APPENDIX, 2, 3 443

performed by the single gondolier it only swings the boat’s head sharp round to the right), in bringing up at a landing-place, especially when there is any intent of display, the boat being first urged to its full speed and then stopped with as much foam about the oar-blades as possible, the effect being much like that of stopping a horse at speed by pulling him on his haunches.¹

2. [P. 6] OUR LADY OF SALVATION

“Santa Maria Della Salute,” Our Lady of Health, or of Safety, would be a more literal translation, yet not perhaps fully expressing the force of the Italian word in this case. The church was built between 1630 and 1680, in acknowledgment of the cessation of the plague;-of course to the Virgin, to whom the modern Italian has recourse in all his principal distresses, and who receives his gratitude for all principal deliverances.

The hasty traveller is usually enthusiastic in his admiration of this building;² but there is a notable lesson to be derived from it, which is not often read. On the opposite side of the broad canal of the Giudecca is a small church, celebrated among Renaissance architects as of Palladian design, but which would hardly attract the notice of the general observer, unless on account of the pictures by John Bellini which it contains, in order to see which the traveller may perhaps remember having been taken across the Giudecca to the church of the “Redentore.” But he ought carefully to compare these two buildings with each other, the one built “to the Virgin,” the other “to the Redeemer” (also a votive offering after the cessation of the plague of 1576): the one, the most conspicuous church in Venice, its dome, the principal one by which she is first discerned, rising out of the distant sea; the other, small and contemptible, on a suburban island, and only becoming an object of interest because it contains three small pictures! For in the relative magnitude and conspicuousness of these two buildings, we have an accurate index of the relative importance of the ideas of the Madonna and of Christ, in the modern Italian mind.

Some further account of this church is given in the final index to the Venetian buildings at the close of the third volume.

3. [P. 12] TIDES OF VENICE, AND MEASURES AT TORCELLO

The lowest and highest tides take place in Venice at different periods, the lowest during the winter, the highest in the summer and autumn. During the period of the highest tides, the city is exceedingly beautiful; especially if, as is not unfrequently the case, the water rises high enough partially to flood St. Mark’s Place. Nothing can be more lovely or fantastic than the scene, when the Campanile and the Golden Church are reflected in the calm water, and the lighter gondolas floating under the very porches of

¹ [Readers who desire further information about the gondola should consult H. F. Brown’s Life on the Lagoons.]

² [See in the next volume, Venetian Index, s. “Salute.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]