Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21st, 1917 THE THREAT AGAINST VENICE.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 November 1917, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21st, 1917 THE THREAT AGAINST VENICE.

What will be the fate of Venice if unhappily the Franco-British reinforcements arrivo in insufficient numbers to stem the Austro-German onslaught upon Italy, and to save the famed city from the clutches of the invading armies? Will it be remembered as the former paradise of multitudes of German and Austrian tourists, who in the palmy days of peace swarmed into the city by steamer from Trieste, and will (it be respected accordingly? Or is Venice doomed to suffer the cruel fate that has already befallen so many of the treasure houses of Belgium and Northern France through the ruthlessness of a foe to whom nothing is sacred? 'Hie answer to these questions, says an Exchange, will he awaited with anxiety by lovers of art the world over. Venice, the repository of priceless ar t treasures. belongs, not to Italy, hut to all nations.. Throughout the British Empire and in America the mention of Venice recalls immortal memories of

Shakespeare, Byron, and Browning; and the Rialto, the Bridge of Sighs, and the Grand Canal are household words to thousands who have never set foot in Italy, Venice has been

described as “an unbelievable city of Spires and palaces, whose streets are water and whose sunset s are liquid gold.” It is all that and more. It is essentially the home of these three great Italian masters of the art of painting Tintoretto, Titan and Paul Veronese. It was left to Venice to prove what t,licse giants—Tjintoretto in particular —could do when afforded vast spaces in which to give their artistic faculties full scope and development. But although the Accadeima is to Venice what the National Gallery is to London, the Louvre to Paris, and the Uffizi to Florence, its chief treasures do not consist of its paintings in frames on the wall. The glory of Venice is'in the mosaics, the ceilings, and the other marvellous mural paintings which cannot he taken down and hidden in cellars, and which, once destroyed, can never be restored. The intrinsic interest which is attached to the art treasures of Venice is heightened by the uniqueness of their setting. Nothing less than the eloquence of a Ruskin has sufficed, in “The Stones of Venice,” to do justice to the architectural beauty - and historic significance of the churches and palaces of this enchanted city. Specially noteworthy is iSt. Mark’s, with the unequalled richness and colour of it's interior—St. Mark’s, which from many points or view is “the most venerable and most beautiful building left to us in Europe, coming to us from the earliest middle ages, with all the wonders of the East in its golden dim aisles and nil the beauty of the West in its space and splendour.” The same authority declares that “if the Church of St. Mark sums up and expresses the Byzantine city, the Palace of the Doges may he said to hear witness in its architecture to the Gothic, in its contents to the Renaissance splendour of a city that more than any other State in the Italian peninsula lias known how .o express itself.” St. Mark s and the Doges’ Palace are hut typical of many other churches and palaces each replete with art treasures which go to make up the inimitable charm of Venice. It is not too much to aver that Germany stands once more at the bar of the civilised world and that the severity of the sentence to be passed upon her and her Allies depends m large measure upon the respect shown to Voifice as one of the treasure houses of the world, if that Queen of the Rea should unfortunately fall into enemy hands or come within range of enemy guns.