There is another strain too, that one senses rather than notices: something subtle and evasive, a twist of courtesy, a wry shrug of the shoulders, to remind one that through it all, boldly though they flew the banner of the evangelist, proudly though they represented Christian civilization against the Turk, the Venetian imperialists were never out of touch, nor altogether out of sympathy, with Islam.
… her daughters had her dowers [so Byron wrote]
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers…
We will end with the most marvellous booty of it all, and the most moving (for the Nikopoeia, after all, failed to preserve the Venetian Empire as she failed to save the Byzantine, besides letting me down disastrously when I appealed for her support in the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum), more majestic than the lion of Piraeus (which looks, as a matter of fact, rather lugubrious and lick-spittle, like a blood hound), more dazzling even than the sheen of the Pala d’Oro, more touching than the little emperors, hand in hand in the Piazzetta. The four Golden Horses of Constantinople, the Stallions of St Mark, were the very epitome of loot, the very standard of national self-esteem.
In all recorded history there were no such imperial trophies as these. They were scarred by the fortunes of time and war. They had lost much of their ancient gilding. They were mounted wrongly on their gallery on the façade of the Basilica, in two couples instead of a single quadriga. But they were to remain for 800 years the supreme symbol of Venice, powerful but always magnanimous. If the winged lion stood for Venetian authority, the Golden Horse represented the generosity and constancy of Venice – La Serenissima, the Most Serene. When in 1379 the Genoese admiral Pietro Doria lay with his fleet at the very gate of the lagoon, he boasted that he would never leave until he had ‘bridled the horses of St Mark’: within the year the siege was lifted, Doria was dead and all his ships and men had ignominiously surrendered.
Whoever made the Golden Horses, the Venetians took them as their own, and they entered the sensibility of the city like no other images. Tintoretto included one as the charger of a Roman centurion, in his monumental Crucifixion. Carpaccio mounted St Martin on another. Canaletto took them off their gallery, in a famous caprice, and re-erected them on pedestals in the piazzetta. Poets from Petrarch to Goethe celebrated them: ‘blazing in their breadth of golden strength’, was John Ruskin’s vision of their presence up there, and Max Beerbohm said they made him feel common.
Through the long Venetian decline the horses remained unchallenged, for Venice was never invaded and never suffered a successful revolution. Only with the fall of the Republic in 1797 were they removed, for the first time in six centuries, and shipped away to Paris: there, after some years between the Tuileries and the Louvre, they were taken in procession, escorted by camels and wild beasts in wheeled cages, to be mounted on the Arc de Carrousel as the most marvellous of all Napoleon’s battle trophies (though he uncharacteristically rejected a suggestion that he might himself be added in effigy to the quadriga, driving a chariot).
They were returned to Venice after Waterloo, but their pride was never the same again, because Venice herself had lost her independence for ever. They had been bridled at last. Only for a few months in 1848, when the half-Jewish Venetian patriot Daniele Manin led a heroic but abortive rebellion against Vienna, did they recover their symbolic meaning: when Venice finally became part of the Italian kingdom, after the Risorgimento, they remained up there on their gallery as beloved friends, but never again as defiances. They were removed for safety’s sake in each of the world wars, and then in 1977 it was decided by the administrators of St Mark’s that they ought to be indoors, away from the fumes and the salt. To the sorrow of millions of lovers of the Golden Horses, it was decreed that they must be taken from their pedestals, restored, and kept for ever as museum pieces in the rooms behind the gallery.
There they are now, out of the sun at last. Through the door of their last resting-place you may see their forms, proud as ever, silhouetted against the half-light from the windows. Their hoofs are raised, as always, in a noble gesture of greeting, companionship or compassion. Their heads are turned still, fraternally towards each other. But the life has gone out of them at last, as the power and purpose have left Venice. The Venetians used to say that whenever the Golden Horses were moved, an empire fell – the Byzantine Empire in 1204, the Venetian Empire in 1797, the Napoleonic Empire in 1815, the Kaiser’s Empire in 1918, Hitler’s Empire in 1945. This their last move, though, is no more than an obituary gesture, a long farewell, a recognition that the glory of Venice has gone, and only the forms remain.
