Part 2

Near the Giant’s Staircase is an inscription framed with ornaments and figures by Alessandro Vittoria recalling the passage of Henry III. through Venice; and farther on in the gallery at the approach to the golden staircase are two statues by Antonio Aspetti,--Hercules and Atlas bending beneath the starry firmament, the weight of which the mighty hero is about to transfer to his own bull-neck. This magnificent staircase, adorned with stuccos by Vittoria and paintings by Giambatista, is by Sansovino, and leads to the library which now occupies several rooms of the Palace of the Doges. To attempt to describe them one by one would be a work of patience and erudition that would require a whole volume.

The old hall of the Grand Council is one of the largest you could find anywhere. The Court of Lions at the Alhambra would easily go inside it. On entering, you stand still, struck with astonishment. By an effect that is somewhat frequently found in architecture, this hall looks much larger than the building that contains it. A sombre and severe wainscoting, where bookcases have taken the place of the seats of the old senators, serves as a plinth for immense paintings that extend all around the walls, broken only by windows, below a line of portraits of the Doges and a colossal gilded ceiling of incredible exuberance of ornamentation, with great compartments, square, octagonal and oval, with foliage, volutes, and rock-work in a taste scarcely appropriate to the style of the palace, but so imposing and magnificent that you are quite dazzled by it. Unfortunately, the pictures by Paul Veronese, Tintoret, Palma the Younger, and other great masters, that filled these superb frames have now been removed on account of indispensable repairs.

That side of the hall by which you enter is entirely occupied by a gigantic _Paradise_ by Tintoret, which contains a world of figures. It is a strong painting and it is a pity that time has so greatly darkened it. The smoky shadows that cover it belong to a Hell rather than to a Glory. Behind this canvas, a fact that we have not been in a position to verify, it is said that there is an ancient _Paradise_ painted in green camaïeu upon the wall by Guariento of Padua in 1365. It would be curious to be able to compare this green _Paradise_ with the black one. It is only Venice that has one depth of painting below another.

This hall is a kind of Versailles museum of Venetian history, with the difference that if the exploits are not so great, the painting is far better. It is impossible to imagine a more wonderful effect than is produced by this immense hall entirely covered by these pompous paintings that excel in the Venetian genius. Above these great historical scenes, is a row of portraits of the Doges by Tintoret, Bassano, and other painters; as a rule, they have a smoky and bearded appearance, although, contrary to the impression we form, they have no beards. In one corner the eye is arrested at an empty and black frame that makes a hole as dark as a tomb in this chronological gallery. It is the space that should be occupied by the portrait of Marino Faliero, as told by this inscription: _Locus Marini Phaletri, decapitati pro criminibus_. All the effigies of Marino Faliero were also destroyed, so that his portrait may be said to be undiscoverable. However, it is pretended that there is one in the possession of an amateur at Verona. The republic wanted to destroy the memory of this haughty old man who brought it within an inch of ruin in revenge for a youth’s jest that was sufficiently punished by a few months’ imprisonment. To finish with Marino Faliero, let us note that he was not beheaded at the head of the Giant’s Staircase, as is represented in several prints, since that stairway was not built till a hundred and fifty years later, but in the opposite corner at the other end of the gallery, upon the top of a flight of steps since demolished.

We will now name the most celebrated chambers of the palace without pretending to describe them in detail. In the chamber _dei Scarlatti_, the chimney-piece is covered with marble reliefs of the finest workmanship. On the impost also is seen a very curious bas-relief in marble representing the Doge Loredan on his knees before the Virgin and Child, accompanied by several saints,--an admirable piece of work by an unknown artist. The Hall of the Shield: here the arms of the living Doge were emblazoned. It is hung with geographical charts by the Abbé Grisellini that trace the discoveries of Marco Polo, so long treated as fabulous, and of other illustrious Venetian travellers, such as Zeni and Cabota. Here also is kept a globe, found on a Turkish galley, engraved upon wood and of strange configuration being in accordance with Oriental ideas and covered with Arabic characters cut with marvellous delicacy; also a great bird’s-eye view of Venice by Albrecht Dürer, who made a long stay in the city of the Doges. The aspect of the city is generally the same as to-day, since for three centuries one stone has not been laid upon another in the Italian cities.

In the Hall of the Philosophers, a very beautiful chimney-piece by Pierre Lombard is to be noticed. The Hall of Stuccos, so called because of its ornamentation, contains paintings by Salviati, Pordenone, and Bassano: the _Virgin_, a _Descent from the Cross_, and the _Nativity of Jesus Christ_. The banquet-hall is where the Doge used to give certain feasts of etiquette,--diplomatic dinners, as we should say to-day. Here we see a portrait of Henry III. by Tintoret, very strong and very fine; and facing the door is the _Adoration of the Magi_, a warm painting by Bonifazio, that great master of whose work we possess scarcely anything in Paris. The Hall of the Four Doors has a square anteroom, the ceiling of which, painted by Tintoret, represents Justice giving the sword and scales to the Doge Priuli. The four doors are adorned with statues of grand form by Guilio del Moro, Francesco Caselli, Girolamo Campagna, and Alessandro Vittoria; the paintings that enrich the room are masterpieces.

