Secrets of a Contessa

I first saw Tudy Sammartini on the Zattere water’s edge in Venice wearing a large black floppy hat and long flowing white tunic which moved like angel wings as she waved to me. Then she took a puff from her cigarette, momentarily exhaled and barked in a deep masculine, "buon giorno." Let’s go.”

Then the Venetian contessa unlocked the gates to the hidden beauty of secret gardens. Along the way, from garden to garden, she became my friend.

Secret gardens in Venice hide a rich history of wealth that cannot be seen from canals and public walkways. I imagined they hold secrets of couples speaking in low murmurs as they strolled under vine-covered walkways, among fountains and small statues. Jasmine sweetened the air. Their secret liaisons were hidden behind high walls.
During many visits to Venice, I walked past the walls with huge wooden doors, and wondered how I could enter and paint what remains of the gardens? I knew they were not open to walk-in traffic. Perhaps I would have to borrow keys or trouble someone to meet me and unlock gates. Or, perhaps I would simply ring a bell and knock on the door. I was a stranger and my chances of entry were slim.

“Buon giorno, Sra. Sammartini,” I replied with a smile and all the American charm I could muster in broken Italian. I readied for wherever my guide led - along canals, over bridges, hopping on vaparetto boats. I ran to keep up with that statuesque Venetian. My white silk jacket flapped over my jeans. I squeaked along in white walking shoes. We charged along the narrow street bordering Trovasso canal and crossed Campo San Margarita. Sra. Sammartini stopped at a heavy green door. A caretaker welcomed us into Villa Luchesse, one of the oldest and most picturesque gardens.

Low boxwood hedges surrounded squares of roses extending the full depth of the garden. A royal palm tree shot up as tall as the villa’s four floors and surrounding the garden were fruit trees, cypress and pines. And just over the brick wall, I could see the bell tower of a Renaissance church. The quiet of the garden relaxed me at once, glad to avoid noises of pedestrian street traffic.

“Is this what you wanted to paint,” she asked and her eyes danced with wonderment.

“It is paradise,” I replied.

From the beginning Sra. Sammartini spoke English with a Venetian accent. She seemed to utter half truths. She never completed a sentence or thought. She didn’t wear her teeth, so the words sounded slurred. She coughed often and my guess is the cigarettes were ruining her speech. She confided that she was having a reoccurance of cancer. That made me sad.

I don’t know what makes a friendship. Do friends share secrets and pretend nothing? Good friends are reliable, have fun together, smile and respect one another’s feelings. With all these thoughts, I grew to like Contessa Tudy Sammartini. I would have paid her twice the money she earned as my guide. Yet our friendship was short and difficult to share and I am not sure we were not having a simple cross-cultural encounter.

Tudy arrived in my life five years earlier when I bought her book at the Academia Museum. In “Secret Gardens of Venice,” she illustrated and wrote of the charm of outdoor rooms where friends, literary aficionados and lovers since the 16th century could meet for intimate discussions with out public scrutiny. I wished one day to be invited into just one of those gardens. Two years later, I returned to Venice and spent the evening at a friend’s flat. During the evening, Mario told me he was a neighbor of the author of “Secret Gardens of Venice.”

“She is just upstairs,” he said. “I’ll get her on the phone for you.” That was 10 p.m. She was busy at a dinner party but said that whenever I return to Venice to paint, she would be glad to get me into some of the gardens in her book.

Three years later, I sent her my request by fax. Finally, she announced that she had 19 gardens lined up for me to choose from. “That will keep you busy,” she concluded.

After two weeks of following my guide through gardens, all owned by her friends, Tudy announced one day that she thought it would be nice for me to have a meal with her friends who had opened up their gardens to me.

“And you will pay for it,” she added. I gulped.

“But I won’t understand what they are saying,” I complained, breathlessly.

“Don’t worry. I will be sitting next to you and can tell you what is being said.”

Try as I could to rely on my Italian lessons, I understood nothing.

“What are they talking about,” I finally asked.

“Oh, they are talking about their cats.”

“Please ask them what it is like to wake up in an old, historic house that has been in the family for generations,” I asked Tudy.

“Oh, I know what they will say. You wake up worried about what repairs have to be made that day.”

“But they love their gardens and their roses,” I continued. “Do they rush out to their gardens to see what new flowers have bloomed overnight? Do they think about their gardens in the early morning?”

She relayed my question to Anna Barnabo who owns Palazzo Barnabo Malipiero on the Grand Canal. Anna beamed. Yes, she nodded. She goes in the early morning to her cortile (courtyard) to see her roses.

I painted at Palazzo Barnabo for three days, and felt I was in a magical place surrounded by hundreds of pink and white roses. I was vaguely aware of boats passing like humming birds as I painted from morning to late afternoon. Once Anna came to the cortile to turn off the fountain and we spoke in Italian and English.

On the last night of my stay in Venice, Tudy invited me to dinner at her house. She cooked fresh fish and tasty vegetables capped of by a family dessert. She lives in what she calls her studio in a quiet corner of Venice, near the docks for freighters and ocean steamers. Her studio is all of a bedroom, library and kitchen. Her library is a priceless collection of rare manuscripts of Venice.

She recently completed a two-year renovation of a villa next door but has decided she would rather live in her studio.

Finally, I said goodbye to my Venetian guide and new friend. We smiled and hugged. Then I handed her 880 Euros ($1,144). I would have given her more. My visits with a Venetian contessa were priceless.

John Berendt in “The City of Falling Angels,” writes that Venetians are suspicious of newcomers who spend fortunes to buy their way into Venetian society. While I touched briefly into Venetian life, I cared more for painting their lovely hidden gardens than for Venetian society.