Sex Francesco's Venice

A great city had risen out of the Venetian lagoon.

At first, barely above the marshy ground.

It's transformed over six centuries

into a city of palaces of marble and stone.

Its great waterway, the Gran Canale,

would be one of the most brilliant displays of art and architecture

the world had ever seen.

Under the bold leadership of successive Doges,

Venice built up an empire of trading posts

that spanned east and west.

But in 1575, plague decimated the city.

Almost one third of the population died.

And Venice was shunned by the rest of Europe.

This is the story of Venice's great age of Carnival,

when Venice would become the pleasure capital of the world.

A place of unrestrained decadence and sexual indulgence.

The age would be dominated by two men of opposite extremes -

the adventurer and the mercenary.

The sensualist and the soldier.

The lover and emperor.

One came to define the age - Giovanni Giacomo Casanova.

And the other came to destroy it -

Napoleon Bonaparte.

But for the moment, Venice's greatest enemy was the plague.

Another epidemic gripped the city in 1630, and when it subsided,

11 months later, almost a third of Venice was dead.

But out of the mists of a dream, an architectural vision appeared to the Doge.

The survivors would build a great new church -

Santa Maria della Salute -

dedicated to the Virgin Mary,

to thank God for the city's deliverance.

The extravagance of the new church would define the age.

La Salute is all drama.

Visual effects.

Baroque architecture was really elaborate, very decorative.

Like a big wedding cake.

Venetian baroque would be an assault on the senses.

About making a big impression

with most of the attention on the exterior of the building.

The style was still classical, but much less restrained -

embracing ornament and sculpture.

The dramatic effect of the interior

is heightened by a great circle of windows

flooding light into the building.

The Baroque could be for Venice the rebirth.

The round form of the temple represents the crown of the Virgin Mary.

But the Baroque would slide into indulgence,

theatre would become pantomime, decoration would become disguise.

Buildings became overladen with ornament and exaltation.

It would signal an age of excess.

Venetian women treated their skin with strips of veal to keep it supple.

They streaked their hair with urine.

Venice was changing art into fashion.

The angle of a fan indicated willingness.

A beauty spot at the corner of the eye signalled a passionate nature,

and on the throat it was considered shameless.

Venice was becoming brazen. She had been beautiful for centuries,

but now she knew it, and she would attract the world to her door.

There was a flood of tourists -

aristocrats from England and France,

who came to educate themselves on what they called their Grand Tour.

And Venice was their first stop.

Young rich Europeans came to study Venetian art and architecture

and to learn from our long history.

But whatever the power of art, many visitors got distracted.

They said Venetian women were the most beautiful in Europe,

their fashion sense the most alluring.

This was the age of the courtesan, an era of upmarket sex for sale.

A Venetian paradise for the young men of Europe who poured into the city.

This painting is called Il Corso Delle Cortigiane In Rio Della Sensa.

And it depicts the evening ritual

of courtesans cruising along the canal for business.

The women were beautiful and often they were clever and witty,

well-versed in music and poetry.

In all there were close to 12,000 women for sale,

and most of these women are forgotten, but not all of them.

One woman above all others

set the style of Venetian art and sensuality,

elevating love to new heights of creativity.

Her name was Veronica Franco.

But Veronica's life did not start well.

She grew up here, in Canaregio.

Canaregio was a poor part of town,

and becoming a courtesan was Veronica's way out.

Franco was acclaimed as one of the most beautiful women in the world,

famous for her seductive powers.

But she grew rich from her volumes of passionate poetry,

which became bestsellers across Europe.

She became so famous that when the King of France visited Venice,

he requested an evening with her.

Franco wrote a poem to commemorate the occasion.

And even if you were not the King of France,

you could find the art of Venetian love around every corner.

This is a sort of guide to Venice in the 18th century.

It's got a lot of useful information, a lot of addresses.

In San Luca in the street of the Colla family,

in Santangeli in front of the house of the Malipiero family,

in San Leo, in Santa Maria Formosa on the Rugagiuffa.

In Santa Maria Formosa on the Calle Longa.

In San Antonio at the arch. In San Giovanni Bragola, in Santa Trinita.