From this hall let us pass into the Anti-Collegio; it is the waiting-room of the ambassadors, the architecture being by Scamozzi. The envoys of the various powers who came to present their credentials to the Most Serene Republic could scarcely have been in a hurry to be introduced: the masterpieces crowded with such lavishness into this splendid anteroom would induce anyone to be patient. The four pictures near the door are by Tintoret, and among his best. These are the subjects: _Mercury and the Graces_; _Vulcan’s Forge_; _Pallas, accompanied by Joy and Abundance, chasing Mars_; and _Ariadne consoled by Bacchus_. Apart from a few rather forced foreshortenings and a few violent attitudes in which this master took pleasure on account of their difficulty, we can do nothing but praise the virile energy of touch, the warmth of colour, the truth of the flesh, the lifelike power and that forceful and charming grace that distinguishes mighty talents when they have to render sweet and gentle subjects.

But the marvel of this sanctuary of art is the _Rape of Europa_, by Paul Veronese. What lovely white shoulders! what blonde curling tresses! what round and charming arms! what smiles of eternal youth in this wonderful canvas in which Paul Veronese seems to have spoken his final word! Sky, clouds, trees, flowers, meadows, seas, tints, draperies, all seem bathed in the glow of an unknown Elysium. If we had to choose one single example of all Paul Veronese’s work, this is the one we should prefer: it is the most beautiful pearl in this rich casket.

On the ceiling the great artist has seated his dear Venice on a golden throne with that amplitude of drapery and that abundant grace of which he possesses the secret. For this _Assumption_, in which Venice takes the place of the Virgin, he always knows how to find fresh blues and new radiance.

The magnificent chimney-piece by Aspetti, a stucco cornice by Vittoria and Bombarda, blue camaïeu by Sebastian Rizzi and columns of _verde antique_ and Cipolin marble framing the door complete this marvellous decoration in which shines the most beautiful of all luxuries,--that of genius.

The reception-hall, or the Collegio, comes next. Here we find Tintoret and Paul Veronese, the former red and violent, the other azure and calm; the first, suited to great expanses of wall, the second, for immense ceilings. We will not speak of the camaïeu, the _grisailles_, the columns of _verde antique_, the little arches of flowered jasper and sculptures by G. Campagna: we should never finish; and those are the ordinary sumptuous details in the Palace of the Doges.

There are many other admirable rooms in the Ducal Palace that we have not mentioned. The Hall of the Council of Ten, the Hall of the Supreme Council, the Hall of the State Inquisitors, and many others. Upon their walls and ceilings sit side by side the apotheosis of Venice and the Assumption of the Virgin; the Doges on their knees before some Madonna or other; and mythological heroes or fabulous gods; the Lion of St. Mark and Jupiter’s Eagle; the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and a Neptune; Pope Alexander III. and a short-kilted Allegory. Mix up stories from the Bible and holy Virgins beneath baldaquins, captures of Zara embroidered with more numerous episodes than one of Ariosto’s songs, and surprises of Candia with jumbles of Turks; carve the door-cases; cover the cornices with mouldings and stucco; set up statues in every corner; lay gold upon everything that is not covered by the brush of a superior artist; say: “All those who have laboured here, even the obscure, had twenty times as much talent as our celebrities of the present day; and the greatest masters have employed their lives here;” and then you will have a feeble idea of all this magnificence that defies description. Painters, whose names are not uttered once a century, here hold their place in most terrible proximities. You would say that genius was in the air at that climacteric epoch of human progress and that nothing was easier than to produce masterpieces. The sculptors especially, of whom no one ever speaks, display an extraordinary talent and are not in the least inferior to the greatest painters.

Close to the door of one of these rooms we still see, though robbed of all its prestige of terror, and reduced to the condition of an unused letter-box, the ancient Lion’s Mouth to which the informers came to cast in their denunciations. Nothing remains now but a hole in the wall: the jaw has been removed. A sombre corridor leads you to the Hall of the State Inquisitors, to the Leads, and to the Wells that have served as a text for an infinity of sentimental declamation. Certainly there are no beautiful prisons; but the truth is that the Leads were large chambers covered with lead, a material with which the roofs of most of the edifices of Venice are covered and which has nothing particularly cruel about it; and that the Wells were not below the level of the lagoon. We visited two or three of these cells. Covered with wood on the inside, they had a low door and a little opening facing the lamp fixed to the roof of the passage. A wooden camp-bed occupied one of the corners.

