Underground Treasure in Venice

In which we discover Venetian Pearls and Buried Beauty 

 

San Simeone Piccolo, Venice, built 1738

The Maestro, as we call him, composed the first two acts of his new opera in the spare bedroom of our Florentine flat this winter. When the time came for him to take this work up to Austria to present it to the theatre, we put the electric piano in a snowboard bag (it fit perfectly) to make it easier to take on the train.

I know, it sounds glamorous, and maybe it is.

A glass bead coral necklace by Marisa Convento

I accompanied Erling and his piano as far as Venice, and treated myself a day to wander about the city on an unusually warm and uncrowded midwinter day, feeling a bit blue that I would not be staying for Carnivale this time. Feeling even bluer that I wasn't able to return to Venice with my mother, something we talked about a lot during her last year.  I was cheered and inspired by a visit with the great Impiraressa, Marisa Convento, a Venetian artisan reviving the traditional art of seed glass beading from her small shop in San Marco, Venetian Dreams.  Not just an expert beader, Mariso knows the history of her art, and the significance of its revival.  She works with vintage and antique glass beads, and has an impressive collection of the special "Pearls:" antique (and highly collectible) Murano-made beads used for centuries in trading around the world, and which have found their way back to the city, and into her skilled hands.

Marisa is one of the artisans involved with Venezia Autentica, a brilliant organization helping to educate visitors on how to have a more meaningful experience in a city being trampled by mass tourism.  While we commiserated on the fate of the artists in our respective cities, I could see that the fight to save Venice may well be won by her artists.  Who knows more about perseverance than a Venetian?  Than a Venetian artist? 

Buried Treasure

Just across the canal from Santa Lucia station is the strangely proportioned church of San Simeone Piccolo (above.)   Attracted by its impressive copper green dome, visitors might peek inside the circular nave, see the protective plastic sheet covering the ceiling, and then leave.  I personally have never seen the inside of this dome and the church under it is unremarkable. However, this church keeps a secret treasure in its crypt.  You can buy a candle from the attendant as admission, and go down the stairs.

Now, stay still, until your eyes get used to the dark. 

painted designs on the walls of the crypt

You will see, the entire crypt is covered in ornament and murals! Rough and sort of theatrical in style, the painting shows up pretty well in low light.  Most of the ornament is done with a very limited palette of yellow ochre,  red, white, and a bit of black.

Lit by a single candle, the crypt walls and ceiling are visible only for a few feet.

Crypt ceiling painted in ornament with red and yellow ochre

Yes it is well below ground, and yes it is damp and cold.  It appears to have been painted in the 18th century after the church was built,  and I have no idea if...  

darn it my candle went out and I have to make my way back to the entrance, where one little candle was left burning.    

Xe mejo on mocolo impissà che na candela stuà. (1)

A small chapel in the center of crypt, lit by a single light near the entrance

Radiating from a central octagonal chapel are corridors leading to small shrines and burial chambers, These were ransacked and ill-used during the Napoleonic period. Any records about who is buried here were lost at that time.  Any candelabra that may have been here... have not been replaced.

A mournful mural detail by candlelight

A small shrine inside the crypt with loose but effective trompe l'oeil painting

The stoning of St Stephen,  in a faux gold mosaic cartouche.*

I don't have a flash on my camera but I resort to using the flashlight of my phone a few times. 

Especially when I hear things.

Entrance to a family tomb

inside a tomb, with a yellow, black, and ochre color scheme

A tomb where the tunnels split into four directions. The trompe l'oeil grill on the ceiling mimics a real grill elsewhere in the crypt.

macabre decoration in the crypt of San Simeone Piccolo, lit by a single candle

Five months later, in Klagenfurt rehearsals have started.  In three hours I  am in Venice to see the spectacular retrospective of Nancy Genn at the Palazzo Fero-Fini, which corresponds with the opening the Biennale Architettura.   The art galleries are opening new shows, and prosecco is being poured in every doorway of the Dorsoduro.

Erling joins me for one day. I pay my respects to Tintoretto.  On our way back, I stay with the bags while Erling ventures into the crypt.

It is perhaps better if you go into the crypt alone.

(1) Venetian proverb: Better to have a lit candle stub than an extinguished candle. 

All photos in this post by Lynne Rutter, 2018
except* by Erling Wold

Rattensturm a opera by Erling Wold and Peter Wagner,  13 -30 June, 2018 at the Klagenfurter Ensemble, Klagenfurt-am-Worthersee, Austria.

Churches of Venice  website in English with details on every church and its art

Venetian Dreams  Marissa Convento on Instagram
Alessia Fuga  contemporary glass bead artist

Venezia Autentica   because the more you know about Venice the more you will love it

Lynne Rutter Studio

Back in Florence

In which we go back, in order to go forward.

A ceiling panel in the Ufizzi Galleries, depicting the destruction of Florence by retreating Nazi troops at the end of WWII.

I was trying to recall the last time I was truly happy.  I think it was three years ago, before all this happened. I had spent a year planning my sabbatical in Florence, and then learned my father had cancer.  His treatment was encouraging, and so we were encouraged to go.  "What else are you going to do?" my father asked me "sit around here and watch me drool?"   And so we passed three months in a rainy Tuscan winter, while I sought out material for my book.  When I called each morning,  my father assured me that despite any rumors of his demise, he was not yet dead.  He and my mother were genuinely interested in what I was doing, shared their own travel stories, asked me for specific photos, told me their news, sometimes bad news.

We made the most of our time, well aware of how limited it was.

Later that year, my father died. And then all too soon after that, my mother got cancer, and all too soon she also died.  My family had to move out of their home in what felt like a terrific hurry.  During all this I could see the avalanche coming and I knew I could not outrun it.  And so I let it wash over me, and bury me, and bury my ambitions and my dreams and my joy, and pretty much everything else.  Every movement required immense effort and caused incredible pain. And so I just stayed there under all that grief, living each moment of it in great detail, until I could no longer breathe.