Four replicas are their successors, made of bronze in Milan. They are skilful copies, perfect in proportion, exact in scale, aged by a patina artificially applied. But they are lifeless things. They lack the bumps, the scratches, the suggestions, the mighty experience of the Golden Horses of St Mark. They never saw old Dandolo storm ashore at the Golden Horn, nor welcomed the great galleys, aflame with flags and profit, home from the seas of empire.
Gazetteer
Arbe, Yugoslavia: Rab
Astipalaia, Cyclades Islands: Stampalia
Bocche di Cattaro, Yugoslavia: Boka Kotorska; Gulf of Kotor
Boka Kotorska, Yugoslavia: Bocche di Cattaro; Gulf of Kotor
Byzantium: Constantinople; Istanbul
Candia: Crete
Candia, Crete: Iraklion
Canea, Crete: Khania
Capodistria, Yugoslavia: Koper
Cattaro, Yugoslavia: Kotor
Cephalonia, Ionian Islands: Kefallinia
Cerigo, Ionian Islands: Kithira
Cetinje, Yugoslavia: Cettigne
Cettigne, Yugoslavia: Cetinje
Chalcis, Greece: Khalkis; Negroponte
Constantinople, Turkey: Byzantium; Istanbul
Corfu, Ionian Islands: Kerkyra
Coron, Greece: Koroni
Crete: Candia
Curzola, Yugoslavia: Korčula
Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia: Ragusa
Dulcigno, Yugoslavia: Ulcinj
Durazzo, Albania: Durrës
Durrës, Albania: Durazzo
Euboea, Greece: Evvoia; Negroponte
Evvoia, Greece: Euboea; Negroponte
Fiume, Yugoslavia: Rijeka
Gulf of Kotor, Yugoslavia: Boka Kotorska; Bocche di Cattaro
Hvar, Yugoslavia: Lesina
Iraklion, Crete: Candia
Istanbul, Turkey: Byzantium; Constantinople
Ithaca, Ionian Islands: Ithaki
Ithaki, Ionian Islands: Ithaca
Kea, Cyclades Islands: Keos
Kefallinia, Ionian Islands: Cephalonia
Keos, Cyclades Islands: Kea
Kerkyra, Ionian Islands: Corfu
Khalkis, Greece: Chalcis; Negroponte
Khania, Crete: Canea
Kithira, Ionian Islands: Cerigo
Koper, Yugoslavia: Capodistria
Korčula, Yugoslavia: Curzola
Koroni, Greece: Coron
Kotor, Yugoslavia: Cattaro
Laurium, Greece: Lavrion
Lepanto, Greece: Navpaktos
Lesina, Yugoslavia: Hvar
Levkas, Ionian Islands: Santa Maura
Lissa, Yugoslavia: Vis
Methoni, Greece: Modon
Modon, Greece: Methoni
Morea, Greece: Peloponnese; Peloponnisos
Napoli di Romania, Greece: Nauplia; Navplion
Nauplia, Greece: Napoli di Romania; Navplion
Navpaktos, Greece: Lepanto
Navplion: Napoli di Romania; Nauplia
Negroponte, Greece: Euboea; Evvoia
Parenzo, Yugoslavia: Poreč
Patrai, Greece: Patras
Patras, Greece: Patrai
Perast, Yugoslavia: Perasto
Perasto, Yugoslavia: Perast
Piran, Yugoslavia: Pirano
Pirano, Yugoslavia: Piran
Pola, Yugoslavia: Pula
&nbs
p; Poreccaron;, Yugoslavia: Parenzo
Pula, Yugoslavia: Pola
Rab, Yugoslavia: ArbeRagusa, Yugoslavia: Dubrovnik
Rcthimnon, Crete: Retimo
Retimo, Crete: Rethimnon
Rijeka, Yugoslavia: Fiume
Rovigno, Yugoslavia: Rovinj
Rovinj, Yugoslavia: Rovigno
Santa Maura, Ionian Islands: Levkas
Santorin, Cyclades Islands: Thira
Scutari, Turkey: Usküdar
Sebenico, Yugoslavia: Šibenik
Segna, Yugoslavia: Senj
Senj, Yugoslavia: Segna
Šibenik, Yugoslavia: Sebenico
Spalato, Yugoslavia: Split
Split, Yugoslavia: Spalato
Stampalia, Cyclades Islands: Astipalaia
Tenos, Cyclades Islands: Tinos
Thira, Cyclades Islands: Santorin
Tinos, Cyclades Islands: Tenos
Trau, Yugoslavia: Trogir
Trogir, Yugoslavia: Trau
Ulcinj, Yugoslavia: Dulcigno
Usküdar, Turkey: Scutari
Vis, Yugoslavia: Lissa
Zadar, Yugoslavia: Zara
Zakindios, Ionian Islands: Zante
Zante, Ionian Islands: Zakinthos
Zara, Yugoslavia: Zadar
Chronology
DOMESTIC AND MAINLAND DATE
Fourth Crusade sails from Venice 1202
By the end of the thirteenth century the Venetian Republic had established its independence, evolved its system of aristocratic government, and made a start in building the city of Venice as we know it now.