It was black and stifling, but without any melodramatic accessories. Upon the walls are decipherable several of those inscriptions that prison weariness engraves with a nail upon the wall of the tomb: signatures, dates, short sentences from the Bible, philosophical reflections appropriate to the spot, a timid sigh for liberty, sometimes the cause of the imprisonment, such as the inscription in which a captive says that he has been incarcerated for sacrilege. At the entrance to a corridor they showed us a stone seat on which those who were secretly executed in the prison were made to sit. A slender cord cast around the neck and twisted like a garotte strangled them in the Turkish manner. These clandestine executions were only for state prisoners convicted of political crimes. The deed being done, the corpse was bundled into a gondola through a door opening on to the Canal della Paglia and it was taken away to be sunk with a cannon-ball or stone at the feet in the Orfanello Canal which is very deep and where fishermen are forbidden to cast their nets.

Vulgar assassins are executed between the two columns at the entrance of the Piazzetta. The Bridge of Sighs, which seen from the Paille Bridge, looks like a cenotaph suspended over the water, has nothing remarkable inside: it is a double corridor divided by a wall which serves as a covered way from the Ducal Palace to the Prison, the severe and solid edifice built by Antonio da Ponte, and situated on the other side of the Canal facing the lateral façade of the Palace which is supposed to have been built from the plans of Antonio Riccio. The name of the Bridge of Sighs, given to that tomb that connects two prisons, probably comes from the lamentations of the unfortunates going from their cell to the tribunal and back again, broken by torture, or in despair after condemnation. In the evening this Canal, squeezed between the high walls of the two sombre edifices and illumined by some rare gleam, has a very sinister and mysterious aspect, and the gondolas that glide along there bearing some handsome pair of lovers going to get a little fresh air on the lagoon, look as if they have a burden for the Orfanello Canal.

We have also visited the ancient apartments of the Doge; nothing remains of their primitive magnificence except a highly ornamental ceiling divided into gilded and painted hexagonal compartments. In these spaces, shielded by foliage and rosebushes, was an invisible hole through which the State Inquisitors and the members of the Council of Ten could spy upon what the Doge was doing at all hours of the day and of the night. The walls, not content with listening by an ear, like the prison of Denys the Tyrant, watched with an ever open eye, and the Doge who had conquered at Zara or at Candia heard, like Angelo, “steps in his walls” and felt a mysterious and jealous watch all about him.

PALACE OF LINLITHGOW

SIR WALTER SCOTT

Linlithgow, distinguished by the combined strength and beauty of its situation, must have been early selected as a royal residence. David, who bought the title of Saint by his liberality to the church, refers several of his characters to his town of Linlithgow, and in that of Holy Rood expressly bestows on the new monastery all the skins of the rams, ewes, and lambs belonging to his Castle of Linlitcu which shall die during the year.

The convenience afforded for the sport of falconry, which was so great a favourite during the feudal ages, was probably one cause of an attachment of the ancient Scottish monarchs to Linlithgow, and its fine lake. The sport of hunting was also followed with success in the neighbourhood, from which circumstance it probably arises that the ancient arms of the city represent a black greyhound-bitch tied to a tree. Tradition, however, ascribes other causes for this remarkable emblem, but is, as usual, rather inconsistent in accounting for it otherwise. One legend says simply, that such a hound was found so tied on the small island on the east side of the loch. Another tradition hints at a witch who used to assume this shape. A third more ungallantly adopts a metaphorical meaning, and affirms that a mistress of one of the kings was designated under this hieroglyphic. A Celt, according to Chalmers, might plausibly derive the name of Linlithgow from _Lin-liath-cu_, the Lake of the Greyhound. Chalmers himself, seems to prefer the Gothic derivation of _Lin-lyth-gow_, or the Lake of the Great Vale. _Non nostrum est._

[Illustration: PALACE OF LINLITHGOW, SCOTLAND.]

The Castle of Linlithgow is only mentioned as being a peel (a pile, that is, an embattled tower surrounded by an outwork). In 1300 it was rebuilt or repaired by Edward I., and used as one of the citadels by which he hoped to maintain his usurped dominion in Scotland. It is described by Barbour as “meihle and stark and stuffed weel.” Piers Luband, a Gascoigne knight, was appointed the keeper, and appears to have remained there until the autumn of 1313, when the Scots recovered the Castle under the following interesting circumstances:--

