Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
riding a hydra, babbling rivers of blood from her mouth. At the opposite end of the emo-
tional spectrum is Paolo Veneziano's 1553-59
Coronation of Mary
(Room 1), where Jesus
bestows the crown on his mother with a gentle pat on the head to the tune of an angelic or-
chestra.
UFO arrivals seem imminent in the eerie, glowing skies of Carpaccio's
Crucifixion and
Glorification of the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Mount Ararat
(Room 2) - Harry's Bar was
apt in naming its shimmering, raw-beef dish after him. But Giovanni Bellini's
Pala di San
Giobbe
(Room 2) shows hope on the horizon, in the form of a sweet-faced Madonna and
Child emerging from a dark niche, as angels tune their instruments. The martyrs surround-
ing them include St Roch and St Sebastian, suggesting that this luminous, uplifting work
dates from the dark days of Venice's second plague in 1478.
Lock eyes with fascinating strangers across the portrait-filled Room 4. Hans Memling
captures youthful stubble and angst with the exacting detail of a Freudian miniaturist in
Portrait of a Young Man
, while Giorgione's sad-eyed
La Vecchia
(Old Woman) points to
herself as the words 'with time' unfurl ominously in the background.
Rooms 6-10
Venice's Renaissance awaits around the corner in Room 6, featuring Titian and Tintoretto.
Tintoretto's
Creation of the Animals
is a fantastical bestiary suggesting God put forth his
best efforts inventing Venetian seafood (no argument here). Tintoretto's 1562
St Mark
Saving a Saracen from Shipwreck
is an action-packed blockbuster, with fearless Venetian
merchants and an improbably muscular, long-armed saint rescuing a turbaned sailor.
Titian's 1576
PietÃ
was possibly finished posthumously by Palma il Giovane, but no-
tice the smears of paint Titian applied with his bare hands and the column-base self-por-
trait, foreshadowing Titian's own funeral monument.
Artistic triumph over censorship dominates Room 10: Paolo Veronese's freshly restored
Feast in the House of Levi,
originally called
Last Supper
until Inquisition leaders con-
demned him for showing dogs, drunkards, dwarves, Muslims and Reformation-minded
Germans cavorting with Apostles. He refused to change a thing, besides the title, and
Venice stood by this act of defiance against Rome. Follow the exchanges, gestures and
eye contact among the characters, and you'll concede that not one Turkish trader, clumsy
server, gambler or bright-eyed lapdog could have been painted over without losing an es-
sential piece of the Venetian puzzle.
