Gondolas - Venice: A Travel Guide to Murano Glass, Carnival Masks, Gondolas, Lace, Paper and More - page 28

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Gondolas

In the heyday of the Venetian Republic, some ten thousand gondolas transported dignitar-

ies, merchants, and goods through the crowded canals and lagoons of the water-logged
city. Today, only about four hundred gondole glide through the waterways of Venice.
Across the city and the outlying islands, a handful of boatyards or squeri still make and re-
pair gondolas using modern techniques and power tools, but each year, fewer and fewer au-
thentic gondolas are turned out by hand. A small group of specialized master boat builders
working in historic boatyards now holds the craft—literally—in its hands.
Although the gondola has become the symbol of Venice, the city once teemed with di-
verse types of handmade wooden boats, from utilitarian rafts to canal ferries to the famous
Venetian war galleys—which the government bragged its craftsmen could rig in a single
day—and the doge's own impossibly ornate, gilded barge, the Bucintoro. That's not surpris-
ing when you realize that Venetians have long relied on boats for transporting everything.
The Venetian gondola began as a much simpler contraption than the elaborate boats now
synonymous with Venice. To my knowledge no complete Venetian gondola made prior to the
mid-1800s survives intact; only a handful of iron prows from the Renaissance era have en-
dured the humid Venetian climate that destroys anything made of wood, even of the highest
order of craftsmanship.
The earliest documentary evidence of the Venetian gondola dates to 1094, when the word
gondolum is used in a letter from the Doge, Vitale Falier, to the people of Loreo. We must
wait another four hundred years for visual evidence of the distinctive boat. The earliest de-
pictions of the Venetian gondola let us imagine what these early boats might have looked
like. We can envision these dark, elegant boats with the help of a series of beautiful wall
paintings executed by Vittore Carpaccio in the 1490s for the Church of Saint Ursula, now
preserved in the Accademia in Venice. In this cycle of paintings, gondoliers appear to man-
euver their boats using the oarlock, a manner of rowing that is not too different than that of
today.