Tha Glory of the Mundane from Siena

Immediately after boasting that  hadn't seen a single dog turd, I did see one. But it was very dainty.

I did see massive frescos too. Siena has some of the earliest secular frescos apparently. It's a relief, because with crucifixion after crucifixion after crucifixion one does begin to feel one can have too much of a good thing.

The first secular frescos I saw were in a huge echoing building opposite the Duomo called Santa Maria della Scala. Not sure what she was doing up a ladder but perhaps on her way to heaven. It was the hospital in mediaeval times, and amazingly, was still being used in the late 20th century. In the long room where the beds of the sick were so recently lined up, there are frescos of people being treated hundreds of years ago in the very same room. A young man with a ghastly wound in his thigh is being tenderly washed prior to surgery. A couple of porters are carrying stretchers. A fat bored mink (sorry, 'monk' but I can't bear to correct it) is hearing confession from a very ill old man in bed.
The establishment also acted as an orphanage and cared for foundlings - in fact local woman overburdened with children could just come and donate their latest child knowing it would be well looked after. They had an army of wet nurses and one of the frescos showed them being paid. I had the place completely to myself and as there were seats, I spent a lot of time there.

I also visited the famous Allegory of Good Government in the Museo Civico. That's the one which includes a personification of Pax as a girl relaxing on a sofa holding a palm frond or olive branch and reading a magazine. (I was lying about the magazine.) In the same painting there are quite a few
armed guards, bad hombres in handcuffs and indeed, almost on the lap of Justice herself, a severed head. The implication being that Peace wouldn't be able to sprawl in that carefree manner were it not
for the First Responders.
Good Government is reflected in an attractive townscape showing girls dancing to a golden tambourine, a bloke buying shoes, somebody giving a lecture, and outside the city walls, a team working with pick axes, a plough, hunting with dogs and a nice black and white pig. Once again, it's hovered over by an angel holding a miniature Polly Pocket size gallows. (Stocking filler idea?) The message is loud and clear.
Bad Government is represented by a devilish looking guy with horns but his fresco has been much damaged. I did manage to see one murder though and I guess there were originally plenty more.

Oh how I wish my eyesight, knees and Latin were in better nick.

After all that I went to the Campo and was faced with a pizza almost as large as the Campo itself. Of course I didn't normally eat there - I'm not completely daft - but it was my last sunlit moment in sunlit
 Siena so I wanted to wallow slightly. Lots of people sit or lie down in the Campo but if I were to do so I fear the paramedics would be called.

I was nerving myself up for Florence, but as it turned out, even a whole bodyful of nerves wasn't going to be enough.

Siena

If you've never been to Siena, come. If you've ever been, come back. I came back. It's my sixth visit but I haven't been here for seventeen years. The Rough Guide describes it as 'immediately ravishing and endlessly mysterious' (or something - haven't got the quote to hand). They're not wrong. It's a tiny city but on such a grand scale.
Endless staircases and ravines of rosy brick. Chasms of ancient windows. Marble staircases as is heaven - or so I'm told. And then the Campo. A dream-like space. The atmosphere of happy antiquity enfolds you.
There are little dogs everywhere but I haven't seen a single turd.
As for the Duomo... Every inch of it offers a decorative feast.
I dreamt last night I was kissed by Jacob Rees-Mogg, but even that couldn't spoil my mood of exaltation.

