30 May 2004
Venice in spring smells of Pittosporum tobira and Philadelphus. Its pungent, and its frustrating, emerging as it does from behind high walls. Look up, and there are leaves of tall trees and creepers tumbling over the walls. Occasionally, if youre lucky, youll find the iron gate has a grate to peer through into an orderly green cool, punctuated by bits of statuary, or perhaps a vera di pozzo, one of those gorgeous bulbous-sided marble Venetian wellheads. Other times, what lies beyond is clearly a wilderness, left to run riot by absentee owners or simply owners (or tenants) who are so at home with Venices overwhelmingly on the surface at least urban nature that their patch of green seems something of an anomaly: it would never occur to them to employ time and funds restore the garden to its former splendour.
Its a problem encountered (and lamented) by Tudy Sammartini, a Venetian monument whom I met in Venice this weekend. She rails at anyone who calls her contessa. In fact, she rails at anyone who doesnt call her Tudy and doesnt use the informal tu form when addressing her. People are always asking me for help to restore their gardens. But when I tell them it will cost them, they look at me in disbelief. They never imagine that restoring gardens is a job.
So instead, she shows people those gardens that have been are in fine condition, gaining access to places that no one else can set foot. Those secret places where the perfume makes you swoon as you pass: private gardens, monastery gardens. I charge people a fortune for this. But I need the money, for my good works.
I took Tudys name in vain yesterday afternoon as I returned for the second time in two days to the church of San Francesco della Vigna, up in the north-east of Venice. The church is fascinating, with its Palladio-designed faade*** part of it oddly obscured by jutting houses its Negroponte and Bellini madonnas and its Lombardo family carvings of prophets and their prophecies coming true. But what has for years interested me most about San Francesco is its third cloister.
The first two are on show: the larger one with crossing paths, dividing the calm space into four rather scrappy lawns, edged with petunias and pansies; the smaller one is all brick and recently restored. The fourth is shut off to the east of the church, and used by local children for playing football. The third, I had always believed (rightly as it turned out), was off the first, behind a firmly-shut green door marked clausura (closed order). I had seen the brown-habited Franciscan monks slipping through this door, pulling it abruptly shut behind them in thou-shalt-not-pass fashion. Id never been near enough at the right moment to sneak a look or beg a visit.
In Tudys book I giardini segreti di Venezia***, theres a photo of the third cloister a lushly down-to-earth place of fruit trees and neat rows of vegetables with an arched walkway on two of its sides, a wall on its third side separating it from the northern lagoon and another on the fourth above which Venices rusting, disused gas tanks loom. This picture only whetted my appetite further. So when I saw a dour-looking Francisan heading for the door, I made my move. Tudy says your garden is splendid. Can I take a look?
Tudys name, here, is magic. (I get all my vegetables from the monks garden, she told me which doesnt quite explain her one-of-the-family rapport with the vegetable stall holders in the Rialto market whom she hectors and bullies with motherly affection.) From dour, the monk turned welcoming and I was ushered through the green door.
I wonder how much this garden has changed since the monks planted their first vigne (vines) here in ????***. Id say the original inhabitants would feel perfectly familiar with the place, give or take an import from the Americas or two. Perfectly regulated without being regimented, this soft-edged eden gives the idea of perfect balance. It looks expressly designed to feed its monks, with something over for poor pilgrims (and Tudy). There are fruit trees and rose bushes. And the obligatory, overpowering Pittosporum tobira. And, hidden in the greenery near the gate, an old tin full of sand and cigarette butts. The Franciscan sees me looking at it, and turns sheepish. Oh that, he says. Well, you cant expect monks to be totally free of vices, can you?