In San Cassiano...and obviously in Carampane, the castle.

All addresses of the most desirable Venetian courtesans.

Hello? Oh, excuse me?

We are searching for courtesans around here. Do you know anything?

-I do not, but I know a man who knows.

-Where?

-Just around the corner.

Permesso!

The place of the courtesan was at the very heart of Venetian society.

Just off St Mark's Square sits the most fashionable cafe of the age -

the Venezia Trionfante - but we know it as Florian's.

The favourite haunt of courtesans and artists alike.

Half coffee house, half literary salon,

Florian's strange oriental decoration

captures the mood of mystery and excitement

that drew foreign tourists to Venice.

Upstairs, it was whispered, was the best bordello in town.

Downstairs, art and licence mixed into a potent brew.

The fashion was for erotic verse,

like Giorgio Baffo's Inni Alla Mona,

Lodi Al Culo

and Gusto De Sborar.

English visitors were reputed to be the most licentious,

but, as libertine Venice filed past,

even they had to remind themselves why they were in Venice art.

Even the guilty realised they would need an alibi to take home.

And new Venetian artists

would create the most elegant souvenirs for the guilty men.

Venice was full of tourists and their money was opening up a whole new market.

The arts, from painting to sculpture to music, were for sale.

And everybody wanted a piece.

The most famous musicians were all women

all living in the city's four church-run orphanages.

Mostly they were unwanted daughters of courtesans.

For the sake of modesty,

they played behind iron grills set into the galleries of music rooms.

One man was to bring Venetian music to the world.

He was a clergyman, nicknamed Il Prete Rosso,

for his flaming red hair,

but he would put his music not at the service of God, but of money.

His name was Antonio Vivaldi.

Vivaldi was the son of a barber who had played the violin

in the orchestra of the Basilica of St Mark's.

He became head of music at the orphanage of La Pieta.

Whereas composers had been in the service of the church,

or a single rich patron, now Vivaldi responded to a new market for music.

Vivaldi revolutionized music, not with his compositions,

but by the way he sold them.

He had made music a commodity for sale.

Vivaldi wrote more than 500 concertos and 46 operas in his life.

He claimed he could finish a symphony in just a few days.

His technique was simple he sold dedications to compositions

which were often just a blend of ingredients from previous pieces.

Those who paid for a dedication

never guessed they were part of a quick-fire production line.

Was this art for sale?

Perhaps, but it is still the most sublime accompaniment to my city

of any musician.

Painters too would market their art directly to tourists.

And the foremost Venetian artist of the day was Antonio Canal.

But he became better known as... Canaletto.

Canaletto never won the reputation

of the early Venetian artists like Titian or Bellini.

People thought of him as we might think of a tourist photographer.

He didn't imagine things - he just reproduced them.

Canaletto led a new movement in art.

He was a vedutista a painter of views.

For the first time, the city was the subject of the painting,

rather than just the background.

Canaletto's realism was created with help of the newest technology.

A box that held a lense projecting an image onto a screen...

a camera obscura.

And this is the very one that Canaletto used.

18th-century tourists seized on his art

as the most upmarket postcards of the age.

But even Canaletto, the master of realism,

allowed himself artistic liberties.

Early subtle light effects would disappear from his later paintings,

as his tourist clients demanded sun-drenched views of Venice.

Some even wanted views they could never hope to see in real life.

To paint this picture of the Gran Canale,

Canaletto must have had wings.

Or maybe he developed his own balancing act.

Canaletto's popular appeal made him an easy target.

But many criticisms were nothing more than snobbery.

Canaletto was creating a new icon for a secular age

the city itself.

His pictures would become the world's favourite view of Venice...

..a city in love with itself.

Only one man would eclipse Canaletto as Venice's favourite son,

and his only gift to the world was a 12-volume book about himself.

A Venetian life devoted to pleasure.

It was entitled simply A History Of My Life.

This man was not an artist.

He was not a poet, not even a great thinker.

He was a celebrity.

For the tourists of 18th-century Venice, he WAS Venice.

Giovanni Giacomo Casanova.

The chief business of my life has always been to indulge my senses.

I never knew anything of greater importance.

