2969 Calle Del Forno, Venice, 7th September 2008
This a first floor apartment overlooking the Rio di S. Margherita and the Calle Del Forno. When the children in the apartment above run about the lights in the dining room chandelier flicker. We breakfast to the sounds of the canal and the street floating up to us. The lively and bustling Campo Santa Margherita and our favourite café, appropriately just called Caffe, is at the end of the Calle Del Forno.
We spent the morning at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. It holds examples of almost every modern art movement in a light-filled house and garden with delights at every turn – my favorites were Empire of Light, Rene Magritte (1953-54), The Clarinet, Georges Braque (1912), Silver Bedhead, Alexander Calder (1946), and Woman Walking, Alberto Giacometti (1936). The adjoining gallery was devoted to a temporary exhibition, ‘Coming of Age – American Art, 1850s to 1950s’ featuring the work of Thomas Ekins, John Singer Sargent, James McNeil Whistler, Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe amongst others. None of their best of their work was included and it was easy understand the ascendant popularity of European painters, with the possible exceptions of Hopper and O’Keeffe.
Some of the American paintings had a rather sombre aspect and it was good to relax out on the terrace under the priapic eye of The Angel of the Citadel (Mario Marini, 1948) to watch the procession of the Regata Storica. First held in 1825, gondoliers and other boatmen compete in a trial of strength, skill and colourful display in a regatta which starts with an historic procession down the Grand Canal. The Serenissima, one of the most beautiful parade ships, which represents the Bucintoro, once the official state vessel of the Doge, led the flotilla. In 16th century costumes, the dignitaries and crew re-enacted the arrival in Venice of Caterina Cornar, the Queen of Cyprus. It was followed by the magnificent and lavish ceremonial gondolas with golden mythical figureheads, then the bissioni (eight-oared gondolas), the balotine (six-oared gondolas) and the multi-oared boats belonging to Venetian rowing clubs. A scene of yellow, red, blue and gold sparkling in the sun. The sedateness of the pageant belied the eventual sweaty exertion of the racing to Ca’ Foscari and the happy confusion on the canal when the races were over.