The Glassblower of Murano Read online

  Corradino knew that his glass was the best because he held her in his hands, touching her skin with his, feeling her breathe. He took up his tagianti shears and began to pull a delicate filigree of curlicues from the main cylinder, until a forest of crystalline branches sprang from the tube. Corradino swiftly broke the blowpipe free, and transferring the piece to a solid iron rod - the pontello - he began to work with the open end. Finally running out of time as the unforgiving glass hardened, he took it to the mother structure and wound the new arm round the main trunk, in a decorative spiral. There was no rough spot - no pontello mark - to remain, like an umbilicus, to betray the origins of the limb.

  He stood holding the arm while the final hardening took place, admiring his work, then finally stood back and wiped his brow. Although shirtless, as the maestri always worked, he still felt the burning of the furnace fires on his skin from dawn till dusk. He wondered, looking at the diligent workers around him, whether this profession were a good preparation for hellfires. What was it that Dante wrote?

  `... tall flames flowed fierce,

  Heating them so white hot as ever burned

  Iron in the forge of any artificers.'

  Corradino knew the work of the Florentine well. His father had allowed all the family to bring one possession - one most precious thing - with them from the Palazzo Manin on the night they escaped. His father had brought a precious vellum copy of Dante's Divina Commedia from his library.

  That was my father's choice. It's the only book I own. It's the only thing that remains of my father.

  Corradino banished the thought of him and turned back to the punishing flames.

  No wonder that, back in 1291, the Grand Council of Venice had decreed that all glass-making should take place on the island of Murano, because of the constant threat of fire to the city. A blaze begun by the furnaces had more than once threatened to engulf Venice. It had been a wise idea to move the centre of production, for just a few years back the English city of London had been all but destroyed by fire. Not, mind you, that it had been started by anything as artistic as a glass foundry. The latest rumour among the merchants on the Rialto had spoken of the blaze beginning in a pie-shop. Corradino snorted.

  'Tis an English trait - always thinking of the stomach.

  The London fire had meant good business here on Murano. The English King Charles seemed to want to create London anew, and fill his grand modern buildings with mirrors and glasswork. There was, therefore, much demand from that chilly capital for the work of Corradino and his comrades.

  Although Corradino had finished the main frame of his chandelier there was still much to do. It was growing dark, and one by one, the fire-breathing mouths of the furnaces were extinguished, doors closed, and his fellows left. He called to one of the garzoni to a last errand, and as the boy ran through the fornace, jumping over iron pipes and dodging around buckets as the men worked, Corradino smiled and thought the apprentices' nickname `scimmia di vetro' - glass monkeys - seemed particularly apt.

  The boy was soon back with the box. `Eccolo Maestro!

  Corradino opened the long rosewood box. Inside were 100 small square partitions, all numbered, all lined with a wad of flock wool. Corradino got to work. He took a small pontello, much smaller than his trusty blowpipe, and dipped it into the glass that lay, molten and unformed, waiting, at the bottom of his furnace. He pulled out the rod which now resembled a lit candle. Waiting a moment, he then plucked the glowing orb from the rod and began to roll the glass in his palms, and then more delicately in his fingers. When satisfied, he pulled out a string of the glass to form a teardrop, and fashioned a delicate hook on its end. He dropped the jewel he had made into the bucket of water that rested between his knees.After a long moment, he plunged his hand into the bucket and rescued the gem.

  His action brought to his mind the stories of the pearl fishers of the East, stories that were brought back in the days of Venice's mastery over Constantinople, way back in the thirteenth century.

  Do those boys who dive for pearls in the deep, striving for the oysters while their lungs burst, feel the same satisfaction I do? Surely, no: when they find a pearl, it is mere luck - a beneficence of nature. When their brothers in the Hartz mountains in Germany who mine for silver in the heat and dark of the hills, find a pure seam of silver, do they feel as if they have created this treasure? And you diamond miners of the Africas, as you prise a perfect gem from the rocks, can you feel the pride that I do? No, for I have made these things of beauty. God made the others. And now in this world of men, in our seventeenth century, glass is more precious than any of your treasures; more than gold, more than saffron.

