Two Gondoliers and a Pair of Fish

Some objects arrive with a history. Others arrive with just enough of one to make you curious.

This little gondola came from Venice, from an 82-year-old Venetian, she used to have one of the nicest Osteria in town.. It measures only 19 centimetres, weighs 242 grams, and at first glance looks like exactly what it probably was intended to be: a small souvenir of Venice.

But then you start looking.

There are two gondoliers, one at either end. Both wear pale clothes, red sashes and yellow hats. The gondola is painted blue-green rather than the black we immediately associate with Venetian gondolas today. Long, ridiculously delicate metal oars extend from the figures.

And underneath the whole thing are two fish.

Not painted on the gondola, not merely decorative details in the casting. Two separate, rather substantial fish form a crossed stand on which the gondola rests, as though this miniature Venice is being carried across the water on their backs.

That was enough to earn it a place in The Cabinet.

A souvenir, but not quite the usual one

Venice has been producing souvenirs almost as long as it has been receiving travellers. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the city had become extraordinarily good at turning itself into objects that visitors could carry home: glass gondolas, silver gondolas, photographs, prints, miniature lions, mosaics and countless versions of the city's most recognisable boat.

This one appears to belong to that tradition, although exactly when and by whom it was made remains uncertain.

Its construction gives us some clues.

The hull, figures and fish stand are cast from a non-ferrous metal. A magnet produces no reaction from any of them. Where the paint has disappeared, the exposed metal is silver-grey. Taken together, those characteristics point towards spelter or another zinc-based casting alloy, materials widely used for inexpensive decorative objects during the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century.

The oars are different. They attract a magnet and are therefore probably steel or iron, a sensible choice for such thin and vulnerable pieces.

There is no maker's mark that I can find.

For the moment, I would date it cautiously to approximately 1920–1940. It may prove slightly earlier or later, but without a mark, catalogue or documented comparison, pretending to know an exact year would make the story tidier and the history worse.

Why two gondoliers?

Today, a visitor to Venice expects to see a single gondolier standing at the stern.

Two therefore look slightly odd.

But they aren't necessarily a mistake.

Historically, important households and wealthy passengers could employ gondolas worked by two gondoliers, one at the stern and another towards the bow. By the twentieth century that was no longer the everyday image of the Venetian gondola, but it survived in paintings, prints, photographs and the romantic visual language of Venice.

And that may be precisely what this object represents.

It isn't necessarily a miniature of the Venice in which it was manufactured. It may already have been depicting an older Venice.

That is one of the things I find fascinating about souvenirs. We tend to think of them as records of places, but often they are records of what people wanted those places to be.

The Venice sold to travellers was not always the ordinary working city outside the shop door. It was the Venice of gondoliers, palaces, serenades, canals and improbable romance.

Our two little gondoliers fit very comfortably into that Venice.

And the fish?

They are perhaps my favourite part.

The two cast fish are completely unnecessary. The gondola could easily have been made to sit on a simple base. Instead, somebody decided that it should float above a pair of crossed fish.

I haven't found enough evidence to give them a particular Venetian symbolic meaning, and I don't want to invent one simply because it would make a good story.

They may be nothing more complicated than an imaginative reference to the lagoon and the sea.

But visually they transform the object. Without them, it is a miniature gondola. With them, it becomes almost theatrical: two gondoliers travelling across a tiny imaginary lagoon supported by two enormous fish.

Which is considerably better.

The object and the story

I don't know who originally bought it.

Perhaps a visitor took it home from Venice. Perhaps it was bought by a Venetian. Perhaps it spent decades sitting on a shelf somewhere in the city while the real gondolas passed outside.

What I do know is that it eventually came from the possession of an 82-year-old Venetian and has now ended up with me.

Its monetary value is modest. Its casting is not particularly refined. The paint is worn, and the blue-green hull may even have been repainted at some point in its life.

None of that bothers me.

In fact, it is almost the point of The Cabinet.

I am increasingly interested in objects that have survived long enough to lose part of their explanation. You can establish some facts, make reasonable deductions about others, and then eventually you reach the boundary between evidence and imagination.

That boundary is a good place to stop.

So for now it remains what it appears to be: a small painted metal gondola, probably from the first half of the twentieth century, two gondoliers aboard and two rather magnificent fish underneath.

A tiny, slightly eccentric version of Venice.

And really, what could be more Venetian than that?

THE OBJECT

Object: Miniature gondola with two gondoliers and fish-form stand
Probable date: c. 1920–1940
Origin: Venice, Italy, by provenance
Maker: Unknown
Material: Painted cast zinc alloy/spelter; steel or iron oars
Dimensions: 19 cm long
Weight: 242 g
Provenance: From an 82-year-old Venetian, Venice
Condition: Original wear and paint loss; hull possibly repainted

STATUS: COLLECTION
This object is currently not for sale.