“Art should be a mirror through which the viewer observes the world” wrote
Leon Battista Alberti, who was a true Renaissance man of the Renaissance,
among his many works, he published De Pictura, a book on painting where he
introduced the symbolic meanings behind the techniques used by painters. His,
hiowever, was the western view of art, so very different from that developed in
Byzantium in the east, where the icon was central.
Byzantine icons certainly
made their mark in Italy too, especially in Venice as we can see by looking
around this Basilica at all the mosaics of saintly people looking at us, or we might
say, into us. The idea is that the viewer should not look at an icon to see himself
or to reflect upon the meaning of what he is seeing, as people have always done
in the in west; the icon is a figure with whom the viewer enters into silent
conversation, it is a presence with which one opens up, and ideally prays to in
private. It is an intimate, if silent, bond. Icons are saintly individuals, exactly as
the 14 statues at the top of the collonade through which one enters into the
presbitery: this is the Iconostasis.
Looking up at them, we see the 12 apostles with Mary and St. Mark in a
horizontal line, all flanking Jesus on the cross in the middle. Each figure is
looking outwards or downwards, with an intensely pensive look on their face,
each a separate being with no interaction with their neighbours. However, all
together they form one singular work, a joint effort by two respected Venetian
brothers and sculptors, Pierpaolo and Jacobello dalle Masegne. The statues were
sculpted in white marble, and you may think you’re looking at the wrong pieces;
you’re not. Simply, day after day and century after century, the fumes from the
candles rising from below have left their own mark. If anything, the darkened
traits give the disciples a stronger and more austere presence, which seems to
befit them.