I felt myself born for the fair sex. I have ever loved it dearly,

and I have been loved by it as often and as much as I could.

I have always found the odour of my beloved ones exceeding pleasant.

"What depraved tastes!" some people will exclaim.

"Are you not ashamed to confess such inclinations without blushing?"

Dear critics, you make me laugh heartily.

Thanks to my coarse tastes, I believe myself happier than other men.

I am convinced that they enhance my enjoyment.

One night in 1753, Casanova started a love affair

with a mysterious woman he refers to only as "MM".

Even today, we can only hazard a guess that she was Maria Morisini.

Complete secrecy was vital.

Even by the standards of Casanova, it would be risky.

He was breaking one of the taboos of the Catholic Church.

Going beyond even the bounds of permissive Venice.

The problem...and the thrill...

was that MM was...a nun!

Her great virtues were her beauty and intelligence.

In addition to these, my happiness was intensified by the whiff of scandal.

She was a vestal virgin - I would taste the forbidden fruit.

Casanova first met MM in a convent on the Island of Murano.

But what was he doing in the convent in the first place?

He had started going there just a few months before,

to visit a novice he had fallen in love with.

In his diaries, Casanova calls her "CC".

We know she was Catarina Capretto.

Her father had put her there to get her away from Casanova.

But Casanova wouldn't take no for an answer.

Now Casanova was having affairs with not one but two nuns.

Things started to get a bit complicated.

So often things got complicated

in the aura of sexual licence that pervaded the city.

One layer of intrigue and outrage upon another.

The meetings took place in a room rented by the French ambassador,

a clergyman, the Abbe de Bernis.

De Bernis had a secret of his own -

a secret spyhole.

All three of us - intoxicated by voluptuousness and its frustrators

and transported by communal fits of rapture -

wreaked havoc on everything visible and palpable given to us by Nature,

openly devouring everything we saw,

and finding that we had all three become of the same sex

in all the trios we performed.

Philosophers were saying pleasure was the goal of life,

that religion was rubbish.

This man lived it!

He was the spirit of the age.

If pleasure was the new religion,

then the whole of Venice was at prayer.

Everything reached a climax with the city's annual carnival.

The carnival had begun centuries before as a feast before Lent.

But by the mid-18th century, its religious origins were forgotten.

The Venetian carnival lasted for six months.

It was the first and biggest of all masked balls.

For half the year,

all the normal rules of the world were turned upside-down.

There was bull fighting in Campo Santo Stefano,

bear-baiting next to the church of Santa Maria Formosa.

In Campo San Luca they burnt effigies of witches on bonfires.

In the piazzetta in front of the Doges palace,

workers from the arsenal walked the tightrope.

And of course, Carnival goes on today.

Even now, it lasts the whole month of February.

Events climax with a great competition in St Mark's Square

for the best costume.

The mood of 18th-century over-indulgence and partying goes on

even if it has lost some of its magic.

Are we in Venice, or Las Vegas?

The spirit of Carnival was born in theatre.

Venice's Commedia del Arte,

part-pantomime, part-slapstick.

There were no limits.

Outrageous and crude, frivolous behind the mask.

Theatrical fantasy would become Venetian reality.

And imagine, even in the audience, they were wearing masks.

The whole of Venice was living by the rules of the Commedia.

Farting,

eating,

cheering,

fondling, whistling,

booing, making love.

The mask was both liberating and constricting.

Anonymity was guaranteed.

Often masks were held in place

only by the wearers clasping a bit between their teeth.

But if masks made speech impossible,

they opened up a wealth of other tantalising possibilities.

With a mask on you could do everything you like.

You could forget everything, all your troubles.

The mask brought the sexual licence of secret liaisons out into the open

but kept them anonymous.

Even the rich and famous could go unnoticed in public and behave as they liked.

Barriers of class and wealth vanished behind the mask,

and even gender could become a thing of mystery and uncertainty.

Pinocchietta? Pinocchietto?

Venice was full of intriguing possibilities.

But there was a darker side.

People imagined the place was full of spies,

hidden behind the masks.

And while visitors could indulge themselves without restraint,

the authorities were less tolerant with us Venetians.

One man above all had pushed things too far -

Casanova.

Someone had been watching him all along.

A government spy.

Casanova was in trouble.

On July 26th 1755, he was arrested.

Now Casanova was taken to the Doge's prison.

Escorted across the infamous Bridge of Sighs.

So-called because prisoners would sigh

as they caught a last glimpse of Venice through the bars.

My investigation as to what I had done to deserve such a fate

was not a long one,

for in the most scrupulous examination of my conduct,

I could find no crimes.

I was, it is true, a profligate, a gambler, a bold talker,

a man who thought of little besides enjoying this present life,

but in all that, there was no offence against the state.

In fact, Venetian justice had gone soft -

too much drink, too many parties.

Casanova could have his furniture brought to his room.

He could even have people over for dinner, if he wanted,

but it wasn't enough.

The Venetian state acted like an indulgent parent towards its favourite child.

But this child wasn't happy staying in his room.

As always, Casanova had his own ideas.

And on 31st October 1756, he made his escape bid.

He broke out of his cell onto the roof and then, deviously,

broke back into another part of the prison.

Thanks to lax security at one of the entrances, he slipped out unnoticed.

But it would cost him years of exile from Venice.

it seemed a high price,

but at least he would not be in Venice to see the party turn ugly.

Venice had always been a gambling capital of Europe,

the Ridotto, the official gaming house,

had opened as far back as 1638.

But by the mid-18th century,

gambling had reached fever pitch.

Venetians and visitors alike filled the gambling dens of the city,

but Venice wasn't making money,

and now even the families of Venetian nobles

were blowing their inheritance.

Many of the compulsive gamblers were women, who,

on losing, would ply their favours just yards from the gaming table.

Financially rewarded, they would return to play.

Sometimes us Venetians were lucky.

But more often,

riches built over centuries vanished in a night of gambling.

And visitors to the city went home

taking the wealth of Venice with them.

The government tried to close all the casinos,

but nothing changed.

In fact, they made things worse.

Hundreds of new private casinos grew up in secret rooms across the city.

And now so many Venetians lost their family fortunes,

there was even a name for them - they were called the Barnabotti,

because they went to live in San Barnaba, the poorest part of town.

Even aristocratic brothers could only afford one wife between them,

and she was expected to satisfy them all.

Meanwhile, the hospitals of Venice were filling up with sick people.

A strange disease had taken hold of the city -

a sickness we call the French disease,

the French call Italian,

the Russians call Polish.

By the 18th century, the disease was so widespread

we had even created a special hospital to deal with the problem.

It was called The Incurabili the hospital of the incurable.

The disease was syphilis.

The first sign was the appearance of boils, called chancres -

relatively painless, but ugly and uncomfortable.

If you were lucky, it stopped at that.

If not, the boils turned into ulcers that ate away at your flesh.

The disease destroyed the nervous system, attacked the heart and lungs.

If things got that far, death was certain.

But not before the disease had eaten away at your brain, sending you mad.

Venetian medicine in the 18th century was a brutal affair.

Things hadn't really moved on since the Middle Ages.

Promiscuous Venetians would find themselves in agony

sometimes more from the treatment than the disease.

Doctors tried to cure the problem with mercury.

Sometimes the patients were made to inhale the fumes,

sometimes they mixed it with brandy.

Even babies who were born with the disease

were given mercury in their milk.

But this cure just made things worse.

Around 20% of the population had syphilis.

The most famous Venetian didn't escape.

But Casanova was one of the lucky ones.

By the time he returned to Venice

pardoned by the authorities - he was no stranger to syphilis.

But the disease stopped short of killing him.

I looked frightful. My skin was yellow and all covered with pustules.

One may be consoled if one considers such scars were acquired during pleasure,

just as soldiers enjoy regarding their wounds as evidence of their virtue and sources of their glory.

But my burning fever - complicated by the venereal poison which was circulating in my veins -

put me in a state which made the doctor despair of my life.

But Venetian art would refuse to mirror reality.

After the plague, we had built fine new churches.

Now - in the disfiguring grip of syphilis -

the city would produce images of ideal physical beauty.