Tomb Radar

I've seen some flashy tombs in my time but Titian's takes the cake. OK, he was a big shot, he was the top banana, and it was kind of bad luck keeling over with plague just when he was within sight of his 90th birthday. But not as bad as Marietta's luck (Tintoretto's daughter, a talented painter who died at around thirty, probably in childbirth).
And I suppose it's a bit unfair, criticising a guy's tomb, especially if it was created three centuries after his death. All the same, it's a crazy megalomaniac Las Vegas kind of structure. Compare it with Monteverdi's tomb a few yards away: a simple slab set in the floor, inscribed with Claudio's date of birth and death, around a yard wide, no more. Tears came to my eyes because Monteverdi has been part of my life since I was about 18 and first heard his Vespers, and was transported by them into some kind of parallel universe where human beings, like lions, can fly. Winged lions are all very well by the way, but I do worry rather about the songbirds.
So there was Monteverdi, keeping a very modest low profile in death, and there was Titian being commemorated in a way that somehow made me think of Elvis. Somebody had placed a couple of roses on Monteverdi's memorial slab but you couldn't have reached up far enough to do the same for Titian.
In the same church (familiarly known as the Frari) I finally saw the painting that made Henry James come over queer, and he was quite right, it is a heavenly Bellini altarpiece which glows. Apparently Bellini's soulful pouting Madonnas were modelled by his gorgeous pouting mistress. That girl could pout for eternity, and happily, she will.

Tintoretto and the Wrong Trousers

I found a pair of light cotton trousers and they looked OK in the shop, but when I got them home I realised that the elasticated bottoms weren't a good look, and the blue was a shrieking sort of blue that not even Tiepolo at his bluest would have chosen. I couldn't do much about the blue, but I was determined the elasticated bottoms would go. I didn't want to look like Andy Pandy's  mother. So I grabbed the scissors (this apartment has everything) and hacked off the bottoms, then hemmed them amateurishly. The trousers now flapped around my legs like flour bags, at a moment when the sartorial authorities have declared that all trouser legs must be tight-fitting as tourniquets. Never mind. Nobody would look at me anyway. At least I would be cool in the punishing heat. Thus attired I went out in search of Tintoretto. The punishing heat had gone and a light rain was falling. The trousers, to be honest, were beginning to feel a bit too thin.

But I persevered. I hopped onto a vaporetto and chugged round the northern coast to ORTO. The church Madonna del Orto contains the tallest painting ever attempted. I went in. The church was lofty, pink and grey and cream brick and marble - my favourite colours, I can't imagine why I packed all this blue. I just misspelled 'pink' as 'oink'. I just thought you'd like to know.

I was a bit disappointed with Tintoretto's Last Judgement. The whole of the bottom half - hell, yes - was so dark as to be almost invisible. His colours seemed a bit muddy - but perhaps my taste has been corrupted by all the shrieking blue. Still, Tintoretto was roughly contemporary with Elizabeth 1, and when you compare his stuff with the awful primitive tat that was being churned out by English artists of the period, it makes you realise just how grrrrreat he was. My favourite thing in the church was a small dog in a painting by Titian, Tobias and the Angel. I also saw a very macho old pug on the boat. He looked like a tiny bull.

 I am happy to record that the English tourists here are some of the least disgusting. There's a lot of debate in Venetian forums about trying not to look like a tourist, and the difference between tourism and travelling. I suppose if you drift past St Mark's square on a cruise ship several storeys high, exclaim raucously and take photos, then sail off to somewhere else, it might exhibit a vulgar attitude to travel which is to be deplored. But as we, the gaping hordes, churn up and down the Grand Canal, gazing at all these palaces built by millionaire merchants to exhibit their wealth and taste, I would have thought they'd be chuffed that hordes of people would come from Wanxian and Wisconsin and Wotton-under Edge to gape, stunned, at the majesty of the place, hundreds of years later. In other words, being a tourist in Venice is just what comes naturally.

