ABSTRACT
On 25 June 1686 Ernst August, Prince Bishop of Osnabrück and by this time also duke of the territory of Braunschweig-Lüneburg-Calenberg, staged a magnificent regatta on the Grand Canal.1 The regatta was a sporting contest consisting of a series of competitions between various kinds and sizes of boat rowed standing up in the Venetian manner which raced each other the length of the Grand Canal. In all, 352 oarsmen and 104 boats took part. A foldout plate in Alberti’s account, consisting of some 11 sheets stuck together, takes the viewer from the Arsenale, passes in front of St Mark’s Square and up through the Grand Canal to Ca’ Foscari where Ernst August, his heir Georg Ludwig and other members of his family were staying. Before the sporting part of the proceedings, however, there was a waterborne pageant. The most striking feature of this was a huge structure in the shape of a dolphin surmounted by a kind of grotto on which was balanced another dolphin which in turn bore a shell on which stood a figure of Neptune. (Fig. 21.1) Numerous hippocamps and Tritons swam around this structure in the water. Then came the six decorated boats or peote of Venus, Mars, Glaucus, Diana, Juno and Pallas respectively, rowed in each case by ten costumed oarsmen. (Fig. 21.2: Peota of Venus). Ernst August himself took part in the procession in a margherota, a somewhat smaller boat rowed by eight oarsmen dressed as Venetian gondoliers (Fig. 21.3). There followed a further fifteen decorated peote bearing nineteen Venetian patricians whose names are a roll-call of the great families of Venice: Dolfin, Foscari, Zuliani, Loredan, Mocenigo, Pisani, Venier, Manin and Pesaro, to name but some of them (Fig. 21.4). That night, at the end of the regatta, the machina with the figure of Neptune on top was illuminated and towed up the Grand Canal until it came to Ca’ Foscari where it stopped and the figure of
1 Giovanni Matteo Alberti, Givochi festivi e militari, Danze, Serenate, Machine, Boscareccia artificiosa, Regatta solenne. Et altri sontuosi Apprestamenti di Allegrezza espositi alla Sodisfattione vniversale Dall Generosità dell’ A.S. d’Ernesto Avgusto, Dvca di Brvnsvich, e Lvnebvrgo, Prencipe D’Osnaprvch, etc. Nel tempo di sua dimora in Venetia …
Neptune bowed to the Duke who was standing on the balcony. So the regatta was a very public event, quintessentially Venetian, which demonstrated the high esteem in which Ernst August was held by the leading families of Venice.
