Who Let the Doges Out?

June 29, 2018

Who Let the Doges Out?

Day 30, Friday, June 29

Not our last day as Dave believed/(hoped). There’s today and tomorrow, then the endless march of airport, airplanes, and Scrabble games that cannot be won. At least the flights from Venice to Frankfurt and from there to San Diego are with Lufthansa, an airline where the attendants condescend to the passengers, as opposed to United/Delta/American where they exhibit actual contempt. So much worse, Dave thinks, than being a GI and traveling by bus in the 1960s. At least then there was a chance the driver had served in WWII and understood that all GIs were hopeless dumb-asses. The contemporary flight attendant seems to believe that passing out piddling little servings of Coke constitutes a “job well done,” after which they scurry back to the rear of the plane and suck oxygen from those “in case of loss of air pressure” masks. An obvious scam. Once the plane loses air pressure, the flight attendants, like the pilot and copilot, are bugging out in real parachutes, not the cardboard ones passengers get. Skeptical? How come the news stories about tragic plane crashes always say that so-and-so many passengers died? Crew? Not so much.

But that’s then. Today, since Scout has been awake for awhile – and, of course, checking her Smartphone for guidance regarding how to live her life – the agenda is to first reconnoiter the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, then wolf more food than any sensible person should, then hoof it to St. Mark’s Square to use our “Skip the line” tickets at the Doggy Palace which allow us to stroll in while the suckers from Iowa and Germany wait outside, scratching themselves fitfully. “Skip the line” we discover, is an Italian scam meaning only “pre-paid,” which means that we stand outside scratching ourselves while sixty Gate One Tours tourists stroll inside ahead of us. Dang.

Okay, it’s “Doge’s” Palace, Doge (“Doe Jay”) being Venetian for a sort of Duke/mayor/Main Johnson guy who ran the show. Was he an aristocrat with tons of dough? That’d be a yes.

Once at the gate, we learn that our paper ticket must be exchanged for another, better paper ticket. Further, we really ought to have the audio guide (5€ each) and, by the way, Dave’s backpack, which contains only a bottle of water, must be checked. By the time we’ve gotten past these hurdles, we need to pee – okay, TMI, but, did we mention that the too-big breakfast included too-big coffee? At last inside, we discover that the Doggy Palace has zero dogs in it. Instead, there is room after room of dark paintings of Christian themes, usually with this or that Doge in them. Not only are the walls packed with these, the ceilings are as well, all surrounded in gilded frames that scream “major bucks” instead of major piety. The murals, many 20, 30, or 40 feet wide, often depict famous (at the moment) Venetians being wealthy and powerful, something that would never end, right?

For those of you who didn’t major in history, Venice had a brief run as a world power, owing to her powerful navy, her army of hired mercenaries and – don’t ask me how – the invention of double entry bookkeeping. This was in the days when the Byzantine Empire was tottering and the Ottomans -i.e., godless heathens, were growing stronger. Venice seemed like a potential protector of Christianity though, for the most part, what they really wanted to protect was their own skin and their profits.

Eventually, they weren’t up to it. Byzantium fell and the Turks proved too powerful for Venice to defeat. In time, Islam, like the Mongols, would be at the gates of Vienna. Venice, though vanquished, was not conquered – at least not by the Turks – and became another one of the Italian small fry that guys like Napoleon used to conquer before Garibaldi, the George Washington of Italy, united all of the duchies and little kingdoms into a single nation around 1870, the time when Otto von Bismarck was doing the same thing in Germany. Fifty years later, Italy would have Mussolini; Germany would have Hitler. Geez.

But Venice had its moment in the sun and the Doge’s Palace is the proof. The various chambers scream money. One was, for many years, Europe’s largest interior space without a pillar: 150 feet by 75 and every square inch of wall and ceiling dedicated to the glories of God, And of Venice, though the order might be reversed. Viewing these, one is reminded of Lord Kenneth Clark, who once said “No great idea was ever first thought in an enormous room.” What the Venetians thought was: “How can Venice become – and remain – top doggie?” Eventually, like everyone else, they ran out of ideas.

