Tour of Tintoretto's Last Suppers

On Tuesday, we were treated to a guided tour of Venice by Professor Gregory Dowling. This professor teaches here in Venice at Ca’ Foscari. He seemed to know just about everything there was to know about Venice. He had dedicated his morning to us in order to share his expert knowledge on Tintoretto’s Last Supper paintings which are scattered across the entire city. We spent the day heading in and out of many churches to analyze Tintoretto’s work. After hours of this tour, we ended at San Stefano for one last painting.

Although I could write an entire blog on the collection of paintings in itself, it is not what struck me the most about this morning. What I found to be the most beneficial was the walking aspect of the tour.

In Urry’s work Consuming Places, he spends a great deal of time explaining this idea of the tourist gaze. “The gaze is directed to features of landscape and townscape which separate them from everyday and routine experiences (Urry, Consuming Places, 132).” In many aspects, I still feel as though I am a tourist in Venice, and more importantly, a tourist who is guilty of this “gaze” that Urry speaks so much about. I find it more interesting to see those things which are different then what I am used to. The local grocery store in Venice is not nearly as intriguing as the bakery filled with traditional Venetian desserts. The inner tourist in me still stops to take pictures, look at the fish market, and stand in awe of the canals.

What I found so captivating about this walk that Professor Dowling led us on was how incredibly interesting the “normal” things in Venice were. These are things that would traditionally not ensnare the tourist gaze. Simple things such as a sign above a building, a plain bridge, or a tile in the sidewalk have so much meaning behind them which Professor Dowling shared.

Perhaps my favorite of these items was a small plaque above a window. This plaque was located in a small alley just off of Piazza San Marco in the side of an apartment building. Any tourist walking down the street would not stop to take a picture of this, and let’s be honest, probably wouldn’t even notice it. Professor Dowling told us that it represented the place where a woman threw a brick out of her first floor window (second floor in the United States), and in turn killed a man linked to the Venetian Revolution. Wow! Who would have known??

Professor Dowling helped me to even further see past the tourist façade of Venice. His knowledge about the little things in Venice, as well as his passion for sharing these, showed how much he as a person appreciated this city. It inspired me to look past the commonly touristic things and to begin to embrace the “normal” in Venice. As I’ve said before in my blogs, every week I can see a difference in the way I view this city. I find more respect and appreciation for it each and everyday. The whole theme of this course is to realize that the beauty of Venice is in the details, and how true I’m finding that statement to be!