  Dry instantly in the heat of the flames, the droplet Corradino had made was placed delicately in the compartment marked `uno' in the rosewood box. Even nestling in the wool flock its diamond-like purity was not dulled. Corradino sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Angelo Barovier, the Maestro who had, two centuries ago, invented this `cristallo' glass of hard silica with which Corradino now worked. Before then, all glass was coloured, even white glass had an impurity or dullness, the hue of sand or milk or smoke. Cristallo meant that, for the first time, full transparency and crystal clarity could be achieved, and Corradino blessed the day.

  Corradino turned back to the making of his droplets. He still had ninety-nine to make before he would allow himself to return to his quarters for his wine and polenta supper. He could not entrust this work to one of the servente apprentices, because each one of the hundred droplets was different. In a move that had astounded his fellows, Corradino insisted that each droplet, because of its position on the chandelier, its distance from each candle, had to be a slightly different shape in order to transmit the same luminescence from every angle when suspended from the ceiling of a church or palazzo. The other glassmakers in the fornace and the boys used to gaze for hours on end at the contents of Corradino's droplet boxes, shaking their heads. They all looked exactly the same. Corradino saw them looking and smiled. He knew he had no need to hide his work - they could look all day long and would not know how he did it. Even he did not really understand what his fingers did as he thought of where this particular droplet would hang on the finished piece.

  Corradino always went to look at the place where his chandeliers would hang. He asked his customers endless questions about how the room would be lit, he looked at the windows and shutters, he even considered the movement of the sunlight and the impact of the reflections from the water of the canal. And each time he noted down his calculations in a little vellum notebook, recording everything. This precious volume was now, at the height of Corradino's mastery, crammed with his ugly handwriting and his beautiful drawings. Numbers, forming intricate measurements and equations, also jostled for room on the page as Corradino believed in the power of the ancient science of mathematics. Thus, each piece that he made and each advancement in technique was documented so that he could develop his art by making reference to his previous pieces. Now, having finished the last unique glass drop, he took out his book. He found the calculations he had taken from Santa Maria della Pieta and made a quick quill sketch of his finished piece. Even on the page the chandelier seemed to stand out in a crystal relief.

  Corradino guarded the book well, wearing it next to his skin at all times, but knew that even if his fellows could see it, they would not be able to decipher its secrets. He also knew that the other maestri laughed at him, and passed around the jest that Manin even wore his book when he pleasured a woman. He was truly an unusual man. But a genius, oh yes, truly a genius.

  The testament to his genius was in every palazzo in Venice, every church, every grand eating house. It was in every shining chalice he made, every mirror smooth as the lagoon in summer, even every glass bubble or bonbon he made as Carnevale favours. They all had the same glow of an expensive gem. And now he knew that his newest work would illuminate the dark, vaulted ceilings of the Santa Maria della Pieta like no light they had ever seen. And it would sing, as
many of his pieces spoke or sang. At the flick of a fingernail one of his cups would ring out the tale of the gold that painted its rini - of Samarkand and the Bosporus and the white hot days of eastern summer. This chandelier would echo the music of the girls that played in the Pieta. The girls that were orphaned, and had no one to love or love them, so poured their love into their music. His glass would sing back. It would tell them that at least one among them was loved.

  The Pieta. Corradino smiled. Tomorrow he himself would go to the Pieta with the chandelier droplets. The chandelier itself would travel ahead of him in a special, flatbottomed boat. Corradino had himself designed the packing system for his precious candelabri - they were suspended from the lid of a huge barrel filled with filtered lagoon water. This meant that the fragile design was cushioned from all knocks, and could survive all but a capsizement. Then to arrive in Santa Maria della Pieta, to be winched from the barrel, water streaming from it in the godlight of the windows, like an extension of the exquisite glasswork. To fulfill its destiny, to light the church for perhaps centuries, to enable the girls to see the dark insects of the music notes as they raced across the pages of their scores, to enable the sublime noise that they made to the ultimate glory of God. And Corradino would complete the process as he painstakingly hung each drop in its proper place before the final piece was winched to the ceiling.

