The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [16]
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,