[stately classical music]
Male Actor with French Accent: “Nothing in the world is as beautiful as Venice during this night, lit by a million torches.”
Female Narrator: An eighteenth-century French geographer described the dazzling scene in Piazza San Marco during the Good Friday procession of the Blessed Sacrament, a custom unique to Venice.
[church bells]
Male Actor with French Accent: “The Piazza San Marco offers an enchanting spectacle at this moment. There are two large torches of white wax at each window of the Procuratie. This double row of torches, arranged with regularity, and those lit on the church portal create a very beautiful effect and illuminate all the processions of the confraternities and neighboring parishes that expressly pass through the square.”
Female Narrator: The lighting of the square is achieved entirely with candles. In an age before electric light, Guardi masterfully rose to the challenge of painting an illuminated nocturnal scene, capturing even the golden glow that bounces off the mosaics on the façade of Saint Mark’s Basilica.
Male Actor with French Accent: “During this time, the entire city seems to be ablaze: white wax is used so liberally that Venice is thought to burn as much of it in this one evening as the rest of Italy in an entire year.”
[music ends]
