SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS QUARTERLY
TRAVEL QUARTERLY WINTER 2015
N R E U Y O S J SE EING TH E WORLD IN A N E W LIG HT
When Venice ruled • Donald Sutherland recalls Fellini • The Jewish Ghetto revisited How to row the canals • Frances Mayes explores the lagoon • Made-in-Venice gifts
WINTER 2015 VENICE
Venice
THE GENIUS O
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S OF VENICE The seafaring republic borrowed from cultures far and wide but ultimately created a city that was perfectly unique
I
By Roger Crowley Photographs by Anna Mutter
n t h e C o r r e r M u s e u m at t h e e n d o f
St. Mark’s Square, there’s a spectacular city map. It was produced in 1500 by Jacopo de’Barbari to celebrate the half millennium and the glory of Venice. At nearly three meters (ten feet) long, printed from six giant woodblocks on sheets of paper of unprecedented size, it was also an advertisement for Venice’s supremacy in the newfangled art of printing. The method behind its perspective was equally ingenious: Barbari had surveyed the city from the tops of bell towers to portray it in bird’s-eye view as if from a great height. Houses, churches, ships, the S-shaped meander of the Grand Canal— everything is laid out in magisterial detail, and the whole scene is watched over by Mercury and Neptune, the gods of commerce and the sea.
Previous pages: Venetian Gothic arches of the Doges’ Palace overlook the Piazzetta San Marco as it spills into St. Mark’s Square with the Church of Giorgio di Maggiore in the distance. Right: Neptune rides a sea monster in a detail from Jacopo de’Barbari’s “Grande Pianta Prospettica,” a circa 1500 map of Venice unusual for its bird’s-eye vantage.
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PHOTOGRAPHER ANNA MUTTER IS REPRESENTED BY FOTOGLORIA/LUZ/REDUX; (RIGHT) BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
ESSAY
‘I love its slow dying more than most living’ Recollections of a Venice that by turns terrified and delighted the author
By Donald Sutherland
A
s I sit here, wondering about Venice, a photo of John Bridger, the fellow I played in The Italian Job, crosses the screen in front of me and stops
for a couple of seconds. He’s leaning into a cell phone as he walks across a damp St. Mark’s Square towards the Grand Canal, talking to an imaginary daughter just waking up in California. He’s a day away from dying in a fusillade of lead. If he’d taken a second to look up to his left, I’m sure he would’ve stopped, would’ve sensed a connection, a genetic connection, with another fellow nearly 300 years his senior, the prisoner Giacomo Casanova scrambling across Fellini’s lead-plated roof. Casanova’d just escaped through that lead roof from the dreaded i Piombi, the cells the doge had purpose-built at the other end of il Ponte dei Sospiri, Byron’s Bridge of Sighs. Director Federico Fellini had Sutherland’s eyebrows removed, built out his nose and chin, and partially shaved his forehead for the role of Casanova.
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CREDIT
WINTER 2015 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS 41 EVERETT COLLECTION
Sutherland’s Venetian connection
CASANOVA
DON’T LOOK NOW
Fellini directed Sutherland not to play Italy’s legendary
Sutherland played opposite Julie Christie in the 1973
18th-century lover as a romantic figure but rather “a puppet,
Nicolas Roeg supernatural thriller about a couple whose
not a man, engrossed in his mechanical sexual act.”
lives are shattered by the death of their child.
