3-021-310 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Procession of funeral gondolas with the body of Daniel Manin, on the Grand Canal, Venice, 1868. 'At seven o'clock the hearse, or funeral barge, one blaze of light, came along the Grand Canal into the city, followed by hundreds of gondolas and other boats, lighted up with torches and wax candles..."The houses on each side of the water were illuminated...At eight a gun was fired. The lights multiplied as if by magic, and a fleet of sable boats, which seemed to have caught fire, sailed into the street. Foremost was the hearse with people in it all in mourning, and with a coffin on a throne high up in the centre of the boat...The sides were transparent and inlaid with pictures of stained glass, lighted from within...it was drawn by ropes attached to gondolas in the van of the procession. Other ships followed...some of them with music. The tunes played were soft and low, like music in a dream. The splashing of the oars in the water and the breaking of the ripples into flakes of fire made the scene exceedingly fanciful and strange...the boats...[passed] along the Riva degli Schiavoni to the Church of San Zaccaria, where they stopped. The coffin was taken into the church, and there it remained till morning".' From "Illustrated London News", 1868.