Close Your Eyes + Think Of Venice

07 Nov 2024

Some days are daydream days. How can we get away – if not in reality, at least in our minds? One particularly stunning destination for a flight-free fantasm? Venice.

Nobel Prize-winning poet, Joseph Brodsky (1940- 1996) – after ‘scanning this city’s face for seventeen winters’ – has written about his real life experiences in: Watermark. An Essay on Venice.

As he arrives:

… ‘The backdrop was all in dark silhouettes of church cupolas and rooftops; a bridge arching over a body of water’s black curve, both ends of which were clipped off by infinity. At night, infinity in foreign realms arrives with the last lamppost, and here it was twenty meters away. It was very quiet. A few dimly lit boats now and then prowled about, disturbing with their propellers the reflection of a large neon CINZANO trying to settle on the black oilcloth of the water’s surface. Long before it succeeded, the silence would be restored.’

And later:

… ‘In winter you wake up in this city, especially on Sundays, to the chiming of its innumerable bells, as though behind your gauze curtains a gigantic china tea set were vibrating on a silver tray in the pearl-gray sky. You fling the window open and the room is instantly flooded with this outer, peal-laden haze, which is part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers. No matter what sort of pills, and how many, you’ve got to swallow this morning, you feel it’s not over for you yet…’

How have visual artists captured this magnificent city over the centuries?

Gentile Bellini. Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo. 1500