Titian, 1556, The Annunciation, o/c, San Salvador, Venice
Discovering Zen in Venice
Seeking the quiet corners.
The bells are faintly tolling, it is 3:00 am in Venice, and the pigeon is disquietingly relaying its message to the ghosts and night’s quiet voice. The Adriatic moves in regular beats against the stone borders that shape its very skin. Venice will awaken before long.
For me, to be in Venice means to stay at the small antique and brocaded fabric-filled, Canal Grande facing gem, The Galleria Hotel, (a stone’s throw from the Accademia Museum) located in the area of Dorsoduro. The Accademia Museum is impressive with its Gothic arches, windows looming high above and dressed in raw sienna colored brick. The windows bordered in white stone, carved as if it were icing and molded into patterns of Gothic tracery. I linger at the white stone sill of this pensione and it allows the rich tapestry of sights, sounds and scents to rush over me. At the pizzeria below my window there is a waiter whistling an energetic tune while he places the outdoor cafe tables in graphic patterns of yellow and red. Over the wood brown bony bridge of the Accademia, the delightful cacophony of the young Italian children echoes out in all directions, young gypsies sell blue roses, old women roll their plaid, shopping totes, elderly men engrossed at card tables playing chess. There is a profusion of scents: diesel fumes, garlic, wine, pizza dough and the occasional odor of the vegetation at the bottom of the canal permeate the crisp winter air. There is always a real life movie set just beyond the shutters of my room. Venice is not often thought of as the place to rediscover balance and to restore peace of mind. Rather than ‘discovering Zen,’ the idea of Venice is usually inextricably linked with a frenetic denizen of tightly water-ringed calles (streets) brimmed with day-trippers and fast track tourists. The ultimate beauty of Venice is that it is and can be all of these things. It is a major cultural and historic tourist center and yet quaint enough so that its length and breadth can be walked in one day. This is the place for inspiration, a call to home from the wilderness. I have located, at long last, the place at which to toss my spiritual anchor overboard.
The Chiesa dei San Salvatore (near the Rialto bridge in San Marco,) is one such quiet place. It is here that Titian’s late painting of the Annunciation may be found (1564-65). For me, this is one of the most incredibly moving Madonnas ever painted. This mysterious Madonna’s thoughts are an unsettling enigma. Is she frightened, serene, bewildered? The angel’s drapery is filled with warm pinks, hansa yellow and deep alizarin red dusted with a pearlescent silvery white light. The spaces between and beyond are awash with golden reds, sienna and yellow. No single color is in sharp focus as in, for example, a Bellini. Rather, the colors merge and soften into each other without a trace of muddy articulation. I wonder what it is that draws us so magnetically to specific works of art, as if bonded to them by some unseen ceremonial tryst? I sit quietly in the pew adjacent and feed the light box coin after coin and I wonder if spiritual passion alone was the necessary driving force in creating such a masterpiece as this? The painting breathes under light. When I haven’t any more coins, it recedes into a veiled silence.
The Chiesa Nicolo dei Mendicoli , one of the oldest churches in Venice, is located in a far often unseen corner of southwestern Venice in the sestiere of Dorsoduro. The exterior is not monumental. It is the exquisite interior space that beckons. Inside I am enveloped by the emptiness, the palpable age and the shadowy darkness. This is not the church one visits to check off on the ‘to do ‘list as there are no paintings or sculptures by any of the major artists of Venice here. Rather this is a place to seek out for a respite from hoarding crowds, bustling trattorias and vaporetto buses. The, comparatively, low ceilings lend a sense of intimacy. An organist begins to play a powerful liturgical piece that makes me feel as if I am at a private concert in an ancient theatre. I take a solitary seat in the pews; except for a surprisingly young priest in his lavish, ecclesiastical robes who sits quietly with his face cast downward in apparent meditation. There is a spectacularly ornate two-tiered altarpiece with a looming crucifixion. Music punctuates the spaces of silence and I am quite at the edges of thought and feeling. It is cold within the veins of stone, wood and glass.
Today is a gray day. Another opaque day of gray and silvery air as is the full expression of melancholy Venice in the last few breaths of winter. The enchantment of the wholly unknown Venice is now transforming into an altogether different sort of feeling - a sense that it is now becoming a known place. The circuitous paths and flowing aqua passages are now beginning to lend a familiarity that feels like a well-worn sweater on a brisk morning or broken in leather boots . The intrigue is now in the quiet moments of grace such as the bells tolling simultaneously, revisiting Titian’s Annunciation, merging with the ancient silence of Chiesa San Nicolo dei Mendicoli and the gondola at dawn slicing the liquid highway that is the Canal Grande.
A seagull perches on a single brown wooden post on one side of my window, like a captain at post in a lighthouse in white cap and scarf. The silent time of Venice is drawing near. The sound of water is lapping up at the burnished-orange building’s hem and I must sleep.