Standing there in the thrall of Casanova,
bacterium in the Danube and for a few seconds it
Bridger might have felt a passing zephyr lift up the
killed me. Standing behind my right shoulder, I’d
edge of his coat. That gentle breeze would’ve been
watched my comatose body slide peacefully down
the ghost of John Baxter scurrying across that
a blue tunnel. That same blue tunnel the near dead
square, heading towards a small canal, a mosaic-
always talk about. Such a tempting journey. So se-
encrusted basilica, a hooded child cloaked in one
rene. No barking Cerberus to wake me. Everything
of those ubiquitous red raincoats that still con-
was going to be all right. And then, just as I was
front me every time I turn a Venetian corner. I
seconds away from succumbing to the seductions
walk those streets. Cross echoing canals. I hear
of that matte white light glowing purely at what
Prufrock remembering the lonely sound of voic-
appeared to be the bottom of it, some primal force
es dying with a dying fall. Every few steps I slow
fiercely grabbed my feet and compelled them to dig
and turn around. I have to look over my shoul-
my heels in. The downward journey slowed and
der. Someone always seems to be following me in
stopped. I’d been on my way to being dead when
Venice. They aren’t there, but I feel them. I am on
some memory of the desperate rigor I’d applied to
tenterhooks in the city, bristling with excitement.
survive all my childhood illnesses pulled me back.
I am very alive.
Forced me to live. I was alive. I’d come out of the
In ’68 I was not. Not really. I’d come across
coma. Sick as a dog, but alive.
the Adriatic to look at the city, Mary McCarthy’s
If you’re ever with someone in a coma: Talk to
Venice Observed in hand, and in minutes I’d turned
them. Sing to them. They can hear you. And they’ll
tail and run. The city’d terrified me. It’s only be-
remember. I’d heard everything they’d said in the
cause I managed to muster all my strength in ’73,
room. I’ve not forgotten a word.
only because I was able to pull myself together
For its own purposes, MGM’d built a six-
and overcome my terror, that those three fellows
week hiatus into my Kelly’s Heroes contract so,
are related, that their genetic connection exists.
with Brian Hutton refusing to recast me, the stu-
Venice is interlinked in my mind with bacterial
dio took advantage of that break and sent me to
meningitis. In ’68 I’d picked up the pneumococcus
Charing Cross Hospital in England in an effort to
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truly fried. The infected layers of my meninges had squeezed them so tightly that they no longer functioned in a familiar way. I was afraid to sleep. I wept a lot. I was scared of heights. Of water. The Venice I’d planned to visit, therefore, would be anathema to me. But the Turners in the Tate kept running around in my head, so I took a train and went around the top of the Adriatic to Mestre. Got on a vaporetto to the city. Looked. Took some tentative steps. And imTHE ITALIAN JOB
mediately turned tail and ran away. Terrified. Truly
Sutherland starred with Mark Wahlberg in the 2003 American
petrified. Didn’t even look back. Desperate to get my
remake of the British comic caper in which a gang of thieves
feet securely onto dry land.
rob gold bullion from Italian gangsters.
So when five years later Nic Roeg called and asked me to play John Baxter in his film of du
FROM LEFT, FIRST TWO IMAGES: EVERETT COLLECTION; PARAMOUNT, EVERETT COLLECTION
Maurier’s short story “Don’t Look Now,” I gave him
get me to recover. It takes more than six weeks.
a conditional yes. First, though, I told him, before
They’d had none of the necessary antibiotic drugs
anything, Francine and I had to go to Venice to see if
in Yugoslavia. The ambulance ran out of gas on
I could survive the city. We went. Flew in. Landed at
its way to the airport. They’d done seven spinal
Marco Polo. Took a motoscafo to the hotel. Stayed in
taps. The first one had slipped out of the nurse’s
the Bauer Grunwald on the Grand Canal. Beautiful
hand and shattered on the hospital’s marble floor.
everything was. The city’s dampness seeped into me.
