Venetians

by Paul Strathern

  Contemporary sources differ as to precisely how much of these supplies managed to cross the lake and make it overland to Brescia. The Milanese are known to have launched a flotilla of local craft in order to try and prevent the Venetians from sailing, but this does not appear to have been entirely successful. The Venetians erected a line of stakes to protect their fleet, and many may have got through. However, the actual effectiveness of this mission was far outweighed by its propaganda value. This exploit became the talking point of Italy and beyond. From now on, it was understood that even on the mainland Venice’s fabled naval power knew no bounds. Any city under Venice’s protection could rely upon the Republic coming to its rescue, no matter how impossible this task might seem.

  For its part, Venice was certainly grateful to Colleoni and promoted him to governor of Verona, one of the Republic’s most important mainland cities. At the same time his military rank in the field was enhanced by increasing his command to 3,000 lances, in effect almost a thousand men.*

  In 1441 Venice signed yet another uneasy peace with Milan. Francesco Sforza, who was condottiere of the Venetian forces, now found himself with no prospect of lucrative engagements, so chose to take up employment with Milan. Colleoni decided to remain in Venice; however, a year later he became involved in a dispute with the Venetian authorities; he and his men were owed 34,000 ducats, which Venice would not, or could not, pay them. As a result, he too offered his services to Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan, and once again under Sforza he soon proved his worth. However, four years later Colleoni was suddenly seized and flung into prison at the castle in Monza, almost certainly at the behest of the paranoid Filippo Maria. A year later, in 1447, Filippo Maria died and Colleoni sensed that his life was in danger. Simulating a sweating fever, he convinced the physician at Monza to wrap his entire body in water-soaked bandages to cool him down. As soon as he was left alone he unravelled the bandages and used them to lower himself from his cell into the dry ditch of the castle moat.

  As Filippo Maria had died without a male heir, the duchy of Milan was once again thrown into turmoil. The authorities declared the Ambrosian Republic (named after St Ambrose, the patron saint of the city), but after four years this had descended into chaos, with riots breaking out in the streets of Milan and large numbers of the population reduced to starvation. In 1450 Sforza accepted the authorities’ offer to take over as Duke of Milan, an ambition that he had been harbouring for some time. Colleoni was once again drafted to serve under Sforza as the Milanese war against Venice recommenced.

  All Italy had come to realise the futility of this decades-long war, which had continued to draw in all its states in a series of ever-switching alliances. In April 1454 the Peace of Lodi was signed, with Milan, Venice and Florence agreeing to an unprecedented twenty-five-year truce, which was soon joined by Naples and blessed by Pope Nicholas V. A year later, Colleoni was pleased to accept the offer of commander of the forces of Venice, a position he had long coveted. The post not only involved great honour in the Republic, but was also extremely well rewarded, both in terms of salary and gifts of estates and castles on the mainland. Despite the fact that Colleoni had switched sides to fight for the highest bidder when the occasion arose, Venice recognised that for the most part he had been a loyal, brave and talented servant of the Republic and was determined that he should remain so. His services entailed little military action and the Peace of Lodi remained on the whole honoured, apart from sporadic outbreaks of low-key hostilities over territorial disputes. Indeed, such was the lack of military employment for Colleoni and his mercenaries that he was on occasion even allowed to offer his services elsewhere, when requested, to settle military disputes that did not involve the Republic. Venice was more than pleased with its loyal condottiere, who would now command the Republic’s army for more than twenty years.

  Colleoni never showed himself to be the most talented condottiere hired by Venice. Carmagnola, Sforza and Piccinino – all of whom commanded the Venetian army at certain periods during the long decades of the war with Milan, and under all of whom Colleoni served – had the opportunity to demonstrate that they were military leaders of the highest quality. Despite this, Colleoni would show himself capable of outwitting each one of them when the opportunity presented itself. And although he was a condottiere, and thus could not be expected to display unreserved loyalty, he never proved downright treacherous – something that certainly could not have been said of Carmagnola, Sforza or Piccinino, each of whom had their own reasons for owing a deeper loyalty to Milan than to Venice, even when they were in the service of the Republic.

