The Gondola Maker (27 page)

Chapter
45

Little Antonio is barely old enough to walk, but I can already tell that he is cut from the same cloth as my mother and me. Our brother, Daniele, stands next to me at my workbench, balancing the wiggly toddler on his hip. The little boy buries his face in Daniele’s shoulder, then dares to peek at me with amber-colored eyes that are replicas of my own. A shock of dark hair falls over his forehead. I stick out my tongue at him. He giggles and mashes his face against Daniele’s shirt again. I feel my heart surge.

For two days my brother Daniele has not left my side. He confides that he is afraid I will disappear again, and he won’t stand for it. While I work, he talks of many things—Antonio’s love for the mallet, the squash that Mariangela now has growing in the garden, our Uncle Tino’s strange illness in the winter from which he has now recovered. Gingerly, he tells me of Annalisa’s betrothal to the goldsmith’s son following her father’s wishes, a turn of events for which I feel satisfied. Daniele does his best to talk to me about the boatyard, but on that subject I am a reluctant listener.

“We were able to start building boats again quickly thanks to Uncle Tino’s friendship with Master Enrico of the Squero Rosmarin, and of course the help of the guild. Last month we finished roofing the new
téza
,” he tells me. “There is still much to do, but for now we stay dry when it rains. Even Mariangela visits us in the boatyard sometimes,” he laughs.

I harden my expression and raise my palm toward my brother. “Daniele, I have told you. I am not ready.”

“Yes, I know. I can understand that you are not ready to see the
squero
or even hear about it. It stands to reason,” he says. “But you cannot delay seeing our father, Luca. It is only right.”

I lay down my file and walk to the front of the oarmaker’s shop, where the old
remero
has placed my oarlock in a prominent window facing the street. I run my hand over its smooth, polished arc. Behind it stands a cluster of two dozen oarlocks carved in a more old-fashioned manner, each beautiful piece wrought with the master’s collection of rasps, saws, blades, and sanding blocks. Daniele sets our little brother down on the floor, where he races under a table on his hands and knees. He picks up a scrap of sandpaper that has fallen to the floor and waves it in the air.

“Antonio will make a fine replacement for me in the
squero
.” I laugh nervously and return to my worktable. I have begun to block out a new oarlock—a copy of the one in the window—that the old oarmaker insists I begin right away. At the guildhouse, our fellow
remeri
have begun to whisper about my new way of fashioning the arc and proportions of the oarlock. Gondolas carrying a few of our more curious colleagues have already begun to appear at our ramp.

“Surely you are kidding?” Daniele replies. “Together the Vianello brothers will make the most beautiful boats—and oarlocks—Our Most Serene Republic has ever seen!” My brother laughs too, then his expression hardens. “Luca, he will be here soon. I will admit, it took some convincing, but Father agreed to walk here from the
squero
after the midday meal. You must understand; you cannot postpone the inevitable.”

I turn the newly shaped oarlock over in my hands as I let my brother’s words settle into my heart, then I lay the oarlock gently on the table. I walk to the door of the oarmaker’s studio and rest my forehead against its wooden planks. I close my eyes and lift my left hand—my “correct” hand—the one I was always meant to use. The wood of the oarmaker’s door feels cool and smooth against my palm. My brother comes to stand behind me. I feel his strong hands press on my shoulders. For the first time in my life, I feel peace wash over me.

In my mind’s eye, I see our father walking up the alley to the oarmaker’s studio—my studio. I imagine his familiar, purposeful stride carrying him toward me, toward this moment that must be as inevitable as my brother has said. I feel I can almost hear him breathe, his chest heaving from the trek.

My father stands on the other side of the door now, lifting his right hand. On either side of this narrow barrier my father and I stand like reflected images. Our hands are the same: large knuckles, flat, smooth nails, his skin more lined, mine smoother but worn now from labor. We are separated by the hardness of the oak planks, the hardness of life, the hardness in our hearts. We are mirror images nonetheless.

I am so lost in my vision that when the knock comes, I doubt that it is real, but my heart, which skips a beat, confirms it. I open my eyes and take a deep breath.

Gently, I open the door.

Autho
r
'
s
Note

The story of
The Gondola Maker
germinated inside my head while I was busy researching another book called
Made in Italy
. The contemporary Italian artisans I interviewed, one after another, told me how important it was to them to pass on the torch of tradition to the next generation. I began to wonder what would happen if the successor were not able or willing to take on that duty. The characters of the gondola maker and his heirs began to take shape.

Luca Vianello and the other characters in this novel are figments of my imagination. Still, it was essential to me to portray them inside a world that was as authentic and historically faithful as I could make it; any shortcomings in this area are mine alone.

Constructing the backdrop for
The Gondola Maker
was a joy thanks to the wealth of historical sources from which to draw. Renaissance Venetians were well aware of their position in the world, and their culture is voluminously documented in primary sources. David Chambers and Brian Pullan assemble one of the most valuable compilations of these sources in their
Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630
. Primary sources for a handful of Venetian painters are collected in the now-dated but excellent
Sources & Documents of the History of Art
series edited by my former teacher at Yale, Creighton Gilbert and his co-authors, Robert Klein and Henri Zerner. The artists’ contracts, conflicts, lawsuits, and incidental reports shaped my understanding of the complex relationships between Venetian painters, their patrons, and the public. My depiction of the artist Gianluca Trevisan and his workshop is set within this transitional period in the history of art when the status of a handful of artists rose from that of mere laborers to reach unprecedented heights.