No visit to the Doge’s Palace is complete without a look at the adjoining prison, the once famous “Bridge Of Sighs.” It seems odd, with big cells and decent light. Prisoners could, we are told, get Pizza Hut deliveries and any number of other creature comforts. If you had money, of course. Nor is there any info provided regarding how many schmos were wedged into some of those “roomy” cells.

All told, the Doge’s Palace, situated cheek by jowl with St. Marks is impressive testimony to the wealth Venice once had. Exiting from it at about 10 A.M., we see an enormous line waiting to pay their way into a nearby bell tower, there to climb thousands of steps up top for really good photo ops of the city. Nothing wrong with photos, climbing, or even paying; it’s the waiting that kills it for us. Maybe if we got rifles to shoot at pigeons while we waited…

Despite the “cliché” aspect of going to St. Marks, we’ve been here a time or two and can say that 10 A.M. is not a good time to be there. Today is pleasant, though less nice for those waiting in lines or attempting to get clear pictures of anything. We saw only one Korean bride waiting patiently for her photos today; her and her perfect dress in the sun while her photographer and his assistant huddled under an umbrella to keep the sun off them. And them only. Okay, destination wedding brides suffer, too. And that dress looks suspiciously like the one the other brides wore. Hmm. Could it be that they only rent the dress from a local shop? (After all, there’s gotta be pigeon poop on the hem.)

The human tides of St. Marks behind us, we duck and dodge through other waves – and an average of one person in four dragging a suitcase behind them – to the museum Peggy Guggenheim created from her interest in mid-century artists like Jackson Pollock, Paul Klee, etc, etc. It is, we read, the 11th most visited gallery in Italy. For those who enjoy “modern” i.e., from 70 or so years ago, art, the place is full of it, with Dalis and Picassos, Magrittes and the like. Peggy’s grave is in the sculpture garden along with the graves of a dozen of her dogs. There are also more photos of her than anyone needs to see. One wonders how much she paid for the various canvases that her promotional efforts made priceless. Is a “patron” of the arts someone with a refined aesthetic sensibility, or is it someone with a checkbook? Or someone with both?

Not far from “the Goog” is a tiny gallery of wood carvings. Really creative and technically skillful stuff. Examples: a shirt and bra “hanging” on a laundry line. No hype behind these works, but, as Dave’s Art History professor said, circa 1970 “Modern art is all journalism.” (Sure sign of senility: when one starts remembering things one heard 48 years ago.)

Attempting to find the Goog, we stumble past the Galleria de Academie, allegedly Venice’s finest art gallery. Inside is work by Hieronymous Bosch, Dave’s favorite painter. (Bosch did the original of “Dogs playing Poker” in 1503.) Only a couple of Bosch paintings inside, the big deal being info on how they’ve been painstakingly restored after 500 or so years. Not to waste the reader’s time, but Google “The Garden Of Earthly Delights” and ask yourself what this obscure painter was smoking.

While in the Galleria, a soft spoken woman approaches us to ask in French that Dave wear his backpack (It’s a bottle of water!) on his chest, not his back. Huh? Turns out she’s a docent from Belgium and thought we were French. (Not sure what to think about that. Did I smell?) Anyway, the museum has a bag check room, but it sometimes gets locked while backpacks are still unclaimed, she advises. The museum has many, many wonderful paintings, she says, and, because she’s so nice, we feel obliged to look at more of them than we intended. The favorite subjects are: Madonna, Madonna and Child, Annunciation, Crucifixion, Pieta, and a group of people standing around one of the first five subjects. Even Saint Sebastian, the guy whose famous portrait shows him with a dozen or so arrows in him, is depicted idly standing by Mary as if he stopped by to borrow bandaids. Though we’re pagans, the thinking here is that, in religious art, the fewer extra people in the painting the better. Madonna and Child is more powerful than Madonna, Child, and eight guys you can’t identify.

So, good museum. We sneak past the Belgian lady without going up to the second and third floors where, presumably there are paintings of Madonna, Child and a dozen or so Doges, trying to look pious with pockets full of cash.

The hour growing late (2:30PM), we head for the Moresco and free time to edit photos and write this journal. Then, of course, Happy Hour and unsupervised activity until lights out.

A few random photos today, then Google albums: