The Secret of the Glass

by Morin, Donna Russo

  Men of all ages, shapes, and sizes filed in, their wondrous diversity as varied as their styles; some dressed in the grand fashion of the Spanish, with embroidered doublets, sword and dagger hanging from their waist. Long hair flowed past their shoulders and thin mustaches or goatees adorned their faces. The less-ostentatious wore simple linen or silk shirts and breeches, with plain but elegant waistcoats. From the chins of the older, mostly bald, gentlemen hung long, dignified beards, while the younger, still pretty men preferred clean faces and closely cropped caps of hair. They converged from almost every glassworks on the island, the owners and their sons, concern and fear tempering any joy to be had in their assembly.

  The sun hovered at the horizon, its rays imprisoned by the close-set buildings, and the gloomy shadows clung to the parish church’s interior. In the muted light, the solemn procession soon filled the church pew’s wooden benches. These men were the Arte dei Vetrai, the members of the glassworkers’ guild. In their bonds of craft and dedication, this league of artigiani united in self-protection, to provide aid for the sick and aged of their profession, and to the widows and children of their lost loved ones.

  Deep, solemn whispers rumbled through the air, permeated with incense, pungent pockets of aroma hiding in the small statue-filled alcoves and candlelit transepts of the church, remainders from the dawn’s devotions. In Murano, as in other parishes of Venice, there were as many churches as there were winding curves of the canals. The Arti had chosen Santo Stefano as their home decades ago, selected for its simple grace and its centralized location on the Rio de Vetrai, the main canal through the glass-making district. Legend held that it had been built by the Camaldolese hermits at the time of the millennium, and had been restored and renovated many times since. The cloister of the old monastery flourished with beautiful gardens and within the vestry hung a painting by Jacopo Robusti, the Venetian master the world knew as Tintoretto. The Arti gathered their inspiration and strength here, their power and determination from the imposing sepulchral monument to Bartolomeo D’Alviano, a condottiero of great renown, perhaps one of the land’s greatest soldiers.

  The rapping of a gavel upon the podium broke the reverential discourse as Domenico Cittadini, owner of the Leone d’Oro glassworks, and steward of the Arti, called the meeting to order.

  “It is with great sadness that we come here today to discuss the deaths of our compatriots, Hieronimo Quirini, Norberto Clairomonti, and Fabrizio Giustinian.”

  “Parodia!”

  “Terribile!”

  “Orrible!”

  Cries of protest and outrage rang out like cracks of thunder. They volleyed and ricocheted against the stone walls of the church, lofting to its high, vaulted ceiling and out the windows where the women of the town stood and listened, huddled together with heads straining as close to the partially opened windows as they could.

  “Silenzio!” Cittadini countered with a return volley. The veins on his forehead bulged upon his skull in stark relief, his olive skin splotched with color, and his dark eyes bulged under thick salt-and-pepper brows. “The Capitularis de Fiolarus is clear.”

  He threw a thick wad of string-bound vellum on the floor with a violent release. The men in the front pews flinched from the resounding slap. The statutes imposed upon the glassworkers by the Venetian government were a long, imposing list.

  “I am as ravaged by their demise as any of you, but our lost brethren knew what could happen when they left for France, when they allowed the foreign devils to entice them away with promises of riches and fame.”

  His words hung heavy in the oppressive silence; almost two hundred men stifled any immediate countering protests that lingered distastefully upon their tongues, attention focused firmly upon their leader. Cittadini had thus far served a scant two months of his one-year, elected term of stewardship, but he had shouldered his duties with utmost dedication, already meriting the men’s early respect.

  From the back, wood creaked as a slight, elderly man rose up, unfurling his curved and bent body as he slid a blue silk cap from his balding pate. Every head swiveled at the sound. Every ear strained to hear the words of Arturo Barovier, descendant of one of the greatest glassmaking families in the history of Murano.

  “For over two hundred years they’ve kept us prisoner and now they’ve killed.” His warbled voice vibrated through the congregation like warbling birdsong. “We must tolerate this no longer.”

