GOODWIN PORTRAYS THE 'THEATER' OF VENETIAN ART AND POLITICS
AH, BEAUTIFUL VENICE! Actually,
in 1840, it was not beautiful at all, according to the setting for Jason Goodwin’s
exotic detective novel, The Bellini Card
(2008). Under Austrian Hapsburg rule, the city’s palaces are dilapidated, the
canals muddy green, and the political intrigues nastier than ever.
All the
treasures, in fact, are hidden away.
To begin
this story, the new and young sultan in Istanbul hears rumors that an Italian
Renaissance painting of a past sultan, the “Great Conqueror” Mahumet II, is for
sale in Venice. It’s been missing for a few generations. “If the picture
exists, I wish for it,” says Sultan Abdulmecid, just taking office. “Send for
Yashim.”
Yashim is
author Goodwin’s unique creation, a highly-educated court eunuch and
investigator, a chief fixer for the sultans. The Bellini Card is Yashim’s third adventure. In this case,
however, a court bureaucrat, Resid Pasha (a pasha being a high-ranking Turkish
official) intervenes. When the conniving Resid tells Yashim that it’s not
necessary to go to Venice, Yashim secretly sends his friend Stanislaw Palewski,
a former Polish ambassador. He arrives in Venice posing as an American art
buyer named Mr. Brett.
Eventually,
two Venetian dealers with information about the painting are killed. So Yashim
himself glides into Venice, arriving in the disguise of a pasha (ensconced on a barge and wearing an
Ottoman turban and so much else that no one can really recognize him).
One theme
of the novel is that “Venice is theater,” and there’s a good many ploys taking
place behind disguises and masks. Indeed, a key mystery to the novel is based
on a misunderstanding because of the disguises. Back during one of the annual
Venice Carnivals (famous for the use of masks), it was rumored that the new
young sultan had sneaked into sinful Venice, played cards and drank—and who
knows what else—and then returned to Istanbul.
The
Austrian Hapsburgs, who control Venice, believe they can use this scandalous
information as possible blackmail, giving them a political upper hand over the inexperienced
sultan. However, the true fact is that it was Resid Pasha—yes, wearing a mask—who
had come to Venice to satiate his carnal appetites. To hide this guilty fact,
Resid Pasha has sent a Tatar assassin to Venice. The assassin is to kill anyone
who saw Resid Pasha at a Carnival card game. He’s also to kill the art
dealers and get the Bellini painting for Resid’s own purposes.
The
painting is a historical fact (as Goodwin explains in the back-of-the-book
notes).
In the year
1480, the great Venetian painter Gentile Bellini had gone to Istanbul as unofficial
ambassador from his republic. After meeting Sultan Mahumet II, he painted his
portrait (which now hangs in the National Gallery, London). In the novel,
Goodwin has the Tatar die in a storm-flooded Venetian canal, and the Bellini
canvas goes down with him.
Cleverly
enough, this can still jibe with true art history, however, since conceivably someone
could have found the floating canvas, repainted the extensive damage—which is the real
case with the painting—and mounted it on a panel. Such a repair history roughly matches the real painting’s legacy.
Goodwin is
a scholar of the Byzantine Empire. A strength of the novel is the
backdrop of political relations between Venice and the East and the atmospheric
descriptions of both Istanbul and Venice. To add some intellectual heft,
Goodwin also inserts references to an ancient Greek mathematical principle that
had been recovered by the Muslims and transmitted back to Europe. It is one of
the famous mathematical calculations of the Greek geometer Archimedes, a
calculus known as “The Sand Reckoner.”
Archimedes
wanted to estimate the size of the universe by asking, How many grains of sand would
it take to fill the cosmic space? First he calculated how many grains are in,
say, a square mile—he spoke of “myriad” instead of our modern mile—then
extended that to a thousand square miles, and so on. He extrapolated up to
cosmic proportions.
One visualized
result of Archimedes’ principle of repetitive expansion would be a diagram, an
eight-pointed star inside a square. The design was used in Ottoman mosaics and
later in Western art. It’s also a topic the philosophical Yashim reflects upon:
the diagram represents myriad connections, just like all the connections he
finds in discovering who killed whom, who was really in Venice, and who has had
the painting all these years.
“Nothing is
still,” Yashim says. “Nothing remains the same except that pattern that lies
beneath.” Back during Bellini’s visit with the sultan, in fact, the pattern
stood for diplomatic amity because “the pattern reconciles . . . east with west.”
The possessor
of the Bellini painting is Clara, an Italian countess (“the contessa”), who as
it turns out, was also host to the Venice Carnival card game at which Resid
Pasha had participated, wearing his mask, of course. Problem is, Resid got into
terrible debt with his losing hands. This was another reason Resid had sent the
Tatar assassin to seize the painting: the contessa had hidden the debt note on
the back of the painting. The Austrians, meanwhile, also wanted to get their
hands on the debt note, a key element if they ever wanted to blackmail the
sultan (again, whom they thought was the man at the card game). Remember,
Venice is theater.
One would
do well to read some history about Venice and the Ottoman Turks in the
nineteenth century before delving into a Goodwin novel. A lot of motives can be
difficult to ferret out, for the author is not explicit: He knows it would bog down
the narrative to give too much political history and explain all the social
positions (pashas, dukes, contessas, courtesans, Tatars, Moors—and more).
A bit of
Venetian art history passes through easily enough. The contessa’s long-lost son, a kind of
idiot savant, surfaces as a forger of paintings by Canaletto, Venice’s
preeminent urban landscape artist. While Bellini paintings are “not in
fashion,” Titians are very upmarket. All three are famed Venetian painters.
The masked
motives and masked people in The Bellini
Card lend to a very complex plot. But if one can appreciate the theory—a
novel about disguises—a certain satisfaction is guaranteed when, at the end, Yashim
and Resid summarize what had really happened. As the narrator has warned us
more than once, “Venice was theater in so many ways.”
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