They were the work of Antonio Canova, who was born near Venice in 1757

and worked in the city.

Like Vivaldi and Canaletto before him, Canova was a prolific artist.

His work was heralded

as the most sublime sculpture of the human body since Michelangelo.

Canova elevated human flesh to godlike heights.

These figures can never be contaminated by disease.

It is as if the suffering around him, drove Canova to render the human body incorruptible.

Even their sightless eyes seem to say

this is art that would not look Venetian reality in the face.

But Canova would sculpt more and more funeral monuments.

As if even he could not escape what was going on around him.

It was around this time that one whole side of my family died out.

Here it is on my family tree.

They just disappeared.

Maybe some of them had syphilis.

Others joined the Venetian Navy.

It was better to die a glorious death abroad

than to stay at home and face what was happening in Venice.

But Venice's last great sea battle had been 200 years before.

Back then Venice could muster a fleet of over 300 fighting ships.

Now the Venetian Navy had shrunk to fewer than 20,

most of which were old and out of date.

Venice had grown complacent.

Catastrophe was looming.

After centuries of protection by the shallows of the lagoon,

we hadn't realised our impregnability had become an illusion.

Now modern enemy guns could fire on the city from across the water.

It would prove to be the most terrible error of judgement

in Venice's 1,000-year history.

There were new dangers in Europe.

In France, a new era was about to begin.

Revolution would rip apart the old order.

Aristocracy, privilege and excess would be...

..outlawed.

And the man who would lead the revolution,

the man who would change the face of Europe,

would also become Venice's greatest enemy.

Napoleon Bonaparte.

Venice had a new Doge to deal with the threat.

But none of the Venetians knew his name.

They didn't even know the old Doge died.

The carnival was on,

and the government didn't want to interrupt the party.

The Venetian way of life was everything Napoleon despised.

The nobles of Venice revelled in pleasure, privilege and excess,

just like the aristocrats of France that the revolution had swept away.

By 1796, Napoleon's army of 40,000 men

was ready to carry the ideals of the revolution

far beyond the borders of France.

Napoleon would be a new sort of leader.

Driven by ideology as well as ambition,

he would become the first despot of the modern age.

He survived on five hours' sleep a night.

He was a man who thought sex was a weakness.

And a general who had memorised the constitution,

customs and geography of every country in Europe.

Now his sights were set on Italy.

It was Napoleon's first big opportunity

and he was hungry for success.

Italy was stuffed full of art, precious relics, jewels and gold.

Enough to keep the machine of the French revolution rolling for years.

One place had more treasures than any other Venice.

All Napoleon needed was an excuse to attack.

Venice looked like an easy target.

But even years of self-indulgence had not diminished its pride.

Some Venetians still believed we could be a great power.

Now their biggest challenge was approaching.

Napoleon's troops moved faster than any army until the 20th century.

His enemies were caught by surprise every time.

On 24th April, he advanced on Turin,

forcing Piedmont to surrender.

On 15th May, he entered Milan,

and on 15th August,

he crushed a massive Austrian army occupying Castiglione.

In the Doge's palace, the great council was in panic.

Surrounded by the grandeur of 1,000 years of the republic.

Looked down on by the 117 previous Doges,

the weight of responsibility now fell on Doge Lodovico Manin.

He had to make a decision.

What could he do? Some said Venice should make friends with Napoleon.

Some said she should get ready for war.

They said, bring the fleet back to the lagoon

and get money for an army by taxing people.

But the remaining fleet was not able to fight a war,

so the Doge sent messengers to find Napoleon.

Their message - Venice was neutral.

It was probably a hopeless strategy.

But if it was to have any hope of success,

Venice needed to tread very carefully.

Instead, we just went on irritating him.

When Napoleon marches across the Venetian land,

we ask him for compensation.

Then the Venetian farmers started attacking French troops.

Napoleon said it was our fault and he sent the Doge a letter.

"Do you think I am powerless

"to ensure respect for the foremost people of the universe?

"Do you expect my legions to tolerate the massacres you have stirred up?

"The blood of my brothers-in-arms shall be avenged!"

Venice would seal its fate in the lagoon.