  I myself will (finish it, as is fitting.

  It was the second greatest pleasure of this life of his. And tomorrow it would be married to the first - seeing Leonora. He began to make his final glass jewel, not heeding that all the slots in his rosewood box were already full. This was not to be a droplet for the chandelier - it was a gift for her.

  Corradino knew that, when the glassmakers had been moved from Venice to Murano there had been another motive than that of civic safety. Venetian glass was the best in the world, and had been since eastern glassmaking techniques had been brought back from the fall of Constantinople. Such methods were honed and developed, techniques were passed from maestro to apprentice and a powerful monopoly grew for the Republic on the back of these secrets. One the Grand Council was reluctant to relinquish. Almost at once, for the glassmakers of Murano, the island became not just their living and working quarters, but something of a prison. The Consiglio Maggiore understood well the saying; `He who hath a secret to keep must first keep it secret.' Isolation was the key to the keeping of these secrets. Even now, permission to go to the mainland was rarely given. And more often than not, the maestri would be followed by agents of the Council. Corradino, because of his talent, and his practice of taking careful measurements, and the necessity of placing final touches himself, was given more latitude than most. But he had, once before this time, abused this trust. For on such a mainland trip he had met Angelina.

  She was beautiful. Corradino was no celibate, but he was used to seeing beauty only in the things that he had made. In her he saw something divine, something that he could not make. He met her in her father's palazzo on the Grand Canal. Principe Nunzio del Vescovi wished to discuss a set of two hundred goblets that were needed for his daughter's wedding celebration. They were to match his daughter's wedding gown and mask. Corradino brought, as instructed, an inlaid box full of pigments and gems that he might use to achieve the colour.

  All the great houses of Venice had two entrances, denoting their own unmistakable dichotomy of class. The water entrance was always fantastically grand, an imposing, decorative portal, with great double doors and part-submerged boat-poles striped in the colours of the household.The water door opened to invite the honoured guest into an enclosed pool, marble-walled, with a landing stage leading to the exalted reception rooms of the palazzo. The trade doors, opening into the calle at the side of the house, were more modest, for tradesmen and messengers and servants, opening directly onto the pavement. This distinction, this difference of doors, revealed much about the city - Venice owed everything to the water. The Lagoon was all. It was on the water, those shifting but faithful tides, that Venice had built her supremacy and her empire - how fitting, therefore, that the waterways of Venice were given precedence in this way. Corradino's gondola, on that fateful day, was waved to the water entrance. The great silver palace enveloped him and he was shown to the main apartments by a deferential liveried servant. As Corradino, in the humble leathers of a soffiature di vetro entered the beautiful salons looking out onto the water he realized that all had been done for him in deference to his rare talent. The Prince, a man with the long features and silver hair of nobility, received him as he would a kinsman. Corradino's place in the world seemed assured.

  A servant was sent to fetch the Principessa Angelina, and the dress. The Prince discussed the pigments and their prices with Corradino over a fine Valpolicella, then as the old man looked up and said `there you are my dear,' Corradino heard no more.

  She was a revelation.

  Blonde hair like filaments of gold. Green eyes like leaves in spring rain. And the countenance of a goddess. She was a vision in blue - the silks of her wedding dress seemed to have a hundred hues in the morning light and the dappled reflections of the canal.

  As for the Principessa, she knew of Corradino by repute, and had longed to see the artist that all spoke of. She was surprised to find him so young - not more than twenty, she guessed. She was pleased to find him handsome, although not unusually so, with the dark eyes and curls of the region. His face - perpetually tanned by the furnaces - recalled the stern, dark, eastern icons that looked down from their jewel encrusted frames in the Basilica at Mass. In his person, he looked quite commonplace. But he was not. He was as priceless, she knew, as those icons themselves with all their jewels.