From Freezer to Deep Fat Fryer: Venice 2015

I'm back in Venice, and just like last time, the worst thing was trying to find Bristol Airport. This time I resorted to Satnav and I still had the feeling, as the steep wooded lanes got more and more narrow, that I was somehow being betrayed by Satnav. One lane was so narrow I doubted whether it would even manage to accommodate an endoscopy, let alone a Kia Sorento. I am, incidentally, irritated by my car's inability to spell Sorrento. Perhaps it is an intellectual rights issue.
Unlike the rest of humanity, I have somehow failed to instal a cute little holder on the dashboard for the Satnav to slot into with a reassuring click. So - sorry to start a sentence with the word so, but this time it's justified as it has a causal connection to the previous sentence - so my Satnav is free range, and as I lurched up and down those narrow lanes, the Satnav hurtled about in the front of a car, like an untrained terrier trying to escape from its lead. I managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of it as it flashed between my thighs heading for the brake pedal, and it seemed to say the journey was going to take another seven hours.
But in fact it was seven minutes, and to my astonishment Satnav delivered me to the airport with a kind of abruptness which almost seemed like the end of a marital row. 'So there's your precious Bristol Airport - actually!' Perhaps it had heard the things I had been screaming at it.
I parked in the Silver Zone, but there was no reduction for silver surfers. The Silver Zone is fine actually, but if you enter the loo accompanied by your luggage there's a chance you'll be trapped there forever. It's not an unpleasant loo as loos go, but I'm not sure it can compare with the Serenissima. (Is that a car yet, by the way?)
Eventually I escaped and found myself trudging across tarmac to the Ryanair flight to Treviso. The bitter wind and rain was horizontal - a tradition in British Maytime - and I had to cling to the handrail with all my strength as I climbed the steps onto the plane, or I would have been blown off to Swindon in tatters. 'It might be a bumpy to start with,' the pilot warned us. I hate it when pilots use the word 'bumpy'. It's like when doctors say, 'So you're worried it might be Something Nasty?' It's infantilising. But on the other hand, 'Waaaaah! Mummeeee! We're gonna die!'
Instead, however, the flight was smooth and pleasant. I'm sorry to have to say this, but I'm quite satisfied with Ryanair. So far. We haven't had the flight home yet.
Anyway, I arrived to find there was a problem. It was hot. On the short walk from the plane to Treviso terminal I removed my anorak, gilet, and woolly jumper - which had not been enough to protect me from the wintry blasts at Bristol. I would fain have removed my vest had it been feasible. On the bus into Venice there was a digital display giving the temperature as 29 degrees. I assumed it was broken, but the bus tipped us out into Piazzale Roma like sausages into a frying pan. What's happened? Last year it was pleasant, but with a chilly breeze. In fact I remember often feeling a bit too cold.
Well, I had to walk to the apartment I had rented in Cannaregio. It's not far, but to a silver surfer wearing a vest and jeans and dragging a suitcase packed with more jumpers and jeans, it was an endless trek. I feared I would end up drinking my own urine and cowering in the shade of my own passport, but just two minutes from death, I arrived.
My flat is most delightful, and very affordable - I'll tell you more about it later. But the problem is the heat. I need to buy a pair of thin cotton trousers to take the place of these damned jeans, but the jeans are squeezing the life out of me and boiling my thighs, so I can't go out in the heat of the day, in search of tropical weight togs.
Oh God! I should be contemplating the tomb of Tintoretto, and instead am wondering if I could get away with wearing my pyjama trousers in the street. They are leopard print. What do you think?