Even though Venetian boatmen once numbered in the tens of thousands, because they were members of the lower class they remain relatively silent in historical documents except for random incidental accounts. I am grateful for the scholarship of Dennis Romano, whose work shaped my understanding of the private lives of domestic servants and other members of the Venetian lower class. Patricia Fortini-Brown’s work immersed me in the material world that Giuliana Zanchi would have occupied, with its infinite variety of fine objects from paintings to tableware and platform shoes.

The sixteenth-century gondola was a simpler contraption than the elaborate boats now synonymous with Venice. To my knowledge no complete Venetian gondola made prior to the mid-1800s survives intact; only a handful of iron prows from the Renaissance era have endured the humid Venetian climate that destroys anything made of wood, even of the highest order of craftsmanship.

As an art historian I am trained to view every work of art, even a photograph, as a “re-presentation” rather than a faithful recording of actuality. Nonetheless the earliest depictions of the Venetian gondola let us imagine what the craft that Luca Vianello restored in
The Gondola Maker
could have looked like. A sketchy carving on an altarpiece erected by gondola makers in 1628 inside the Church of San Trovaso depicts the familiar arc of the gondola with its spiky iron prow decorations, the
ferri
, on either end, and a covered passenger compartment, or
felze
.

Still, these boats must have remained relatively somber thanks to sumptuary laws that decreed that all gondolas be painted black. We can envision these dark, elegant boats with the help of a series of beautiful wall paintings executed by Vittore Carpaccio in the 1490s for the Church of Saint Ursula, now preserved in the Accademia in Venice. Not only Venetians but also foreign visitors must have been impressed by these distinctive boats, since printmakers such as the Swiss artist Joseph Heinz the Younger and the Dutch author and statesman Nicolaes Witsens disseminated views of the gondola in woodcut prints and engravings that made their way across Europe. A woodcut by the Swiss artist Jost Amman portrays a gondola with a fore and aft oarlock, rowed by two oarsmen, in “Grand Procession of the Doge of Venice,” published in Frankfurt in 1597. More elaborate oarlocks, upholstery, carving, and the peculiar asymmetrical form of modern gondolas that allow for more effective rowing, all developed from the 1700s onward.

I am grateful to the handful of modern historians, mostly Venetians, who have chronicled the development of the gondola through the centuries. Carlo Donatelli describes the boats’ technical, engineering, and hydrodynamic evolution. Giovanni Caniato and Gianfranco Munerotto have made significant documentary contributions to the history of Venetian boats, including the gondola. Caniato has also pulled together comprehensive documentation of the history of Venetian oarmakers, and I am grateful for this important and unique contribution. Guglielmo Zanelli has chronicled the history of Venetian ferry stations, or
traghetti
, like the one where Luca found his first gainful employment after fleeing the boatyard fire. I am grateful to the Museo Arzan
à
in Venice for their efforts to assemble the remaining fragments—oarlocks, tools, seats, and other pieces—of historical Venetian boats.

The famous “Barbari map,” an enormous woodcut by Jacopo de Barbari dating from 1500, shows an aerial view of Venice that gives us an appreciation of the huge number of gondola boatyards, or
squeri
, in the city at that time. Today vestiges of only a few historic
squeri
survive. The most well-known of these is the Tramontin boatyard still in operation today in the Dorsoduro quarter, but there are others that are not as well-known or no longer used for their original purpose. The organization and inner workings of the historical Venetian
squeri
are well-understood thanks to the rule books, or
mariregole,
that each Venetian trade guild was required by law to maintain. From these important documents, we learn intricate details about the making of gondolas in centuries past. Giovanni Caniato and Guglielmo Zanelli have published important work on the Venetian
squero
that helps us understand what daily life in a gondola boatyard for a journeyman like Luca Vianello would have been like.

Scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the late medieval church of San Giovanni Battista in Brágora, where Luca and Giuliana meet on several occasions. The composer Antonio Vivaldi was baptized there, an event noted in the church record book in 1678. The church also houses important works by Venetian painters Cima da Conegliano, Bartolomeo Vivarini, and Palma the Younger. If I were to choose a spot for a clandestine meeting at dusk, I can hardly think of a more perfect setting than this quiet, beautiful gem of a church.

The Gondola Maker
begins with an incident in which a gondolier hurls a stone at another gondola ferrying the French ambassador, resulting in a distinctly Venetian act of justice: the public boat-burning that Luca witnesses. This incident, along with many others that play a role in this story, are based on specific events documented in the Venetian historical record. My hat is off to the historian Dennis Romano for extracting these juicy morsels from the Venetian archives—from boatmen punching a hole in the bottom of a boat and filling it with rocks, to the stealing of oarlocks and jewelry, to the arrangement of complicated associations with tavern owners and courtesans, to gondoliers’ notoriously foul language. These fascinating glimpses underline not only the checkered history of the Venetian gondola, but also the consequences of pride and the universal passions that drive our human nature.

As always, truth is stranger than fiction.

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