  Impassioned, angry diatribes erupted, scarlet-faced men pointed fingers at one another as they punctuated their arguments, any semblance of order dispersed like smoke on the breeze of discontent. The debate fell not upon the existence of the restrictive control of their government, but whether or not it was warranted. Under the guise of protection for the workers, La Serenissima, the government of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, had begun its meticulous ascendancy over the glass-working industry nearly four centuries ago. A fanatical Republic, one that took complex and convoluted steps to keep absolute power from falling into any one hand, it was ruled by perversely tyrannical patriots, motivated by a deep and profound love of their country; there was no action too egregious if it would benefit the state.

  Their control spread, as did the renown of Venetian glass. They spoke of fear for the growing population living in mostly wooden structures and the risk of fires posed by the glassmaking furnaces. The decree restricting all vetreria to the island of Murano came late in the thirteenth century, and the virtual imprisonment of the glassmaking families began. The regime’s sophistry was an ill-fitting disguise and it was not long before the true intention of their actions became clear. It was not safety at the crux of the regime’s concern, but the secret of the glass.

  They meant to isolate the glassworkers, to inhibit any contact with the outside world, curtailing any opportunities for the industry’s intricacies to be revealed to foreigners. As time passed, the pretense of the edict dissipated as clear and outright threats of bodily harm were made to any defecting glassworkers and their families. The seclusion was to protect the secret, and nothing else, for the exquisite vetro of Venice brought the state world fame and filled the government’s coffers with overflowing fortune.

  The statutes of the Capitularis swelled to include the Mariegole, a statement of duty for all glassworkers. It told them who was allowed to work and when, when the factories could close for vacation and for how long, going so far as to dictate how many bocche a furnace must have, as if the government knew better than the workers the best number of windows a crucible needed. In these infant days of the seventeenth century, their malevolent control had surpassed all acts that had come before; their hand of power had turned into a fist and would pummel anyone who publicly defied them.

  Sophia stood as close to the brick-trimmed apertures of the church as her height would allow, nodding her head in silent yet fervent agreement with Signore Barovier’s sentiment. As a woman, she could only make the glass, indulge in her one true passion, in secret, another of the Serenissima’s dictates; she was no supporter of their fanatical controls.

  “Sshh,” she hissed at the murmuring women around her, a pointed finger tapping against her pursed lips, surprising everyone—herself included—with her boldness, straining to hear the discussion continuing within the dim confines of the church. She was too desperate to hear to remain hidden in her usual timidity.

  Vincenzo Bonetti stood up, long face and long nose bowed, one of the youngest men there but still the padrone of the Pigna glassworks.

  “I would like to hear what signore Fiolario has to say.”

  Wood groaned and fabric rustled, all eyes looked to Zeno, quiet so far, amidst the disparate discussions boiling around him.

  The men often looked to Zeno for his counsel. Though he had not been the steward of the Arti for almost ten years, some considered him the best there had ever been and many sought his wisdom like the child seeks approval from the parent. Like the others before him, Zeno stood, twisting his thin body to face the assemblage.<
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  The morning sun’s first rays found the stained glass of the long, arched altar window and a burst of colorful streaks illuminated Zeno’s angular features with hues of shimmering moss and indigo. He appeared like a colorful specter, prismatic yet surreal.

  “We are like precious works of art, cloistered in locked museums, trotted out for show when visiting royalty appears, but kept behind bars otherwise.”

  “Sì, sì,” incensed cries of agreement rang out. Heads waggled with accord, hands flew up in the air as if to beseech God to hear their entreaties.

  Time after time, the Serenissima flaunted the talent and wealth of Venice in the faces of sojourning royalty, using the artisans of Murano for audacious displays. Not so very long ago King Henry III of France had been the most exalted guest of the Republic.

  Many prestigious members of the Arte dei Vetrai had been ceremonial attendants, including a younger Zeno just achieving the apex of his artistry, participating in exhibitions for the delight of the visiting monarch.

  At the sound of her father’s voice, Sophia had stood on tiptoes to see in the high windows. She waited now in rapt attention, as did they all as calm descended once more, for Zeno’s next sagacious dictum.