People would come into this very white room I
Became me. It can be a truly insidious place, Venice.
was bedded in in Novi Sad, look at me and start
Unnerving. It can tell the future. Its past haunts you.
to cry. Nancy O’Connor, Carroll’s wife, turned
Coincidences abound. Jung says coincidences are
and ran, weeping. It was not encouraging. I was
not accidents. They’re there for a reason. Venice is
in lousy shape.
overflowing with reasons. The room we were stay-
They erased all that in Charing Cross.
ing in would be the same room that Julie Christie
Intravenous drugs. A lovely bed. Squeaky-shoed
and Nic Roeg and Tony Richmond and I would do
nurses. The expert woman in the basement who
Don’t Look Now’s love scene in half a year later. The
read the printout of the brain waves coming from
same room we were staying in when John Bridger
electroencephalograph wires they’d attached to my
happily walked across St. Mark’s Square en route to
head looked like the ghost of Virginia Woolf and
the Dolomites and death.
she laughed out loud reading the patterns in front
But it was wonderful. The city. Blissful. I love its
of her. She’d look up, nod at me and say “Sorry,”
slow dying more than most living. I had a dog with
then look at it again and laugh some more. I had
me when we filmed Don’t Look Now. A great big
no idea what she was laughing at and I was afraid
Scottish Otterhound. Not terribly bright but be-
to ask.
lovèd. He went everywhere with us. Years and years
As soon as the six weeks were up they pulled me
later, when we were there for the festival, we walked
out of the hospital, brought me back to Yugoslavia,
into Harry’s Bar and the bartender looked up, saw
and stood me up in front of the camera. I’d recovered.
me, and with immense gusto said: “Donaldino, ave-
Sort of. I could walk and talk, but my brains were
te ancora il cane?” Did I still have the dog? No. I no WINTER 2015 SMITHSONIAN JOURNEYS 43
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27
Public relations specialist
ALESSANDRA LAZZARIN
Floating through Venice Photographs by Kurt Hoerbst
For centuries Venice has influenced the great architects, artists, and writers who have explored its canals and alleyways. Less obvious, however, is the impact the city has had on the countless ordinary people who make it home. “After some time living here, you stop being a tourist and you start absorbing a unique way of life,” says Francesco Cocco, an aspiring opera singer who grew up in Schio, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Venice. “The incredible silence you have at night in a city without cars … the enormous amount of history that slaps you in the face anytime you randomly happen upon a new place, even with your grocery bags.”
The visiting throngs can be a burden, but they also sustain livelihoods— for a public relations specialist, a cook, or even a gondola carpenter. Cocco embraces the good with the bad—the beauty, the crowds, and the sometimes submerged streets. When he travels away, he says, “I really miss these ‘floating stones’ I walk on and those enormous buildings magically standing on the water like eternal sand castles.” Aiming to capture the hidden spirit of those who live and work in Venice, Austrian photographer Kurt Hoerbst used an innovative technique to create what he calls “peoplescapes” of the city. He asked each subject to lie expressionless in a canvas cradle while he moved a fixed camera along the length of his or her body, taking many individual shots from which he would later construct a single image (see page 71). The result shows his subjects from a rarely seen perspective, including, in some cases, a glimpse of the bottoms of their shoes. “By having them in that vulnerable lying-down position with no expression, you can see beyond what is obvious,” Hoerbst says. Sometimes, he adds, “you can see the city of Venice inside their soul.” —Barbie Latza Nadeau
PHOTOGRAPHER KURT HOERBST IS REPRESENTED BY ANZENBERGER/REDUX
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53
Gondola craftsman
SAVERIO PASTOR Cook
MILO RODIGHIERO
33
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58
Janitor
HANNA SOROKA
44
Journalist
SEBASTIANO GEORGI
PATRICIA CARRIZO
Museum guide
32
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9 THINGS
Style and sensibility In Venice, the line between art and craftsmanship blurs. The delicacy of a Murano goblet, the fluidity of a Fortuny silk gown speak to an exquisite sensibility and a matchless quality that is the legacy of guilds formed in medieval times to uphold standards and train artists to preserve the tradition of excellence. Despite the tidal wave of mass-produced copies, artisanal craft survives—if you know where to go.