There was, says our authority, Barbour, dwelling in the neighbourhood of Linlithgow, a stout-hearted husbandman, named William Binnock, who, observing that the Scots were on every hand recovering from the English the castles and fortresses which the invaders possessed within Scotland, could not brook that the peel in his vicinity, which was large, strong, and well supplied with arms and garrisons, should remain unassailed. He formed a stratagem, equally remarkable for ingenuity and audacity. The garrison was usually supplied by Binnock with hay, and they had lately required from him a fresh supply. He assured them of the excellence of the forage, and undertook to send it in early in the morning. But the hay was so arranged on the wain as to conceal eight well-armed and determined men; the team was driven by a sturdy peasant, who bore a sharp axe under his gaberdion. Binnock himself walked beside the waggon, to superintend, as it seemed, the safe delivery of the forage. The porter, on approach of Binnock, with his well-known wain, lowered the drawbridge and raised the portcullis. Just at the very gateway, the driver, as he had been instructed, drew his axe suddenly and cut asunder the soam, or tackle, by which the oxen were attached to the waggon. Binnock at the same instant struck the warder dead, and shouted the signal word, which was “Call all, call all.” The assailants jumped from amongst the hay, and attacked the astonished garrison. The wain was so placed that neither could the gate be shut nor the portcullis lowered, nor the bridge raised, and a party of Scots, who were in ambush for the purpose, rushed in to second their forlorn hope, and were soon masters of the place.

Bruce, faithful to his usual policy, caused the peel of Linlithgow to be dismantled, and worthily rewarded William Binnock, who had behaved with such gallantry on the occasion. From this bold yeoman the Binnies of West Lothian are proud to trace their descent; and most, if not all of them, bear in their arms something connected with the waggon, which was the instrument of his stratagem.

When times of comparative peace returned, Linlithgow again became the occasional residence of the sovereign. In 1411 the town was burned by accident, and in 1414 was again subjected to the same calamity, together with the Church and Palace of the King, as is expressly mentioned by Bower.

The present Church, which is a fine specimen of Gothic architecture, having a steeple surmounted by an imperial crown, was probably erected soon after that calamity.

The Palace arose from its ashes with greater splendour than before; for the family of Stuart, unhappy in so many respects, were all of them fortunate in their taste for the fine arts, and particularly for that of architecture. The Lordship of Linlithgow was settled as a dowry upon Mary of Gueldres in 1449, and again upon Margaret of Denmark in 1468.

James the Fourth, as splendid a gallant, seems to have founded the most magnificent part of Linlithgow Palace; together with the noble entrance betwixt two flanking towers bearing on rich entablatures the royal arms of Scotland, with the collar of the Order of the Thistle, Garter, and Saint Michael.

James IV., also erected in the Church a throne for himself, and twelve stalls for Knights Companions of the Thistle. It was sitting here, in the time of public worship, and musing, perhaps, on his approaching invasion of England, that he received a singular advice from a singular personage, which we cannot express better than in the words of Pitscottie:--

“At this time the King visited Linlithgow, where he was at the Council, very sad and dolorous, making his prayers to God to send him a good success in his voyage. And there came a man clad in a blue gown, belted about him with a roll of lining, and a pair of _brottikines_ on his feet, and all other things conform thereto. But he had nothing on his head but side hair to his shoulders, and bald before. He seemed to be a man of fifty years, and came fast forwards, crying among the lords, and specially for the King, saying, that he desired to speak with him; while at the last he came to the desk where the King was at prayers. But when he saw the King, he gave him no due reverence nor salutation, but leaned him down gruffly upon the desk, and said, ‘Sir King, my mother has sent me to thee, desiring thee not to go where thou art purposed, which if thou do, thou shalt not fare well in thy journey, nor none that is with thee. Farther, she forbade thee, not to mell nor use the counsel of women, which if thou do, thou wilt be confounded and brought to shame.’ By [_the time_] this man had spoken these words to the King, the even-song was near done, and the King paused on these words, studying to him an answer. But in the meantime, before the King’s eyes, and in presence of the whole lords that were about him for the time, this man evanished away, and could no more be seen. I heard Sir David Lindsay, Lyon-herald, and John Inglis, the Marishall, who were at that time young men and special servants to the King’s grace, thought to have taken this man, but they could not, that they might have speired [_asked_] further tidings at him, but they could not touch him.”

Buchanan confirms this strange story on the word of a spectator, Sir David Lindsay, whose testimony he describes as unimpeachable. Thus supported, we have only to choose betwixt a deception and a supernatural appearance. The temper of James was one of those described by the poet as being “of imagination all compact.” He was amorous, devotional, and chivalrous. This renders it highly probable that the simulated vision was contrived by some of the numerous party who advised a continuance of peace with England, and who might be of opinion that counsels conveyed in this mysterious manner might have some effect on the romantic spirit of the King. It is usually supposed that the vision was intended to represent Saint Andrew; but the use of the words, “my mother,” seem rather to imply the Apostle John, who indicated by that term the Virgin Mary.

The death of James IV. and rout of his army clouded for many a day the glory of Scotland, and marred the mirth of her palaces.