Albert Mérat Poems on Venice - The Statue of Colleoni

Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni

“The adventurer, of purer blood than royalty,
Born of the beautiful republics.
He rests his feet on bronze stirrups,
And with his left arm lifts and holds his horse.

He opens his other arm in a loyal gesture,
Having chosen, with a heart devoted to these relics,
From among the flags imprinted with symbolic animals,
The old Lion rather than the imperial Eagle.

A solid leader of soldiers of his stature,
With a gaze without pupils, he led the battle,
And surely let his tactics succeed.

His mouth with drooping corners, enclosed by wrinkles,
And clenched by the pride of two dry lips,
Out of contempt for speech, he does not deign to lie.”
Albert Mérat - Les Villes de Marbre 1869

Carpaccio

“Sometimes the primitives saw with a dim eye
The colour that still held its mystery;
For beauty had barely begun to shine upon the earth,
And, pale, was sketched on canvas or wall.

They went slowly, far from the uncertain world,
Towards cloisters full of shade and solitary peace.
The great thirst for love that nothing could quench
Was quenched by the freshness of a mystical and pure art.

Venice, in the smiling, dreaming East,
In the sweetest rays of the rising sun;
A pearly dawn cradles its contours.

The young, living azure of the awakening sea!
Carpaccio was able to capture the light, oh wonder!
And put the air of the sky at the top of its towers!”
Albert Mérat - Les Villes de Marbre 1869