BOOKMARK A gondola’s distinctive prow, the ferro, is said to represent a doge’s cap. The teeth allude to the sestieri, or city districts. This bookmark comes from MASK
the shop of Saverio Pastor, one of few remaining craftsmen who can sculpt a
The unwanted cargo landing in
fórcola, a gondola’s oarlock. Le fórcole
Venice in 1347 was the contagion of
di Saverio Pastor, Dorsoduro 341,
plague. The plague doctor wore a mask,
Fondamenta Soranzo. www.forcole
its beak stuffed with herbs to repel the
.com/eng-saverio-pastor.html
putrid air of disease. Still, doctors and patients dropped like flies. Today the mask is more happily associated with Carnival. Ca’Macana Dorsoduro 3172, Venezia. camacana.com
CAPE To present la bella figura is a social obligation in Italy. For dramatic panache, nothing matches the swirl of a tabarro, or cloak, a favorite of 18th-century nobles wishing to move anonymously through the streets during Carnival. Tabarro San Marco di Monica Daniele, Calle del Scaleter 2235, San Polo monicadaniele.com
BISCUITS Because the biscuits last a long time, ships carried them on long voyages. The name baicoli comes from their shape, which recalls a small fish of the lagoon. Venetian children consider them a breakfast favorite, and adults enjoy them dunked in a glass of wine. Available in many stores.
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SLIPPERS Tread softly and sustainably in these furlane—slippers of soft velvet. PAPER FOLDER
Traditionally favored by gondoliers, these
“We can never equal the perfection of Venice paper,” lamented the 17th-
slippers, with soles made of old bicycle
century English church historian Thomas Fuller. This accordion folder will
tires, don’t mar the finish of the boat and
make the task of putting papers in order an elegant enterprise. Legatoria
provide good footing. Massimo Dittura,
Polliero, Campo dei Frari 2995
Accademia-Dorsoduro, San Vio 871
DOORKNOB Glassmaking was moved to the island of Murano in 1291 to minimize risk of fire to the city. The craft was so guarded a secret, it was forbidden to take materials or tools outside the lagoon. This doorknob has no such travel restrictions. Arcobaleno di Nube Massimo, San Marco 3457
EYEGLASSES Eyeglasses were reportedly invented in Italy, but bragging rights as the city of origin are a contested squabble among Pisa, Florence, and Venice. The stylishness of these locally handmade eyeglasses is uncontested. Ottica Carraro, Calle della Mandola 3706, San Marco. otticacarraro.it
PILLOW A Byzantine-style motif is woven on 18th-century looms by the weavers of Bevilacqua. A winged lion is the symbol of St. Mark, the city’s patron saint, and of the city. Mario e Paola Bevilacqua, 337/b, San Marco, Fondamenta della Canonica. bevilacquatessuti.com
Compiled by Antonietta Poduie in Venice
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SU BDU I NG THE SE A SU BDU I NG TIME
A journalist recalls a witching-hour walk with the poet Joseph Brodsky By Charles Fenyvesi
A
t the time Joseph Brodsky and I met
of fellow émigrés and Italian poetry lovers. More
and walked the streets of Venice until
than 20 people followed him to a down-at-the-heels
dawn, his passion for the city was still
trattoria next door where small tables were pushed
young. The dissident-poet had been expelled from
together to form a long rectangle for him and his
his Russian homeland just six years earlier, in 1972.
admirers.
It would be a decade before he would write a col-
He and I had met only briefly the previous day,
lection of mystical meditations on Venice called
so I was surprised when he invited me to take a
Watermark, and nearly two decades before the
seat across from him. My face, he said, reminded
Nobel laureate would be interred in the watery city
him of a friend from his native Leningrad—now
he once called “my version of Paradise.”
again called St. Petersburg—a violinist whose
But on this night, Brodsky had just given a
name meant nothing to me. But Brodsky pressed
reading in a ramshackle movie theater to a group
on: “Are you sure that you are not related to him?
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CHIARA GOIA
Colors reflected on a canal in Venice resemble an abstract painting. In his book Watermark, Brodsky wrote that water “stores our reflections for when we are long gone.”
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