  Angelina remembered being among the privileged company that had gone, the year before, to see an exhibition of a fabled creature at the Doge's Palace, the Palazzo Ducale. They called the creature a Camelopard, the fabled Giraffa catnelopardalis, and it had been loaned by a King of the Africas. The name meant nothing to the Principessa. But when she saw the animal she felt an almost feral excitement as she watched from behind her mask. Enormously tall, chequered like a Harlequin, and with an impossibly long neck, the creature strode slowly around; its form slicing through the sunlight shafts that flooded in through the palazzo's windows.The great chamber of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, cavernous, gorgeously painted in red and gold frescoes and with the highest ceilings in Venice, seemed the only room fitting for the display of this fantastical beast. From the ceiling, seventy-six past Doges ofVenice, rendered by the great Veronese, looked down unmoved at the sight. Their living successor looked on in wonder from his throne, crowned with his corno hat, whispering to his consort from behind his beringed hand. Meanwhile, the alien silent creature paused to examine a high scarlet drapery with a snakelike black tongue, eliciting delighted gasps from the audience. It lifted its tail and expelled a pile of neat droppings onto the priceless floors, treading in its own excrement. The ladies giggled and squealed while the men guffawed, and Angelina pressed a floral posy to her nose. But her excitement remained. She felt herself in the presence of something truly unusual, something unique. She did not ask herself if the Camelopard were beautiful or not. That question was an irrelevance. If the beast had been for sale she would have had her father buy it.

  She looked now at Corradino and felt the same sensations. It mattered not if he was young and handsome, only that he was truly unusual, something unique. She felt the need to possess him. When Angelina del Vescovi smiled at him all thought of the pigments went out of Corradino's head. He soon remembered them though, oh yes. In fact, he found it necessary to make many trips to the Palazzo Vescovo in the months before the wedding, to discuss those all-important pigments. Sometimes he saw the Prince as well as his daughter. But mostly he saw the Principessa alone. These were very important matters, you understand. It was crucial to get such things absolutely right.

  A week before her wedding it was discovered that the Principessa Angelina dei Vescovi was with ch
ild. The Principessa's tiring maid, a tool and spy of the Prince, observed her mistresses' linens, which remained a blanched white throughout the time of her monthly courses. The wench reported the Principessa's pregnancy to the Prince almost before Angelina knew of it herself. The betrothal was broken on grounds of ill health, and Angelina was spirited away, in the utmost secrecy, to her father's estates in Vicenza for her confinement. In an effort to salvage his daughter's reputation, the Prince threatened his servants with death if any word were breathed back in Venice of Angelina's disgrace. Corradino, in a clandestine visit to the palace to see Angelina, found himself met by two of the Prince's gentlemen and carted upstairs to the Prince's study. There he had a brief and bitter interview with Nunzio del Vescovi in which he was told in no uncertain terms that it was more than his life was worth either to attempt to contact Angelina again or to remain in the city. So harsh were the Prince's words, so belittling of Corradino's status, that he instantly lost all semblance of the nobility he had regained when he had first been received at the palace. He felt, now, that his talents were no match for the riches and the standing of the Prince, which he had once had and now lost. In years to come his mind would not let him remember many of the Prince's bitter words, but one exchange would not leave his memory.

  After Nunzio had spent his rage he turned his back on Corradino and looked out over the lagoon. In a soft, defeated voice, he had said; `Sometimes, Signor Manin, even by touching something beautiful, we ruin it for ever. I)id you know that a butterfly, that most wondrous of insects, can never again fly once her wings have been touched by the fingers of man? The scales of her wings fall away, and they are useless. This you have done to my daughter.'

  This sentiment, and the notion that Corradino was capable of destroying the beauty he had always striven to create, somehow frightened him more than anything else the Prince had said. For the second time in his life, Corradino fled in real fear back to Murano.