Despite Napoleon's warning that he was not to be trifled with -

that is exactly what Venice was about to do.

The action would focus on the Fort of Sant'Andrea

at the entrance of the Venetian lagoon.

Sant'Andrea - built like a great Roman fort -

is a reminder of Venice's glory days

as a great military power in the 16th century.

This is Venetian military triumphalism at its very best.

Its solid structure proclaims to any enemy force

that Venice would last for ever.

Of course it wasn't true.

Like all of Venice, it was built on sand and mud.

But whereas the illusion had worked in the past,

now our illusions of grandeur would be our undoing.

On 20th April 1797, three French ships approached the Fort.

Three ships hardly constituted an invasion force.

They were probably seeking shelter from a neutral power.

But the fort commander took a fateful decision and fired on the French.

Two ships turned back, but one sailed on.

The commander decided to attack.

Fired on again, the French ship raised a white flag.

But it made no difference.

The French captain and four of his crew were killed.

Venice was really in danger.

The city was dicing with death.

There was no way she could survive if Napoleon decided to attack.

Napoleon's words when he heard what happened?

"I will be an Attila for the Venetian state."

Napoleon's reference to Attila the Hun

sent a chill through Venetian blood.

Ever since Attila's attack more than 1,000 years before,

Venice had been safe from invasion in its lagoon.

No longer.

Now Napoleon placed heavy artillery

along the shores of the Venetian lagoon.

Inside the Doge's palace, there was complete confusion.

Outside casinos, theatres and bordellos stayed open as usual -

but behind the mask, there was widespread fear.

No one knew what to expect.

We had no choice. As the Great Council voted to surrender to Napoleon, they heard gunfire.

And on 17th May, 7,000 French troops entered Venice.

The Doge only had one thing left to do.

He passed his corno ducale and his coffieta to his assistant,

saying, "Questa, non la dopero piu."

And that was the end of the oldest republic in the world.

Now Napoleon began his real work -

taking everything of value out of the city.

The lion of St Mark was transported to Paris,

where it was placed in front of the Hotel des Invalides.

Even more shocking, Napoleon claimed the four great horses

adorning the front of St Mark's as plunder.

They had been there since the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The city's ultimate badge of identity

a reminder of both great art and military might.

But on 13th December 1797,

they were taken down from the front of the basilica.

The most terrible sight possible for us Venetians.

The Four Horses were transported to Paris

where they were hoisted onto the Arc du Carrousel.

Napoleon ordered that all the silver in the churches be seized

and all the gold in the Treasury of St Mark's melted down.

The French stole Venice's greatest works of art.

From Santi Giovanni e Paolo - paintings by Veronese and Titian,

from St Mark's, works by Bellini and Tintoretto.

Some have never been returned.

Veronese's Marriage Feast At Cana is still in the Louvre.

The Meal At The House Of Simon The Pharisee in Versailles.

The Temptation Of Saint Anthony in the Musee des Beaux Arts in Caen.

In the Madonna dell'Orto, French soldiers destroyed the golden altar,

and distributed the paintings among themselves.

This painting didn't make the trip to Paris.

They said it was too delicate to transport.

It was one of the few paintings we saved -

a vision of Hell.

Now Venice was in its own Hell.

Liberation, as Napoleon called it,

meant life under a new committee of public instruction,

which would impose the idealism of the revolution.

Venetian theatre was shut down, casinos were curbed,

and masks outlawed.

There was a huge a bonfire here in St Mark's Square

to burn all the symbols of the Venetian republic.

The old Doge was made to perform one last act.

Even today we feel bitter -

especially with so much art still in Paris.

And Napoleon had one last surprise for the city.

After he had stripped it bare, he would give it away

as part of a peace treaty with Austria.

In the end, Napoleon had just used us as a bargaining chip.

It was the ultimate humiliation.

Now, no-one would care who Venice belonged to.

The Venetians would live in abject poverty.

This once great island state and its people forgotten by the world.

We would be left to crumble and rot.

It looked as if Venice would become just another ruined city

from a bygone world.

But salvation would come from an unexpected source

not from a new leader, not from an army, but from an idea.

Subtitles by Emma Biggins BBC Broadcast 2004

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