Venice: Harvest from Land and Sea

It was a frantic week, searching Venice in vain for things that are VIOLA.  My mistake?  I didn't wake up early enough!  A plethora of purple is to be found at the marketplace, but you have to catch sight of it before it's cooked and eaten.

We'll start before the bounty reaches the marketplace, on the tiny Island of Burano, where the fishermen get up before dawn...

For centuries, the small community of 450 fishermen on the island of Burano (situated in the lagoon north of Venice) have provided fresh fish for the famous Rialto Marketplace in Venice.  The women of Burano, since the 16th century, have been renowned for their lace-making, a trade introduced from Cyprus, which was then ruled by Venetians. 

The bright colors of the Burano houses follow a special system originating from the golden age of its development.  If someone wishes to paint their home, they must send a request to the government, who will respond by making notice of certain colors permitted for that lot.  It is said that the colors were useful to delineate the properties, and also so that fishermen could see their homes from the sea. 

Burano's boats, parked along the edges of the canals, are as colorful as their houses.  There is a small, open-air fish market on Burano, but most of the catch is delivered to the famous, bustling Rialto Market in Venice.

On his way to the market, here is a typical Venetian shopper.  Try to picture carrying home heavy bags of groceries, over bridges and up flights of stairs, without this wheeled carrier.  When entering a grocery store, many of these personal carts are parked in rows near the checkout stand, waiting to be filled up by shoppers.

We're at Rialto's Pescheria, or fish market.  Along with fruit and vegetable stands, and kiosks of cheeses, the Rialto Market is one of the liveliest spots in Venice.  The Pescheria has been located in this commercial section of Venice since the 14th century. 

According to the book, Secret Venice, the ancient trade of comprovendi pesce, or fishmonger, was restricted to elderly fishermen who had worked at least 20 years at sea, and were over the age of 50.  As a reward for their hard work, the Venetian Republic set aside this trade exclusively for them, allowing the men to end their working life away from the risks of the sea.

This is fresh tonno, or tuna from the northeast Atlantic for €17.80/kilo.  The Italians use tuna in many of their delicious sauces for pasta.

These are spada, or swordfish, fillets, and pieces of salmon.  On a building near the Pescheria, is an old, marble plaque that displays the regulated lengths each type of fish must have before it can be sold.  These "rules-of-length" were rigorously enforced and were intended to protect the fish during breeding season.  The rules still apply today.

Here is a whole pesche spada, or swordfish, along with some shrimp and losters.  Behind, you can see the columns of the open-air Rialto Fishmarket building.  At the tops of each column are beautiful capitals decorated with sea creatures such as crabs, lobsters, squid, octopus and seahorses.

The purple eye of a swordfish.

Octopus flowers.

Calamari Freschi Vivi, or fresh live squid.  Creepy eyes.

Next to the fishmarket, on a building occupied by the State Courts, is a wrought iron gate with a Latin inscription that reads "piscis primum a capite foetet" which means "fish begins to stink from the head".  As the Secret Venice book says, "this could be a warning to the inexperienced customers buying fish, or it could be a metaphorical warning against the dangers of power corrupting those who possess it, with the 'head' being the first part of the body politic to go rotten".  

One of the artists here at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica has fig trees, and she would bring in baskets of delicious ripe figs for everyone. 

Uva Fragola, or grapes with a strawberry flavor, can be purchased from any fruit vendor here.  They are used to make the famous Fragolino dessert wine.  There is a monestery within the city of Venice that grows Uva Fragola grapes that possibly decend from vines dating back to 1253.

The Rialto marketplace.  Beyond this stall, you can see the pallazi that line the Canal Grande.

Nostrani means home-grown, which likely refers to being grown in small farms on outlying islands in the Venetian lagoon.

Purple eggplants.

Purple lettuce.

And finally, a purple garnish.  The sign says that the rosmarino (rosemary) and the salvia (sage) are grown on the neighboring island of Sant' Erasmo, from where Venice receives much of its local fruits and vegetables.  We have rosemary and bay growing right in the garden of the Scuola.