  Zeno stared at the expectant faces. His lips floundered, but no words formed. His head tilted to the side and his gaze grew vacant. He looked down at the empty space on the pew beneath him, and without further statement, sat down.

  Sophia released her straining toes and flexed calf muscles and leaned her back against the warm russet bricks of the church. Her young features scrunched unbecomingly; she didn’t understand why her father had not said more. He had appeared as if about to speak but the words or their sentiments had been lost on the journey from brain to lips.

  Within the church, the same confusion cloaked the congregation; men shared silent, questioning glances, their faces changing in the shifting shadows as the rising sun began to stream in through the windows.

  Cittadini took advantage of the appeasement. Stepping out from the podium, he crossed the altar, and stood in line with the first of the many rows of blond oak pews, at the intersection of forward and sideward paths.

  “Tell me, de Varisco.” The steward addressed a middle-aged man sitting close to the front, Manfredo de Varisco, owner of the San Giancinto glassworks. “You are not a nobleman, yet you live in a virtual palazzo. You own your own gondola. Sì?”

  De Varisco nodded his head, dirty blond curls bouncing, with an almost shameful shrug.

  “And you, Brunuro, you are always wearing your bejeweled sword and dagger.”

  Cittadini strode down the aisle, approaching a handsome man, black-haired and ruddy, sitting a third of the way down. Baldessera Brunuro, with his brother Zuan, ran both the Tre Corone and the Due Serafini.

  “Would you enjoy such privileges, such luxuries, if you weren’t glassworkers?”

  No one spoke, though many shook their heads, for the answer was most assuredly no; other Venetian members of the industrial class did not—could not—relish such refinements as did the glassmakers.

  Jerking to his right, the robust and rotund Cittadini raised an accusing finger, pointing to another middle-aged man, one with finely sculpted features, the owner of Tre Croci d’Oro.

  “You above all, signore Serena, your daughter is to marry a noble. Your grandchildren will be nobles. For the love of God, your male heirs may sit on the Grand Council, may one day become Doge, Il Serenissimo, the ruler of all Venice!”

  Cittadini punctuated his impassioned plea, throwing his hands up and wide with dramatic finality.

  Serena’s brown eyes held Cittadini’s, beacons shining from out of puffy, wrinkle-rimmed sockets. He struggled to stand, his long white beard quivering from his chin onto his chest with each strain of exertion. For a few more seconds he held the steward’s rapt attention in the preternatural quiet of the packed church. The women outside became captives, their noses pressed to the sills, their fussing and fluttering ceasing once and for all.

  “None of us wants to give these things up, these glories that make our lives so rich, so abundant.” Serena spoke of their splendors, yet the sadness in his face, his furrowed brow, his frowning mouth, told another tale. “But at what price? It is naught more than extortion. We should be, we must be, able to live as we please, go where we please. We have earned the right.”

  Cittadini didn’t answer. He studied the familiar face of his friend. He turned, impotent, to the righteous faces all around and curled his broad shoulders up to his ears. “Then…what do we do?”

  Within this house of God, amidst the aura of his benevolence, no one had an answer.

  Three

  Sophia stood at the very tip of the eight-oared barge sailing at full tilt across the two kilometers of lagoon lying between Murano and the major cluster of the Venetian islands. The wind blew against her face, lapping at the long silky folds of her best gown. At the rail beside her stood her two younger sisters, as eager and as excited as she to reach the main island’s shore and immerse themselves in the grandeur that was the Festa della Sensa. Her mother, father, and grandmother were somewhere on the crowded transport, mingling and gossiping with friends and relations, their anticipation pale in comparison to that of their progeny, tempered by a lifetime of attendance at the yearly celebration.

  The low flat islets of Venice appeared on the horizon, as the spiny church spires and rounded domes of cathedrals rose up like mountain ranges upon the sea level earth.

  “Which kings and queens will be here do you think, Sophi? Which princes?” Oriana asked in her sister’s ear, thwarting the greedy breeze from snatching her words away.

