The papery look of a marble facade.... and images from a War

St Mark's is another place that is far to complex to comprehend on one visit. I remember from before, particularly in the rain, the wonderful marble panels on the exterior walls.

Mary McCarthy (to quote yet again) gets this just right.

"The marble veneers of St Mark's sides, especially when washed by the rain so that they look like oiled silk, are among the most beautiful things in Venice. And it is their very thinness, the sense they give of being a mere lustrous coating, a film, that makes them beautiful. A palace of solid marble, rain washed, simply looks bedraggled."

She also says - can this be true? It must be! She wrote for the New Yorker! Our nameless hero in Bright Lights, Big City (a fact checker) would surely agree - that Allied command officially 'captured' Venice with a fleet of gondolas. Something to research - surely.
But a lovely picture of troops on St Mark's square from the Imperial War Museum.

Who trod these streets before

Am reluctant to leave the Hotel Belludi37.  Have somehow found it an enchanting place - cannot say exactly why but there is a genuine welcome - the bowl of pale apples on the mezzanine -  tea in the large cool room with wooden shutters and a vast bed. Sleep well.
Swinging open the heavy wooden shutters gusts of sunshine and cold air sweep into the room. Hazy light outside over the arcade and cobbles.
Always - when seeing deserted streets early in the morning - think of someone who, as a child, said he remembered waking very early in Manhattan and saw from his bedroom window a cowboy riding at dawn through the empty streets.
The nameless hero in Bright Lights Big City/Jay Mcinerney wakes up with a similar thought (the book, so clearly, was written before 2001)

"The first light of the morning outlines the towers of the World Trade Centre at the tip of the island. You turn in the other direction and start uptown. There are cobbles on the street where the asphalt has worn though. You think of the wooden shoes of the first Dutch settlers on these same stones. Before that, Algonquin braves stalking game along silent trails."

But more pilgrimage awaits. David Cameron is making his first trip to Israel as PM today. 
The waitress's boiled eggs are slightly harder. She says she is from the Philippines. She recommends the Iglesia de S Leopoldo but I will not have time to go there, alas. She loves the churches.
St Antony definitely works miracles, she says. Her cousin prayed to St Anthony for a child and one was given after three years' marriage. Another cousin prayed to pass her nursing exams and she was successful. She misses the Philippines but all her family is here, her brothers and sisters. To go back would be very difficult, even to visit - several thousand euros each.
One last trip back to the Basilica with medallions for St Anthony. Hold them against his tomb in a kind of attempted consecration (is that what pilgrims do?)

Wonder at the same time what mental equipment pilgrims need - what stores of prayers and hymns. It would be nice to know more Collects - the perils and dangers of this night - lighten our darkness, O Lord. In fact, I can remember totally the Lord's Prayer, almost all of the general confession and probably most of the Creed. But that's about it. Otherwise - hymns, and many of those that one would not necessarily care to remember - Onward Christian Soldiers. Fight the Good Fight. Kneel and try and remember.
Dizzying patterning in the vaulted roof above the altar. It would indeed take a very long time to absorb Padua.

One last thought: how visual tradition infects everything. The crib (above) in the gift shop is very Baroque (so unlike the crib I saw by the Separation Wall in Bethlehem).
Outside in the street even the arrangements of olives on pizzas seem to reflect the rhythm of decorative patterns on the vaults. How intriguing pattern is - is a striving to master space? How extraordinary that we always seek to pattern. In some cases it is to order: in others to beautify. The subject of another blog.

(And something here that captures my attention - why? It's the silk scarf against the asktrakhan. Rather random and delightful.  I salvaged an astrakhan coat myself this winter in London, but it has scarcely been cold enough to wear it.)

Breakfast in Padua and parts of a favourite saint

More on cyber warfare this morning. Kontacte Russia's social media network has been taken under the control of Kremlin-backed businessmen - access to 13 Ukrainian sites has been blocked. The Kremlin is keen to tighten its grip on public debate. More digital beachheads - like the Snake virus...
But this is by the by: there is a real pilgrimage to be undertaken today - to possibly my favourite saint, and certainly the one I invoke most frequently: St Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. I have long wanted to pay homage.
Even the nameless hero in Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City is talking about pilgrimage.

"Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato's pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it's possible to change in this life. Being with a philospher makes you think."

A great breakfast in the Hotel Belludi37 - love the china milk carton with its indents of fingers - literally tactile design. And the cloudy glasses on the sideboard... grape coloured and as if the bloom of grapes is on them. Later see frescoes with just these colours.

Two perfectly cooked boiled eggs from the waitress who has been in Padua for eight years. Her brother and sisters are here. She has sad eyes but she smiles constantly and loves her new city. Her eyes are so sad that I do not even ask where she came from really, where her real country is. Will do so tomorrow.
The Basilica is a few steps from the hotel. It's busy even though it's hardly ten. This is a serious pilgrimage site and there is not a camera nor a mobile phone to be seen: they are totally forbidden.

The tomb is covered with photographs of people prayed for, or expecting miracles. Stand in line and lay my hand on the tomb. St Anthony is the patron saint of lost things and in my experience, he works hard.

Marble panel by the tomb

Relics are less easy to deal with. The coffin was opened with Pope Jean Paul's blessing some years ago and St Anthony's uncorrupted vocal cords discovered. These with his tongue, and his teeth, are in the chapel. Even more striking for me - than the body parts - were the woven fragments from his robe. The power of the stitch, the threads pulled through by a human hand.

To think about: why do people need relics? They work miracles, of course. But they are also a reminder that someone, or something, was real. Think about the earth brought back to Spain by explorers in the New World. 

Over breakfast I read a review on TripAdvisor saying all of Padua's sites could be seen in a day - in fact scarce a lifetime would suffice, it seems to me.

Lucretia Borgia and rad as tits

It is quite hard to think of many Byron poems that people quote today ... he's thought to be a bit out of fashion.... full-blown.... rather literary....dated... not relevant today.  No one reads him!

But don't think that any other poet was quoted by (the extremely irritating) BAFTA host Stephen Fry last night. Not bad for someone who died nearly 200 years previously. Though - I had to think - am not at all sure what Byron would have made of the BAFTAS.

So defining an age/sensibility/literary movement and lifestyle counts for something. It's fairly hard core as Alison in Story of My Life might say - or as might anyone who mastered that kind of junky punchy American prose/slang.

"Even if you weren't a trilingual doctor of arts and such with a badass resume and a dope setta skills you'd still  be rad as tits."

Byron liked Milan.

"I have been to the Ambrosian library (founded in 1609 by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo)..... I have been most delighted with a correspondence of letters, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia and Cardinal Bembo preserved there. I have pored over them and a lock of her hair, the prettiest and fairest imaginable -  I never saw fairer - and shall go repeatedly to read the epistles over and over; and if I can obtain some of the hair by fair means, I shall try. I have already the librarian to promise me copies of the letters, and I hope that he will not disappoint me. They are short, but very simply, sweet, and to the purpose....

Abraham casting out Hagar and Ismael/Guercino

 The Brera gallery of paintings has some fine pictures, but nothing of a collection. Of paintings I know nothing; but I like a Guercino -a picture of Abraham putting away Hagar and Ismael - which seems to me natural and goodly. The Flemish school, such as I saw it in Flanders, I utterly detested, despised and abhorred; it might be painting but it was not nature; the Italian is pleasing,and their ideal very noble."

Letter to John Murray. 15 October 1816, Milan 

Story of My Life

Maybe Alison - sex, cocaine and parties -  in Story of My Life/Jay McInerney is a latter day Childe Harold.  On a journey to find something.... Though cannot imagine her sitting still on a train journey.

 

"So, okay, maybe I dreamed it. I was in bed after all, and he woke me up. Not for the first time. But just now, with these tranks they've got me on, I feel like I'm sleepwalking anyway and I can almost believe it never happened. Maybe I dreamed a lot of stuff. Stuff that I thought happened in my life. Stuff I thought I did. Stuff that was done to me. Wouldn't that be great? I'd love to think that ninety percent of it was just dreaming."

Train journeys still - to me - seem the most significant journeys.