Venetians are people of the sea - fishermen and sailors.  My friend, an instructor at the Scuola, gave me a tour of her friend's boat, moored at a marina on the north side of the Castello district.  The pride in the owner's eyes spoke of an ancestral connection to the sea.  After seeing the boat, we went on to a lovely, quiet restaurant to dine on fresh, fried calamari, zucchini, cauliflower,  and sweet, white wine.  Buon appetito!  

VERDE = Giardino 
Venetian gardens are primarily secret, but perhaps I can get a peek during the week...

Glowing Light: Venice

The first of three secondary colors, ARANCIONE, or orange, is a mixture of the primary colors red and yellow.  Fire, embers, sunset, citrus, coral...

Marzapane: a confection with a distinct almond flavor, made of sugar, honey and almond meal.

Coral jewels.

I have shown you designs from Venice's Mariano Fortuny before.  He is becoming my Venetian muse.  He lived from 1871-1949 and was a prolific painter, etcher, sculptor, photographer, architect and inventor.  His life culminated with his renowned textile designs, most famous of which was the Delphos Gown, made of shimmering, crimped, silk (like the scarf above) that hugged the wearer's form (a shocking change from Victorian corsets).  It was said the garment's fabric was light enough to be drawn through a wedding ring.  I saw an original turquoise Delphos Gown at an antique fair last weekend for €400!

Another Fortuny design (a far cry from a sow's ear...).

Architecture and undies - so Italian!  Look closely, and reflected next to her left hip is a nun, covered from head to toe.

I've always wondered why people with orange hair are called redheads.

In my last, BLU post, I spoke of the famous, five-generation Rubelli textile company, housed in a Renaissance palazzo.  Here is a fellow artist from the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica,  choosing one of the contemporary samples that range from €40 to €3,000 per meter.  

The famous British artist, Turner, was known for his ethereal, light-filled paintings.  Between the years of 1833 and 1846, paintings of Venice constituted 1/3 of his body of work.  It is said he stayed in a hotel overlooking Piazza San Marco, and went up to the rooftop to sketch during dawn and dusk.  This evening photo of the sky over Campo Santo Stephano, after a glorious thunderstorm, reminds me of Turner's work.

An interesting lamp of flames.

Looking straight up at the Teatro La Fenice's chandelier.

Chandeliers hanging in the furnace room of the Seguso glassworks in Murano.

When I first arrived in Venice, I felt artistically uninspired.  While speaking with Matilde, the founder of the Scuola di Grafica, she said she had a respected art professor in Rome who said:  "Art is like a cat.  When you want it to sit on your lap, it won't.  But, when you least expect it, it jumps up on your lap and curls up, allowing you to do anything to it."  So I began with some simple color studies, like this one.

Then, Matilde showed me the loosening-up process of sitting before a mirror, with your paper up against your chest, and painting while looking at the paper in the mirror, not looking at the paper directly.  It taxes both sides of the brain, and unexpected parts of your character emerge.

I then photocopied these "mirror" paintings and did a glue-transfer process onto various papers or canvases.  Mysterious "psyches" continued to reveal themselves.

For some reason, much of my time in Venice has been a reflection on aging.  This one, in particular, intensely captures the depths of feelings I'm facing about my age.

A lovingly cared for shrine.

The antique fair, where I saw the €400 Fortuny dress, was set up for 3 days in the square right in front of my apartment.  It had a fantastic array of Venetian, European and Asian items, including this Buddha.

I took a day trip to the island of Burano, a fishing village known for the bright colors of its houses.  It was truly enchanting.

Another view of Burano.

I am entranced by Venetian chimneys.  It always seems they come in families, with genealogical resemblances to their neighbors, but still every one different. 

Real foliage and metal foliage.

This is a hand wrought iron bracket on the historic well of a private palazzo.

As portrayed in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, this is in Venice's historic Ghetto.  The English word, ghetto, is borrowed from the Venetian word, ghèto, which means foundry.  This isolated part of Venice was a cannon foundry before the influx of Jewish citizens, fleeing persecution.  The Jews were housed in an area surrounded by water and controlled at night by heavy gates, manned by Christian guards, both protecting and segregating its inhabitants.  Due to the cramped quarters, additional floors were added to the tops of the buildings, making them some of the tallest in Venice.  Laws forbid building separate synagogues, so they were built on the top floors (like the wooden one in this picture) so that there should be no obstructions between the congregation and the heavens.

