‘The Angel of the City’, Marino Marini

Dear Readers, I’ve been lucky enough to have visited Venice many times over the past twenty five years, but somehow I’ve never gotten to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Maybe because it’s not intrinsically Venetian, I’ve not had the same urge to see it as I have with, say, the Accademia, or my beloved Carpaccios at the School of the Dalmatians. However, this time I did go and was delighted by the range of paintings and sculptures on show – our Peggy clearly had ‘an eye’ for the greats of twentieth century art, and her collection feels like a ‘who’s who’ of famous names.

You might remember that I saw a riposte to the Marini statue a few weeks ago, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery sculpture garden. Nonetheless, for all the obvious masulinity involved, what I took from the scupture in situ was a sense of ecstasy at the sight of the Grand Canal, and who can blame the little uy? I must have stood and watched the gondolas and the water taxis and the vaporettos for half an hour, as they all manouevered around one another.

When I arrived on the balcony, a man was running his hands over the Marini sculpture . I was a bit taken aback, but soon realised that he was blind, and his wife was describing everything to him. What a patient and loving relationship they seemed to have!

The gondoliers manage to time their trips across the Grand Canal to avoid all the faster water traffic, before they disappear into a tiny canal on the other side. Their passengers only looked marginally concerned.

Anyhow, after this we popped off for ice cream close to Campo St Magarita, one of my favourite squares. I was eating my way through my two-scoop tub and talking to this guy….

when this guy flew over my shoulder and took the whipped cream right off of the top.

Hah! Having watched a gull flying off with an entire pizza not twenty minutes earlier, you’d think I’d have learned. But respect, seriously. These are canny, intelligent birds, and who can blame them for nicking some dairy product when we’re busy emptying the seas?

So this was a splendid first full day in Venice, and the weather looks set fair for the rest of the week too. Let’s see what we see.