Church of San Zanipolo begun 1234
Establishment of patrician autocracy 1297
Throughout the fourteenth century Venice was involved in a vicious struggle with its chief commercial rival, Genoa, against a background of political instability at home. It ended triumphantly with the defeat of the Genoese at Chioggia, on the threshold of Venice, and the consolidation of patrician oligarchy in the capital. Tiepolo conspiracy against the Republic
Frari church begun
Present Doge’s Palace begun
Doge Marin Faliero beheaded for treason
Genoese surrender at Chioggia
1310
1330
1340
1355
1380
Venice acquires Bassano, Belluno, Padua, Verona 1403-5
With Genoa defeated the Venetians seized for themselves territories on the adjacent mainland and by the middle of the fifteenth century had established a mainland empire reaching almost to Milan. The end of the century was the climax of their success, exciting the envy as well as the admiration of all Europe. Birth of Gentile Bellini
Birth of Giovanni Bellini
Venice acquires Treviso, Friuli, Bergamo, Ravenna
Birth of Carpaccio
c.1429
c.1430
1454
c.1460
DATE IMPERIAL AND OVERSEAS
1202 Fourth Crusade subdues Zadar
1204 Constantinople captured
1204-10 Venice acquires Crete, Euboea, Koroni, Methon: Venetian citizens acquire Cyclades At the time of the Fourth Crusade, though the Venetians were already commercially powerful in the eastern Mediterranean, their overseas territories were limited to scattered seaports on the coast of Dalmatia. The Crusade gave them a string of fortresses, islands and seaports in and around the Aegean and made them an imperial Power.
1386 Venice acquires Corfu
1388
1420
Venice acquires Nauplia
Venetian control of Dalmatia confirmed
The defeat of their rivals, the Genoese, in home waters gave the Venetians extra freedom of movement, and through the fourteenth century, and well into the fifteenth, their imperial expansion continued.
1453 Turks take Constantinople
1464 Venice acquires Monemvasia
1470 Turks take Euboea
DOMESTIC AND MAINLAND DATE
Birth of Giorgione c.1471
European League of Cambrai against Venice 1508
Birth of Tintoretto 1518
Birth of Veronese c.1528
During the last three centuries of her history, despite periods of astonishing artistic fertility, Venice consistently declined in power and virility at the centre. Though her constitution remained inviolate, her strength was whittled away by shifts in world power and the burdens of her commitments. In the eighteenth century she subsided into carnival and excess until Napoleon Bonaparte, declaring himself an Attila to the State of Venice, contemptuously abolished the Republic. Church of the Salute begun
Birth of Tiepolo
Birth of Canaletto
1630
1696
1697
FALL OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC 1797
DATE IMPERIAL AND OVERSEAS
1482
1489
1500
Venice acquires Zakinthos
Venice acquires Cyprus
Turks take Koroni and Methoni
Venice acquires Cephalonia
The rise of Turkish power, though, was already threatening them and the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims was soon followed by the first loss of Venetian territory, in Euboea. Although this was really the turning-point of their imperial history, they continued to acquire new possessions, pragmatically, until the end of the fifteenth century.
