by the photos, but I'm certain I will long enjoy reviewing them.   I do love my digital technology!

Mind, to take these we insinuated ourselves onto the back of the boat and stood for a while, as all the seats back there were taken.   We did this in spite of the fact there were plenty of seats inside.

 
Eventually the back-of-the-boat seats were vacated, so it was a good move for taking photos, even if I thought it was a bit pushy at the time.  

On the back of that boat we met a nice young American  couple there for only about 4 days. 

She was originally from Denver.  

He said he was originally from Kansas, though he graduated from high school in  Claremore, Oklahoma.  (Who says it's not a small world?)

She had a great idea of taking photos of architectural details to make into a calendar as a gift for his has-everything-hard-to-buy-for grandmother. 

I suggested  street lights or  doors.  (Remember those?)

 The photos from the boat speak for themselves.  

I thought the ground floor gardens that faced onto the Grand Canal must be a very sumptuous use of space. 

Either that or the former building has completely caved and no one in their right mind would rebuild in this location given global warming, etc.

We did not visit the Peggy Guggenheim museum, neither of us being major fans of Modern Art.  

That said, Bill laughed when I 'interpreted' this piece to be

"... one definition of an Italian man's happiness:  a chair and a packet of fags..."

(You do know that 'fags' are what Brits call cigarettes?)  There were any number of times on this trip when an available chair contributed majorly to my own happiness. 

Bill fell in love with any number of old fashioned wooden boats.  

I agree that they are far more elegant than the plastic looking jobs.


Strangely, upon our return we learned that a friend in the running club, Terry, actually lived in Venice for three months, when he was a student.  

He's never mentioned this before and every time we learn something else about his amazing life, we're convinced he needs to write his memoirs...or maybe just a blog?