In Partenza

Do you ever suffer this syndrome: on the last day of your hols, it starts to rain, you lose your hotel room key, somebody barges into you in the street and doesn't say sorry, your breakfast disagrees with you? It's Nature's way of saying Back to Work You Skiving Lounger. Although a holiday in Venice is also work of a sort - the endless trudging round churches, the treadmill of lasagnes, the craning of the neck to admire palazzi...
Anyway my last day dawned grey and greasy, not like the bright blue breezy ones which had preceded it. I had planned to visit the Frari on my last morning, to see a painting that was so wonderful it made Henry James come over queer, and another one which Ruskin had said was the best painting ever since the last one he'd quite liked.
However, when I got to the Frari I discovered my museum pass wasn't valid, and I hadn't got enough change for the ten euros (!) admission, and I couldn't find a bank, and I began to think my breakfast had disagreed with me, and when I went back to the monastery to get my case, I discovered my boat bus pass had expired too. Oh soddit! The painting that had made Henry James come over queer would have to wait.
Then, on the bus to the airport, it clouded over and began to rain, and by the time we got there, it was sluicing down, and the flight was delayed for two hours (thank God! One's appetite for taking off in pitch black thunderstorms is limited). And then we were delayed for another hour as they worked their way through the delayed schedule, but at last we were on board, only 3 hours late, and thinking, oh well, we'll be in  Bristol in a minute. But then, in mid-air, the captain made an announcement which began with the word UNFORTUNATELY. This word should be forbidden, especially at the beginning of a sentence, when in mid-air.
Apparently the crew had been working for too long and we had to divert to Brussels to pick up another crew. On arrival at Brussels (well, Charleroi, actually. Hadn't used that word since O level geography) we had to wait an hour for the fresh crew to arrive. There was a bit of whinging. One woman reproached the tired crew saying she often worked a 14 hour day. But I secretly supported Ryanair in all their decisions so far- although one cannot, of course, say one supports Ryanair out loud in polite society. One does not want a tired pilot. Or indeed a tired steward, flinging scalding tea about in a listless fit.
Eventually we arrived at Bristol five hours late, and despite having gone to the loo at Bristol airport, I still had to stop on the drive home for a pee, and it was at one of those petrol stations which is also a supermarket, and I bought loads and loads of grub and still the woman wouldn't let me use their toilet, and I had to look ever so old and desperate and kind of terminal before she relented.
And so ended my journey to the most exquisite, scintillating city on earth: humiliated in a toilet in a filling station.
It was bloody marvellous though.

The Blues in Venice

I'm staying in an ecclesiastical guest house just behind the church Gesuati, and I knew that Tiepolo had gone bananas there, all over the ceiling, so I nipped in for a look. I'd been practising looking at ceilings at home but had seen nothing more than a few beautifully-constructed spiders' webs. In the event I didn't need to crane and totter - there was a mirror sensibly provided in the aisle: you gazed down into it and saw the ceiling reflected. Or that was the idea. What you actually saw, in the foreground and blotting out the Tiepolo, was your own nostrils. Mortified to be reminded that after so many decades, my nostrils still do not match.
Eventually I tore my eyes away from my own shortcomings and admired the sky blue vault with its swarms of cherubs. I think I'd like a cherub for my next pet. You could take it to the park and fly it round like a boy with a model plane. I'm sorely tempted by the winged lions, too - not as a pet, but as a means of transport. Alternative to, say, a Ferrari.
Tiepolo paints good babies. Jesus appeared to be waving to the angels, but closer inspection revealed he was brandishing a rosary. At first I took it for a teething aid. But I'm a novice when it comes to rosaries so its esoteric mysteries are beyond me. However, I do know a good light blue when I see one, and I have to say Tiepolo excels. In fact if he'd been at Cambridge he'd have got a Blue for blue.
Then, in search of dark blue, I entered the Accademia. After suffering a brisk interrogation as to my antiquity I was awarded a massive discount, and I had the place all to myself, no matter what the guidebook says. It was mainly the Bellinis I had come to see, and they were there, the Madonnas and babies, and the Marian robes were quite the best of dark blues ever. You only have to see a Bellini next to somebody not quite so good to realise how superb he is.  Giovanni, that is. His dad and his brother just don't quite have it. The expression of these Madonnas is extraordinarily dreamy and detached, and they look somehow very modern girls - one can imagine them not-quite concentrating on their physics homework.
But it was Carpaccio who really wowed me, with his series about the life of St Ursula. Poor Ursula organised a kind of school trip as part of a pre-nuptial agreement, and she and her hundred girly friends were massacred, I forget by whom. Apart from the rather horrid painting of the massacre, all the other pictures were just fascinating and filled with extraordinarily pretty boys. Anyone interested in beautiful men should instantly scrutinise Carpaccio's Miracle of the Thingummyjig near the Rialto. That boy on the left with his back to us - was there anything ever more camp? And the gondoliers, bless them with their jazzy tights and shoulder length curly hair. Cripes! Who needs HRT?
After having these unworthy thoughts perhaps it was only fair that I should have gone out and paid £36 for fish and chips - though it was sea bass, and filleted at the table for me, etc etc. It's back to street pizzas tonight /- though I have a feeling that also means grazed knees. One does hope not.