1540
1566
1571
1571
1650
1669
1684-7
Turks take Monemvasia and Nauplia
Turks take Naxos and Cyclades
Battle of Lepanto
Turks besiege Iraklion
Turks take Crete
Venice takes Peloponnese from Turks
The last three centuries of the Venetian Empire were centuries of retreat. Despite the part the Venetians played in the Christian victory over the Turks at Lepanto, and despite a brief resurgence of imperial energies in Greece, and later in action against the Muslim corsairs of North Africa, Venice was outclassed by the superpowers of east and west. With the loss of her eastern colonies one by one to the Turks, by the time of the fall of the Republic she was hardly more than an Adriatic seaport once again.
1715 Turks take Tinos
1716 Venice surrenders Peloponnese to Turks
1785 Venetians bombard Tunis
1797 END OF THE VENETIAN EMPIRE
Bibliography
My original research for this book consisted in the main of a protracted and indolent potter through the Venetian seas. Readers familiar with the subject will recognize all too easily my debt to less escapist scholars, but for newcomers here is a list of the books I have found most useful:
Bradford, ernle, The Companion Guide to the Greek Islands, London and New York 1963. The Great Betrayal: Constantinople, 1204, London 1967.
chambers, d. s., The Imperial Age of Venice, London 1970; New York 1971.
foss, a., The Ionian Islands, London 1969; Levittown, New York 1970.
freely, j., Naxos, Athens 1976.
freeman, e. a., Sketches from Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice, London 1881.
gunnis, r., Historic Cyprus, London 1938.
hazlitt, w. c., The Venetian Republic: its Rise, its Growth, its Fall, London 1915.
hill, g., A History of Cyprus, Cambridge and New York 1940-52.
hodgkinson, h., The Adriatic Sea, London and New York 1955.
hopkins, a., Crete: Its Past, Present and People, London and Salem, New Hampshire 1977.
jackson, f. h., The Shores of the Adriatic, London and New York 1906.
jongh, b. de, The Companion Guide to Southern Greece, London 1972. The Companion Guide to the Greek Mainland, London 1979.
lane, f. c., Venice, A Maritime Republic, Baltimore 1973.
lauritzen, p., Venice, London 1978.
lorenzetti, g., Venezia, Rome 1956.
maclagen
, m., The City of Constantinople, London and New York 1968.
miller, w., The Latins in the Levant, London 1908. Essays on the Latin Orient, Cambridge 1921.
Murray’s Handbook to Greece, London 1884.
norwich, j. j., Venice, the Rise to Empire, London 1977. Venice, the Greatness and the Fall, London 1981.
paradissis, a., Fortresses and Castles of Greece, Athens 1972-6.
perocco, g., and salvadore, a., Civiltà di Venezia, Venice 1973.
roiter, fulvio, The Orient of Venice, Padova 1982.
runciman, steven, A History of the Crusades, Cambridge and New York 1951-5.
smith, michael llewellyn, The Great Island, London and New York 1965.
spanakis, s. g., Crete, Iraklion 1965.
sumner-boyd, h., and freely, j., Strolling Through Istanbul, Istanbul 1972.
villehardouin, g. de, Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade, tr. F. Marzials, London and New York 1908.
west, r., Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: The Record of a Journey through Yugoslavia in 1937, London 1942; New York 1955.
young, m., Corfu and Other Ionian Islands, London and New York 1971.
yugoslav lexicographical institute, The Yugoslav Coast, Zagreb 1966.
The translation of an anonymous Cretan poem on page 83 is by Michael Llewellyn Smith, from his book The Great Island, (Longmans, 1965). The Euripides translation on page 92 is by T. F. Higham, and comes from The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation, (Oxford University Press 1938). The maps on pp. 10, 33, 53, 66, 73 are reproduced courtesy of the Museo Storico Navale, Venice.
Index
Acropolis, the, 34, 132-3, 134
Adoldo, Niccolo, Lord of Serifos, 50-51
Adrianople Gate, the, 34
Adriatic, the, 2, 3, 5, 20, 41, 124, 128, 136-7, 153-76;
see also individual entries
Aegean Islands, the, see individual entries
Akronauplia, fortress of, 129, 130
Albania, 101, 137-8, 153, 163
Alexander III, Pope, 16-17
Alexandria, Bey of, 124, 126
Alexius, Young, 22, 28, 29-30, 38
Alexius III, Emperor of Byzantium, 19, 30, 38
Alexius Ducas (‘Murzuphlus’), 38, 41, 43