Where was I before that? In Florence I think it was, three years ago.  And here I am again.

Theatre of Dreams

Glittering Tree toppers at Wendy Addison's studio Theatre of Dreams

A cold, clear holiday weekend,  and what better way to enjoy the beauty of the San Francisco Bay Area than to escape the city and have a short adventure to Port Costa?   It's been far too long since I last visited Wendy Addison's studio, and today the Theatre of Dreams is open!

Theatre of Dreams holiday shop in Port Costa;  Bob's roasted nuts being sold outside

Port Costa is a charming little place on the Carquinez Straight, at the end of a windy canyon road,  and it's utterly beautiful in a frozen-in-time kind of way.  And today it was nearly freezing so the Maestro and I  began with a warming drink at the Warehouse Café, which in the summer is usually full of bikers, but was at that hour perfectly deserted. Then we went to visit the shop, which is housed in an old flat-front Victorian with a double wrap-around porch. 

inside the Theatre of Dreams

Inside the Theatre of Dreams is dark and twinkling with glitter ornaments, gift boxes, and mysterious shadows.  Wendy's creations are made from antique ribbon, old sheet music, German glass glitter, letter-pressed phrases, vintage ephemera.  Her work is as much about atmosphere and memory as it is about tactile beauty.  Visiting her studio is a wonderful and inspiring experience.

a small diorama by Wendy Addison

For a couple of weekends just after Thanksgiving, the Theatre of Dreams is open as a holiday shop.

Of course we ran into our old friend Kathleen Crowley there, another creative spirit and maker of beautiful things whose studio is in just downstream in Crockett.  Weren't we supposed to make tiaras and just start wearing them all the time?

We lingered admiring the glittering décor and another warming drink at the Warehouse, and then wandered across the street to the refashioned  Bull Valley Roadhouse for some excellent comfort food.

More nostalgia:  more photos of the Theatre of Dreams in this previous post (2011)  Cirque de Nöel.

A paper memento mori and Halloween gift boxes

gift boxes displayed under the watchful shadow of a large faerie.

The  Theatre of Dreams  annual holiday open house

Friday-Sunday  November 27-29  and  December 5-7
#11 Canyon Lake Drive, Port Costa, California

WendyAddisonStudio.com

(510) 672-1900

a piano vignette inside the Bull Valley Roadhouse

all photos in this post by Lynne Rutter - click to view larger

Lynne Rutter Studio

And soonest our best men with thee doe goe

A chapel in the Santissima Annunziata, Firenze.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne, 1610

Light breaks through the enfilade between chapels inside Santissima Annunziata

  

Until I can create a fitting tribute for my father, I can but offer John Donne, and a black chapel in Florence.


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photos in this post © 2014 by Lynne Rutter
click on images to view larger
Crucifix carved by Antonio and Guiliano da Sangallo, 1483

  


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Heartbreak

 He was my constant friend for 22 years.

Mrtvaški ples

In the 14th and 15th centuries, plague and wars gave Death a central role in art; the Danse Macabre is an important subject in medieval iconography. Recently I got to visit one spectacular example in Slovenia.

The innocent Child pulled from his crib, the Beggar with his prayer beads, the Loyal Soldier... death will take us all.

In the middle of our recent visit to Bulgaria, the Maestro was summoned to Klagenfurt, Austria to discuss a new commission.  A side trip within a side trip,  our host Gerhard Lehner, tossed us into his van and drove us to nearby Solvenia to see the marvelous Totentanz of the little church at Hrastovlje, on the Istrian peninsula. 

The Banker offers his bag of money and Death laughs. The Doctor's medicine is likewise useless.

Cerkev Svete Trojice (Holy Trinity Church)  dates from 12th century and is built in a unique Romanesque style.    The now-famous frescoes were painted by Johannes de Castua  and his atelier and completed in 1490.  

Beautiful interior of the Cerkev Svete Trojice, Hrastovlje, Slovenia

The Monk, the Bishop, even the Cardinal... we all have to go sometime.

For a nominal fee photography without flash is allowed.  It never hurts to ask!
The docent inside the church told us that owing to the plague in the 16th century, the walls were "covered in white sheets" (whitewash) and the entire town was burned and for a  time, abandoned.   Centuries later, after  WWII, the whitewash was removed and the frescoes, discovered to be in very good condition, were cleaned and restored. 

On the ceilings and elsewhere in the church, colorful frescoes with scenes from the Bible; the months of the year; portraits of saints; faux marbre columns with simple trompe l'oeil capitols;  and stenciled borders embellish every available surface.
But most people come to see the Mrtvaški ples, the astonishing rendition of the Dance of Death.

Here is the Queen and the King,  all of us are equal in the end.

The Pope, at the front of the parade, the grave is waiting and Death welcomes all.

15th century graffiti in Glagolitsa

Graffiti scratched into the walls was also preserved, some of which makes disparaging remarks about the King.  An inscription crediting the artist: "Hoc opus fierit fecit Tomic Vrchovich de… magister Johannes de Castua pinxit"   is repeated in latin and in the old Slavic Glagolitsa.  

The procession of the Magi on horseback- this mural shows clear influence from Italian artist Uccello

Though the church interior is early Gothic in its design, the influence of Renaissance Italy is apparent in the murals. 

Here is a short video tour of the church (in Slovenian, I think) via YouTube:

Our day continued  in a big loop through  Koper, Trieste, and Aquileia, a day from which I am still recovering!


all photos  in this post by Lynne Rutter,  June 2011
click on images to view larger

Lynne Rutter Murals + Decorative Painting