Maybe a middle-aged black-haired woman was tying the knot with the little fellow beside her. It might have been a wedding, but it was hard to think who was marrying whom. There was some sort of ceremony going on, with five or six people in attendance. Then one morning, on finding the side door open, I pushed it and went in. I made a few doomed efforts to get inside the church of San Cassiano, but it was always closed. Maybe I would be able to see these better too, even if they were not as epic as the one in San Rocco. Since I had been given this new gift of sudden acute vision in San Rocco, I thought that I should go and look at Tintoretto’s other versions of the Crucifixion in Venice. I wondered if the new emptiness that had fallen on the city had somehow added clarity to the art.Īs a good Catholic, I like the Crucifixion indeed, I prefer it to the Resurrection, which always seems a bit too staged. I could trace varying shades of pink, each one catching the light in a different way, or note the yellow tunic of the figure I supposed to be St John with what felt like fresh, or better, vision. The different tones in the huge painting seemed incredibly clear. As I stood in front of Tintoretto’s Crucifixion in the side room upstairs, I wondered if my eyes were more alert than usual because of the early hour. One morning, I managed to gain early access to San Rocco. Soon, the restaurants would be ordered to close at six o’clock. Even pulling your mask down for a second to sample ice cream was not allowed.
When I bought ice cream, the little cup was put into a paper bag and I was warned not to eat it on the street. After dark, as I walked from Piazza San Marco to Piazza Santa Margherita, the restaurants were open, but hardly anyone was inside or even at the outside tables. I got a vaporetto from San Zaccaria to San Stae and there was no other traffic, none at all, on the Grand Canal. At twilight, a strange, dark blueness descended. One day, however, the fog licked its tongue over Venice all afternoon as well.
By lunchtime, a pale sun fought to break through, and, for about an hour before it did, an unearthly and sickly yellow light clung to everything. No one came to the small gallery in the hour I stayed there. I liked that he threw books on the floor. I sat for a while contemplating St Augustine in his sumptuously lit study. It was like she was putting on a play that was about to fold. In the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, where the Carpaccios are, the woman at the door was almost glad to see me. I would never have that room to myself again. In San Polo, I could spend time in the side room that houses Giandomenico Tiepolo’s Stations of the Cross.
Instead, dogs and their owners walked the streets, with no one pushing them out of the way. On some bridges a few gondoliers stood around, but there was no one to hire them. Piazza San Marco was often completely deserted. There were no tourists clogging up the narrow streets. No cruise ships went up the Giudecca Canal. S uddenly, there was nothing to complain about.