  In a way, Colleoni was unlucky: he was a generation younger than his great contemporaries (apart from the lucky opportunist Sforza), and thus never had full command of an army at any of the decisive engagements that took place during the long Lombardy War. Consequently he won no major battle, as Carmagnola did at Maclodio, yet his skill and imagination in many minor engagements indicated that he might (given the opportunity and luck so necessary for any military commander) have shown himself to be at least the equal of his illustrious peers.

  During his later years Colleoni grew to love his time in Venice, softening his rough-and-ready military ways and adapting to the more sophisticated social life of the city. He maintained a fine residence in Venice itself, but also spent much of his time out at his estate at Malpaga, on the banks of the River Serio, just south of his birthplace, Bergamo. It was as if his life had come full circle. Finally, in his seventies, he retired permanently to his estate at Malpaga, regarded by all as a respected Venetian figure. (Now that Bergamo had become part of Venetian mainland territory he could even claim to be a Venetian citizen.) When he eventually died at Malpaga on 3 November 1475 his body was carried back to Venice, where it lay in state. At his funeral the people of Venice lined the streets watching the procession, which was led by 200 men bearing torches; Colleoni’s coffin was followed by his favourite charger draped in black cloth emblazoned in gold with his personal device.

  Colleoni had been popular with the people of Venice, and their adopted son would reward this with gratitude. He had died without a male heir to inherit his possessions, and in his will he bequeathed his considerable fortune of 216,000 ducats, as well as the equivalent of three times this amount in properties and estates, to the Republic. There was but one stipulation: in return for his generous gift he wished to have a statue of himself mounted on his favourite charger erected in the Piazza San Marco. This caused consternation: no one in the long history of Venice had yet received the honour of having a statue erected in the Piazza San Marco, which did not even contain a statue of Christ, or even San Marco himself, let alone any of the city’s most illustrious doges. And here was a mere condottiere, who strictly speaking was not even a Venetian by birth, requesting this ultimate accolade. On the other hand, his request was very difficult to refuse, especially after the Council of Ten had replenished the city’s empty exchequer with Colleoni’s timely bequest, which in the final count had contained assets and holdings equivalent to almost 700,000 ducats.

  In 1479 a large bronze equestrian statue of Colleoni was duly commissioned from the most accomplished sculptor of the early Renaissance, the Florentine Andrea del Verrocchio, who would in time prove a major influence on both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. The forty-four-year-old Verrochio was at the height of his powers, and excelled himself by producing a thirteen-foot-high model of Colleoni astride his horse, the like of which none had seen before. The fact that the horse had its right foreleg imperiously raised, which meant that the weighty bronze bulk of the horse and his rider would be supported by just the three narrow points of the horse’s hooves, presented a problem of balance and casting such as had never before been attempted on such a scale. Yet the horse’s raised foreleg was more than just a feat of technical bravado. The pose struck by the horse, combined with the magnificent pride and power of its armoured rider, was topped by Colleoni’s helmeted head with its daunting expression of fero
city and hauteur. Here indeed was the very image of a man who had fearlessly served and protected the Republic, a public monument exemplary of Venice’s pride and standing throughout Italy and beyond. Ironically such a monument to individuality would have been anathema to the very authorities who were commissioning it, had its subject been alive. As it was, the statue would come to be seen as an unmistakable manifestation that the Renaissance spirit had now arrived in Venice; here was a work of art that was the very embodiment of humanist pride.

  Once the statue was completed, the Council of Ten was then faced with the vexed question of where to place it. Colleoni had quite plainly stated that he wished his statue to be erected in the Piazza San Marco, but this was ruled out of the question. However, after much debate the Council came up with a characteristically devious solution. Instead of placing the statue in the piazza opposite the Basilica di San Marco, it could be erected in more unobtrusive surroundings some 500 yards to the north, opposite the Scuola di San Marco – where it stands to this day. Once again, a version of honour had been satisfied; and the Council of Ten could feel justified in accepting Colleoni’s munificent gift replenishing the Republic’s empty exchequer.