  Sophia smiled fondly at her sister; unveiled by her exhilaration, Oriana acted like the seventeen-year-old she was, dispelling the times when her womanliness made Sophia feel like the younger sister. For a girl who had just attained marriageable age, the dreams and fantasies of finding a noble husband were uppermost in Oriana’s mind. Sophia thought her sister, both her sisters, charming.

  On Oriana’s face lay her own features, the same light blue eyes and rich chestnut hair, but Sophia thought them more delicate, a refined beauty to her own rustic pleasantness. At fourteen, Lia still resembled a young girl, with just a hint of promise at the woman she would become, with golden russet eyes like her mother’s and the natural golden copper hair so coveted by the women of Venice.

  Sophia leaned close to the sparkling and rapt faces, squinting against the dazzling rays of the sun glinting off the ocean’s rolling surface. In the unremitting, potent cadence of the barge’s oars, she heard the diligent rhythm of her own aroused heartbeat.

  “One never knows what great royal personages will make an appearance at the Wedding of the Sea. It is such a great and wondrous ceremony. They come from every corner of the world. Not just from France, England, and Germany, but from China and India, too.”

  The young girls squealed and giggled, clasping hands and bouncing up and down. Sophia laughed. She loved these sisters so much; to delight them was to delight herself.

  Sophia crossed herself as the boat passed San Michele, the tiny square patch of land—the cemetery island—that lay between the glassmaking center and the Rialtine group of islands, those forming the central cluster of Venice. Sophia made this passage so often, yet, just as often, she pondered what wonders of God created such an unrivaled anomaly as was her homeland. Much of the salt water in the five hundred square kilometers of the Laguna Veneta was but waist-deep. Like the strands of a spider’s web, deeper channels crisscrossed throughout, allowing for the heavy traffic of its waterways. Halfway between the mainland and the long thin sandbanks known as the Lido, the little islets of sand and marram grass had formed in the shoals, as rivers and streams, like the Po and the Adige that ran down the Alps, discharged their silt. Over hundreds of years, each grain gathered, forming the world’s most uniquely beautiful, populated landmass.

  Sitting snugly between Europe and Asia, Venice had held the pu
rse strings of the world for hundreds of years, reaping the benefits of her prime location by controlling its trade. At one time, not so long ago, it was more populated and productive than all of France, though equivalent to but a quarter of its size. With the opening of the new trade routes, its power had begun to wane but its splendor and bounty and obsession with the best of everything the world had to offer was as powerful as ever. Its glitter had not yet begun to tarnish.

  The steady rumbling of the passengers rose to a rousing bombilation as the boat pulled into the dock at the Fondamenta Nuove and deposited them at the largest landing stage in the north. The journey from here to the Bacino di San Marco, the basin at the eastern end of the Grand Canal, would be quicker and easier via canal and calle than to continue the journey via barge around the island’s jutting eastern tip.

  The girls rushed from the vessel with unladylike haste, lingering with jittery impatience at the water’s edge for the rest of their family. Their formal summer gowns of linen and silk flapped like the wings of harried birds in the constant breeze that wafted off the pungent sea. Sophia’s simple crème gown served as a blank canvas for the peony and aquamarine of her sisters’ garb, her modest, almost severe hairstyle offered as if in contrast to their braided, pinned and beribboned coifs. Their faces shone bright as colorful glass beads beneath the small, lacy white veils obscuring their maiden faces.

  The sisters pointed and gaped at the beauty around them. The city looked breathtaking, bedecked in its best finery for the ceremony and all the visitors it brought to their shores. The pale pink and flax stone buildings blossomed with boxes of flowers, a riot of color, on their balconies and rooftop altanes. The four-and five-story buildings seemed to be made of row upon row of lace, each row unique in itself. The graceful, multifariously shaped windows, spiny-topped roofs, Venetian gothic arches, and marble columns crowned with Byzantine clover designs were forever reflected in the shimmering, undulating surface of the canal water at their feet. Bright garlands festooned the doors and servants in their finest livery stood poised to greet any guests.