Venice, the City on the Lagoon

Although a key work of the maritime Belvedere, Rudolf von Alt’s “View of the Strada Nuova against the Giardini Pubblici in Venice” displays Austria as being pushed towards the sea ‘from astern’, as it were. The windjammers in front of the horizon line all fly the Austrian flag at the gaff. Moored crosswise to each other, the three sailing ships in the center provide an introduction to the art of shipbuilding, including the structural design of the rigging. Towards the center stands the unadorned hull of a two-master with the lower foremast and mainmast. To the right is a sailor in ‘standing rigging’, the guy wires and stays that absorb the wind pressure of the sails on the masts, as well as the lower shrouds over which the sailors can later climb up to the topmasts. Visible on the “land side” is a fully rigged windjammer with the entire ‘running rigging’ and reefed sails. This is also where the transom is most ostentatiously designed. It is usually these reverse sides of the sailing boats that represent the pride and wealth of the owners. In Theodor Alphons’s case, the transom is also given a fresh coat of paint.

What appears to be a drama heightened by smoke in Pietro Fragiacomo’s “Venice prospectus” is in reality the regular ‘falling dry’ of the sailboat lying on its side here. The result of the tidal range, however, appears more threatening in August von Pettenkofen’s triplet study of different ship states, which––unlike in Rudolf von Alt’s work––seem to be in danger of collapsing into each other or, to the right, into themselves. Jakob Alt’s “View of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice” offers two nautical trinities at once, three sailing boats in the middle ground, and three gondolas in front. What would Venice be without its ‘gondole’, these flat and keel-less boats that are particularly suitable for sailing in shallow waters? In Adolf Anton Osterider’s “Dolce far niente”, they rock antipodally to their shadows and in opposite directions to each other in the waves. Likewise, the Carnival of Venice with Anton Romako’s “Merry Company” in a Gondola is, above all, literally an exuberant ‘time-out’.

• RDF
• XML
• JSON

IIIF