Description
Between the Giudecca and the Lido, a few minutes by boat from St Mark’s Square, the island of San Clemente was long the gateway to Venice. In the fifteenth century the Bucintoro, the Doge’s ceremonial galley, came here to receive distinguished guests before escorting them in procession up the Grand Canal. A merchant, Pietro Gattilesso, had founded a church and a hospice there in 1131 for pilgrims bound for the Holy Land; the Camaldolese hermits, masters of the island from 1645, gave it its façade, a gift of the Morosini family in memory of two of their own who fell in the War of Candia. After Napoleon the island became a garrison, then, from 1844 to 1992, a women’s asylum: in Venetian speech, “going to San Clemente” meant losing one’s mind. Since 2003 it has been a palace hotel.
Of this history the photograph keeps only the form. Seen from above, the island reads like an architect’s plan laid upon the water: the wings of russet tile trace their courtyards and cloisters, the gardens open their breathing spaces, the pool makes a patch of turquoise, and all around, the lagoon, smooth as jade, is disturbed only by the white wake of an approaching motoscafo. Venice has dreamed of seeing itself from the sky since Jacopo de’ Barbari’s great bird’s-eye view, engraved in 1500; five centuries on, that gaze remains a privilege. The image takes it with the restraint it demands: no effects, an even light, the drawing alone.
For nine centuries this island has received: pilgrims, monks, patients, travellers. The Hospitality series is devoted to such places, whose profession is to welcome, and to what they reveal of a city when seen from a little further away, or a little higher up.