  The Republic’s finances had never fully recovered from the expenses of the mainland war, but meanwhile the decline in eastern trade following the fall of Constantinople continued. Although the mainland provinces now contributed around 50,000 ducats to the exchequer, this did not even cover its running expenses, to say nothing of the interest rates it was meant to be paying on its debts, in the form of government bonds at 5 per cent. Meanwhile administrative expenses were severely cut back: all civil servants with salaries of more than twenty-five ducats had their salaries slashed by between 50 and 60 per cent. Senators, members of committees and the Council of Ten and even the doge himself were not immune from such measures. Further funds were raised by ‘anticipating’ taxes, often calculated by means of exaggerated ‘estimates’, which wealthier citizens had no alternative but to pay.

  Yet ironically, although the municipality’s finances were in a parlous state, and several well-known noble families had suffered bankruptcy through the decline in trade, many other nobles and merchants had continued to prosper. Trade may have declined, but it had done so from a position of considerable strength. In the eastern Mediterranean, despite its difficulties Venice still had a virtual monopoly on trade to Europe, with transalpine commerce and shipping to the North Sea continuing to prove lucrative for those involved. Central Venice – from the Rialto down the Grand Canal to San Marco and the Riva degli Schiavoni – still had all the bustle and appearance of one of the most prosperous cities in Europe, while the behaviour and attire of its private citizens only seemed to confirm this picture. Once again, this image of Venice echoed its physical contradictions: here was a city that appeared to float on water.

  Colleoni’s bequest had proved a godsend to the administration, even though he himself had not been fully aware of how much it had meant to the Republic’s finances. Not being a member of the civil administration, he was not cognisant with its innermost economic secrets. Indeed, he had in fact suggested that his assets be used to finance a full-scale war against the Ottoman Empire. Despite Venice’s attempts to come to a commercial modus vivendi with Mehmet II, the policy of appeasement was proving a very one-sided affair. For the time being, it was in Ottoman interests to allow the Venetians to trade with both their own expanding Ottoman empire in the eastern Mediterranean as well as with the further ports of the Levant. The Venetians may have had the commercial expertise, but it was the Ottomans who could sever such trade links whenever they chose. Furthermore, all the indications seemed to suggest that one of the central ambitions of Mehmet II’s policy was no less than the conquest of Venice itself.

  In fact, by the time of Colleoni’s death in 1475, the Ottoman army was advancing rapidly north through Dalmatia, to such an extent that the following year Venice itself did indeed stand in peril. At night, from the top of the Campanile, the camp fires of the advanced scouting patrols of the Ottoman army could be seen burning in the darkness from the nearby hills. Even with Colleoni’s gift, Venice could not afford a full-scale war. Things were so bad that by now even the patriotic Arsenalotti were becoming restless because they were owed so much in back-wages. So Venice sued for peace, and in 1479 a treaty was signed in which Venice submitted to the most humiliating terms. The Republic would be permitted to continue trading in the eastern Mediterranean, but it would be forced to surrender Negropont, its major trading colony in the Aegean, as well as all its remaining ports on the Greek mainland. In return, Mehmet II surprisingly allowed Venice to re-establish the merchant colony in Constantinople that it had lost during the war, thus enabling it to continue trading links with certain Ottoman ports in the Black Sea and on the Anatolian mainland. But the cost of this privilege was to be an annual payment of 10,000 ducats.

  During such periods of peace between the Ottoman Empire and Venice in the latter half of the fifteenth century relations between the two powers extended much further than trade. After the signing of the peace treaty in 1479, Sultan Mehmet II went so far as to send a high-ranking Turkish delegation to Venice with the intention of negotiating a wide-ranging cultural exchange. Despite the Islamic ban on painted images, Mehmet had developed a deep interest in European art, dating back to his early encounter with Byzantine icons and the mosaics of Hagia Sophia after the fall of Constantinople. In the past, Mehmet had been introduced to Florentine examples of Renaissance art, which had so entranced him that he determined to import Italian artists to his court. As a consequence, the high-ranking delegation to Venice in 1479 specifically asked for the services of ‘un bon pytor’ (‘a good painter’). Whereupon the Great Council voted to send to the sultan the painter Gentile Bellini, who was ordered to fulfil the role of both painter and cultural ambassador. Bellini was not only regarded as the finest painter in Venice at this time, but had also long cultivated a deep interest in all things Eastern. A quarter of a century previously, when in his twenties, he had followed the work of the Byzantine artists who had taken up residence in the city after the fall of Constantinople.*

