hellovenezia

From graffiti to the writers’ walls, off on a journey that will take us to the very special graffiti artists of the time of the Venetian Republic. No tags, but ships, historical events, personages, long periods of quarantine to serve and remember.

From the German merchants’ headquarters to the Sottoportico del Traghetto at San Canciano, from the doors of the Confraternity of St. Mark (now the Civic Hospital) in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo to the island of Lazzareto Nuovo near Sant’Erasmo, San Francesco del Deserto and Burano in the northern Lagoon.

Graffiti. Art or savagery? Artistic expression or pure destruction of property and of the environment? This is not a new issue and there is certainly a lot of discussion about it. If we think of Americans Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat, who built up their planetary success starting from graffiti on walls or underground trains, we shall be able to take a reasonably benevolent view of this phenomenon. Not all those, however, who have held a pencil in their fingers can be compared with Degas or Picasso, not all those who clutch a spray can or a permanent marker pen have the genius of the masters, and people often stray into vandalism true and proper when they make indiscriminate use of walls and fences for their work or, worst of all, marbles and monuments.
And yet scrawls and graffiti, perhaps unconsciously as far as the original authors are concerned, have marked the history not only of art but of homo sapiens himself. Consider the graffiti and cave drawings done thousands of years ago at Lascaux, in France, and Altamira, in Spain. Consider the more recent messages left by the prisoners in hosts of dark, terrible prisons all over the world. For example in Venice we have the Piombi in the Doges’ Palace (piombo is the Italian for lead), so-called because they are the rooms under the lead roofs of the palace, which used to be prison cells: here there are dramatic messages and sketches that not only remind us of the many who were detained there but tell us about the social conditions and way of life of their times.
The Fontego dei Tedeschi (Rialto Actv stop, service 1 or 2), which is the Venice post office headquarters, is a sixteenth century building that was home to the rich colony of German merchants at the time of the Republic. There are documents that refer to the presence of this building in 1225, but what we see now is a reconstruction, which was completed in only three years, of the preceding palace after a devastating fire in 1505. The cost of thirty thousand ducats was for an all-inclusive job, i.e. it included the Giorgione frescos on the Grand Canal façade and Titian’s on the side canal (what remains of the original paintings can be seen in the Franchetti Gallery in the Cà d’Oro and at the Accademia Galleries).
Sixteenth century Venice was considered the European capital of trade and Rialto was its centre. In fact the German merchants’ headquarters accommodated not only Germans, but also Austrians, Flemings and Hungarians. Women were not allowed to sleep there: many todeschi far from their families probably spent many long, boring hours inside the palace. Perhaps it is for this reason that almost all the marble sills of the windows that overlook the interior courtyard on the first floor bear large numbers of graffi, with messages, drawings and signatures.

Some of these, very unusual, are patterns for the German game calledmolenspiel, known as Nine Men’s Morris in English, or crosses with arms of different shapes.
It is interesting to learn that the Germans worshipped at the nearby Church of San Bartolomeo, for which they commissioned an altarpiece of the Feast of the Rosary from Albrecht Dürer, who was in Venice in 1495. They enjoyed the privilege of the concione, meaning that they could hear sermons in their own language.

With the Lutheran reform, which officially came into being when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg to the applause of the Germanic world, the Fontego dei Tedeschi became a source of anxiety for Venetian Republic politics. The Venetian vision was to try and remain equally distant from political and ecclesiastical power, always with an eye to the moods of Roman apostolic power but with the unknown factor, from that time on, of the progress and consequences of Lutheran reform. Perhaps the first signs of the arrival of the Reformation in Venice can be glimpsed in these crosses heavily inscribed on the marble sills of the German merchants’ warehouse.
Turn right out of the Fontego dei Tedeschi and from the Ponte de l’Ogio look at the left-hand side of the building, originally frescoed by Titian and now bearing the signatures of the modern writers.
We continue on foot along Salizada San Giovanni Crisostomo, passing by the church, then, after the bridge, take the lane to the right to Campo San Canciano. To the left are the San Canciano Bridge and the Sottoportico del Traghetto. Here, on the columns of the arch, are inscribed the fares for the gondola journeys to the islands of the northern Lagoon, the names of gondoliers, devotional crosses and historical references to events that took place centuries ago, like the great cold that froze the whole lagoon in 1884 so that people could get to the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello on foot. A glimpse of everyday life in Venice in the past, to look out for and interpret on these columns, even if they are rather spoiled by the patina of age.
Now we move a few hundred metres on looking for the nearby Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo. When we get there, although it is not easy to remain indifferent to the charm of the equestrian monument of Bartolomeo Colleoni or that of the Basilica-Pantheon of the Republic of Venice, with its funereal monuments and mausoleums, we must go through the Renaissance gateway of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, the former Confraternity of St. Mark building that has been the Venice Civic Hospital since 1819.

On the jambs are a number of fine and interesting graffiti sketches of 16th and 17th century Venetian sailing vessels; coccheand galleys. There is also a strange figure of a little man with his heart in his hand that gave rise to one of the most romantic legends of Venice, together with that of the Bocolo, the red rose that is given to all the women in the city as a love token on 25 March, the feast day of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice.
On the quayside by the side of the hospital, the Fondamenta dei Mendicanti, after an iron bridge and two others we come to the Fondamenta Nove Actv waterbus station where we take service 13 to the island of Lazzaretto Novo. In 1468 a lazaretto was opened on the island known as Vigna Murada to prevent contagion, and called Novo - new - to distinguish it from the other already existing on an island opposite Lido, where confirmed cases of plague were confined. On Saturdays and Sundays from April to September there are guided tours of the island arranged by the Archeoclub d’Italia at 9.45 a.m. and 4 p.m. to discover the fascination of the lazzaretto buildings and, especially, the largest among them, the Teson Grande, more than 100 metres long. Drawn on the walls inside are 500-year-old graffiti giving us the facts about the people in quarantine in this place (magistrates, merchants, sailors, porters) with their goods and the events in their lives after they had been brought here to become clean after being suspected of having the plague.

Not only this, but there are also events in history such as the elections of Doges and tales of sea voyages to faraway ports called at by the seamen of that time, such as Cyprus and Constantinople.
As for us, we will leave it to the return journey to purify ourselves, going smoothly back on the Number 13 waterbus as it glides by islands, churches, palaces, water gates and quaysides reflected in the water and helps us to find a response to the query that started us off on our pilgrimage.
When we get to Fondamenta Nove, our journey can continue on an Actv boat either towards Ferrovia and Piazzale Roma or St. Mark’s and Lido, services 41-42 or 51-52.

 Alessandro Rizzardini (riproduzione riservata ©)