 

An orange pigeon at Piazza San Marco.

I've mentioned the cruise ship controversy in Venice, and I think this makes the issue clear.  On this day, a huge demonstration was staged against the allowance of cruise ships into Venice's lagoon.  Police boats and helicopters were everywhere as demonstrators in small boats yelled and shot off smoke bombs, to little avail, being completely dwarfed by the ships that were being towed out to sea.  San Giorgio Maggiore, looking very small, is in the background. 

 Up next, the second secondary color, VIOLA!

Venice got the blues...

With this post, we'll say arrivederci to the three primary colors:
ROSSO, GIALLO and BLU! 

Literally within minutes, the weather in Venice can go from sunny and clear, to whipping wind, lightning and horizontal hail. 

To the right,  the church of Santa Maria della Salute (health), to the left, the church of Santa Crociera del Svago (cruise of leisure).

The beautiful Fondamenta Zattere as seen from the bow of a vaporetto.

When not out on the water, in the middle of a large campo (square), or sipping a spritz on your rooftop terrace, this is a typical blue sky view.

A roofscape, framed by a window in the palazzo of the Fortuny Museum.

The canals, as polluted as they are claimed to be, still glow this exquisite clear, blue-green.

A brooding sky over the Basilica di San Marco.

The Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs) was built in 1602 and connects the prison to the interrogation rooms of the Doge's Palace.  The view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment.

This statue, on a geographically prominent point, is situated at what once was Venice's Sea Customs Post.  Now the building displays modern art from the collection of Francois Pinault, a wealthy French entrepreneur.  In 2008, when the building was turned into gallery space, the designer was the famous architect, Tadao Ando.  Across the Canal Grande, you can see the bell tower on Piazza San Marco.

When not in use, the gondolas are covered in blue canvas.

A group of us took a private tour of the showroom of the renowned historic Rubelli fabric company, located in a palazzo on the Grand Canal.  Here are exhibited two chairs from the 1930's, upholstered in Rubelli fabric from that era.

As interesting as the historic fabrics at the Rubelli showroom were, the architecture of the palazzo itself was equally stunning.  I looked up and saw this blue and gold ceiling...

...and this ornamented and gilded ceiling...

...and this door!  I jump at every opportunity to see the insides of these exquisite palazzos.

Next week I am going to visit the Orsoni mosaic tile factory.  These glass tile manufacturers have the only glass kiln still active in Venice city proper (the other glassmakers all work on the island of Murano). In 1888, the Orsoni family revived the Byzantine art of mosaics and the techniques for making pure glass enamels that had been developed on Murano during the Renaissance period.  The company has over 3,000 different shades of mosaics in their sample library.

The word "graffiti" is from the Italian word graffiato, which means "scratched".  The Italian term graffiti refers to the inscriptions, figure drawings, etc., found on ancient ruins such as the Catacombs of Rome, or at Pompeii.  Here is 21st century graffiti, but I will soon post some examples of ancient graffiti.

You could spend a lifetime just observing the many different patterns of Venice's ironwork.

This is my trusty map of Venice after only two weeks here.  You should see it now.

Venice is a city of reflections.  It seems I'm always peering in or out of windows.  We're peeking into the oldest intact storefront in the city - a pharmacy with original wood fixtures and old apothecary bottles.  Because of Venice's access to ingredients from the far east, the city was a forerunner in the design and production of medicinals and curative potions.

A blue sketch I did when I first arrived at the Scuola di Grafica.

Look closely, and you'll see the UPS boat (it's more blue than brown!).  Shortly before seeing this, I spied a FedEx boat zooming down the Grand Canal.

And finally, I promised  you a blue pigeon.  This fellow was with a huge flock of ordinary-colored pigeons on Piazza San Marco.  Lorenzo, the director of the Scuola di Grafica, says it's a miracolo, and I would agree, because a few minutes later, I saw a bright orange one.

Arrivederci!  I'm off in search of secondary colors.  I think I'll start with ARANCIONE.