  On arrival at the sultan’s, court in the newly built palace of Topkapi, overlooking the Bosphorus, Bellini appears to have established an immediate rapport with Mehmet II. The Venetian artist and the sultan seem to have recognised each other as kindred souls, at least with regard to their interest in foreign cultures. Bellini’s interest in the East had almost certainly led him to learn Greek, and his friends amongst the Byzantine scholars may even have passed on to him a smattering of Turkish and Arabic. Mehmet II, for his part, is known to have mastered eight languages before the age of twenty-one; these included Persian, Hebrew, Arabic and even French. Bellini eagerly immersed himself in his exotic new surroundings and was soon producing a succession of meticulously observed drawings of the figures he encountered – including soldiers from the sultan’s personal guard of Janissaries, men in kaftans and cloaks, court officials with their heads swathed in enormous turbans (the size of turban was an indication of rank), and even depicting exotically clad, but unveiled local women (though many experts are of the opinion that these must have been indigenous Greeks). His other works are said to have included a meticulous map of Constantinople, as well as a panorama of Venice drawn from memory for Mehmet II himself. Other demands by the sultan included a series of erotic drawings, as well as Christian scenes from the Bible. One of these was said to have depicted the beheaded St John the Baptist, though when Mehmet saw it he objected that St John’s executed head was in fact faulty, as the severed neck simply did not expose the innards the way Bellini had painted it. Mehmet then demonstrated this to Bellini by beckoning for a slave and having him summarily beheaded before them.

  This incident doubtless focused Bellini’s concentration when he came to paint Mehmet II’s portrait, which he is said to have done several times, though only one of these has survived and today hangs in the National Gallery in
London. According to its inscription, it was completed on 25 November 1480,* and shows the fearsome ‘Mehmet the Conqueror’ to have possessed a surprisingly mild-mannered appearance, though the fixed distant gaze of his eyes gives an indication of his determination.

  According to the contemporary Italian historian Giovanni Angiolello, who was attached to the sultan’s court, Bellini’s relationship with Mehmet II was ‘unique in its intimacy’; no Islamic ruler of the period had such a close friendship with anyone working in his employ. Indeed, during the late years of Mehmet’s reign a law was passed which expressly decreed that any intimacy between the sultan and his subjects was to be regarded as derogatory to the majesty of their ruler, and was to be punished as such. As a result of their closeness, Mehmet offered to grant Bellini any wish he desired. Possibly on account of his fear of the sultan, after his arbitrary slaughter of the slave, Bellini asked to be allowed to return to his native Venice. Mehmet II graciously consented to this wish, and before Bellini departed he was elevated to the nobility and presented with a solid gold chain inscribed with the sultan’s name, his honorific and all his titles (according to Giorgio Vasari, writing just over half a century later, this chain ‘weighed the equivalent of 250 golden ducats’). Mehmet also gave Bellini an effusive letter of recommendation, bestowing upon him further honours, including that of ‘golden knight’ and ‘palace companion, going on to praise his ‘miraculous’ artistic abilities and referring to him as ‘one of the most select and intimate members of the household’ – praise indeed from a man who had eight wives and maintained an extensive harem.

  This letter was dated 15 January 1481, and it appears that Bellini departed for Venice soon after this. Just a few months later, in early May, Mehmet II, in his late fifties and suffering from gout, succumbed to his ailment. Despite all that Mehmet the Conqueror had achieved for the Ottoman Empire – his expansion in the Balkans, Anatolia and the Crimea, as well as his administrative reforms – many amongst the religious faction were outraged by his close relationship with Western Christians such as Bellini, his glorification of his hero Alexander the Great, and his cavalier attitude towards such Islamic strictures as the ban on images.