it seemed more like a back street in Liverpool, or around the tenements of Fulton Street in the old days, only hotter.
But I duly found the door, and pressed the brass button, hearing the sound of ringing from deep within. There was eventually a shuffling and a scuffling, and an ancient man first cracked open the barrier and then revealed his face, smiling broadly and toothlessly as he did so. He was dressed in black and had the weathered face of a cobbler. He gathered me and my boxes into the room – a room that, surprisingly, had a floor that sloped down right into water and that ended in a doorway made of slats through which the sunlight shone and shimmered.
At the room’s upper end, beside the doorway at which Alberto had welcomed me, all was dry, and there was a footway leading to a staircase and up into the house itself. But mostly this was the water-entrance to the house, and so there was a small dingy bobbing in the shallow water inside the room, and which bumped on the half-submerged flagstones. As the tide rose, so the canal water slopped lustily further and further into the bowels of the house, a translucent green and ever-spreading carpet.
Alberto could see I was fascinated. He was a little lame, yet he limped with grave dignity along the side wall and then with a flourish drew back the slatted gates. Afternoon sunlight then flooded in, the ceiling suddenly glittered with the reflection of a thousand golden dapples. He beckoned to me to look, to drink it all in.
It was beyond belief. Before me was the Grand Canal itself, no less, the madcap busyness of its great sinuous waterway spread out like some vast tableau, a private theatrical performance laid on just for me. There to the right was the immense, three-tiered Rezzonico mansion, no more than a few hundred yards away; the Accademia bridge was a little further down, and if I strained hard and leaned out over the water I could see the Rialto, too, a few hundred yards to the left.
There was a strange insistence about these cool waters, lapping as they did right into the heart of the very house where I was staying. You must venture out, they seemed to say. There was a small landing stage, and by chance a gondola was tying up to the striped pole at one end, and by even greater chance there came a sudden cry of welcome from within it – a friend of mine who lay on a cushion near the prow was waving to me, frantically. It wasn’t a total coincidence. She knew where I would be staying and had come to meet me, to take me for an evening drink.
I mentioned earlier that I had two pieces of paper with me. The first was the one I had given to the taxi, and which led me to this exquisite miniature palazzo where I was now staying. The second, which I dug from my shirt pocket, was an introduction written from a mutual friend in London – a please be kind to this man letter, written to Arrigo Cipriani, the man who at the time ran no less a watering hole than – of course – Harry’s Bar.
And this, without the slightest protest from my lady-in-the-gondola, was then where we promptly went. And which is why, as the sun went down on that first Venice evening, there we were: two old friends, sitting beside the tiny tinted windows of the bar, gazing out in a quiet rapture and sipping as we did so, and inevitably, pair after pair of fresh-made Bellinis. We were captivated: by the old palaces and warehouses of Giudecca out on the blue horizon, by the enormous white marble dome of the Basilica Salute just across the canal from us, by all the rest of the irresistible magic of Venice, which was laid out glowing and drowning in that evening’s warmth, on every side.
Serene, eternal, perfect. Venice was at that moment for us what it has become for most who are fortunate enough to be able to stay there for a while, who are lucky enough to be able to drink it all in. Venice, the perfect stage set for an ever-unfolding dream, a place that after that inauspicious moment on the Milan Express became as I had long imagined – place of treasure, of secrets, and the embalming comforts of memory.
And a place whose tincture is all captured, so perfectly, in the lush score of the pages of Van Doren’s Venice that follow.
The Bridge of Sighs, 2008
San Giorgio at Night, 2008. Private Collection
“Venice still lingered on my mind when I arrived at the design studio …”
A WORLD AWAY
If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you’ve imagined. Venice is – Venice is better.
– Fran Lebowitz1
The winter of 1986 was barren and cheerless. Gray clouds scudded overhead, overshadowing the Columbia University campus like squat, menacing gulls. Students were holed up in dorms, huddled next to radiators. Finals loomed. Claustrophobia pressed in. I was trapped.
That December, wandering the depths of the architecture school, numb from a recent all-night charette study session, I noticed a brochure in the library announcing a summer program in Venice. The seductive cover showed a glossy photograph of the Salute church on the Grand Canal. All inquiries to be made to Prof. Luigi Butera. References necessary. I read the fine print. Applicants to be selected based on an aptitude for drawing. Space is limited. Despite the prerequisites, I thought my chances were good. Drawing was something I’d done for years, and Venice was a city I knew well. I jotted down the number for Professor Butera – suddenly the most significant person in my life – and determined that a summer abroad would be the perfect escape. But before I could seriously contemplate absconding to Europe, I had to satisfy my more immediate coursework: I needed to pass my semester review, which was only hours away.
Venice still lingered on my mind when I arrived at the design studio after lunch. Most of my fellow students were already there. They looked catatonic; some hadn’t slept in days. The professors were silent as I nervously pinned up my elevations, rendered in pencil and watercolor. They deliberated for what seemed an eternity. When they finally spoke, I heard the words “painterly” and “inspired” – no faint praise from an architecture jury. That afternoon I scrounged around for Professor Butera’s address and submitted my application. The sky seemed suddenly brighter, and I could breathe again. Elated and relieved, I was already sipping espresso in Piazza San Marco.
Lying awake in my dorm that evening, I pondered the possibilities. I thought of the expatriates who once lived there – Whistler, Stravinsky, Pound, Sargent, Browning, James, Byron, Brodsky – cultural luminaries in music, literature, and painting. The list was long. I felt presumptuous comparing my unfledged aptitudes to theirs. Unable to fall asleep, I got out of bed and stared out my window. I envisioned for a moment that the quadrangle below, outside Butler Library, was Piazza San Marco, and wondered if Venice would lead to anything significant – or if I was just being self-indulgent. Shouldn’t I be looking for a job? My drawings for that day’s presentation still lay sprawled on the floor. I looked at them again closely. In truth, I derived my greatest satisfaction from their use of watercolor – greater than any actual architectural problem I’d solved. I cared less about the requisite number of emergency exits and more about the quality of my rendering: the choice of colors, the shade and shadow. My years of art classes seemed finally to have paid off. Starting to droop, I closed my eyes and turned in.
Six months later I landed at Venice’s Marco Polo airport, accepted into the program. Boarding the vaporetto for my hotel, I started to plan my itinerary: the Palazzo Ca’ Dario, with its colorful Renaissance façade;
