THE GONDOLA'S EVOLUTION

The gondola was, during the centuries, changed both in shape and in finishing. Certainly in the past she wasn't the same as she is now, in fact, initially, she wasn't very different from other flat-bottom boats present in the lagoon. The line wasn't very slim, her extremities raised over the water and were supplied with iron harness. From the few hints found in document we presume that the gondola, from the XI century to the XIII century a.d., had variable sizes and a 'felçe' set in the middle of the boat to shelter passengers from the sun and bad weather

In some XV century paintings by Bellini, Carpaccio, Mansueti, the gondola appears as a swing-boat with a flat bottom, raised sides and with rough iron nails which protected the extremities. These bent nails are similar in all paintings, the shape of the 'felçe' is different: either big or small, coated with a coloured cloth or with flowers and branches. The colour of the gondola is always black even if under the water line the hull is white.

The historian Marin Sanudo, who lived in that period, vouched for the price of a gondola to be about 15 ducats, a very modest sum.

In the XVI century, Venetian nobles got a craze for luxury, they demanded for more and more showy gondolas: prows were gold-plated, richly-decorated with carvings and mascarons; the 'felçe' made stiffer, were lined with silk or with coloured satin and their supports appeared gold-plated, carved and inlaid with ebony and ivory; the irons, especially the prow iron, were overwrought in thousand different ways and they became precious with gold-studs, pyramids and flowers. The 'Provveditori alle Pompe', magistrates who had to moderate the luxury of the Venetians, consenquently to this kind of competition among the wealthy, issued a series of decrees to hit such umbridled luxury on the different parts of the gondola.

In a manuscript entitled 'Arte de far Vesélli' (The art of vessels making) by Prè Theodoro de Nicolò, master-builder in the dockyard of Venice, the measuraments and the scheme of a 28-foot long gondola are quoted. Considering these measurements, we can observe how the XVI century gondola, was shorter and wider than the present one; afterwards, such a gondola, wich is considered the ancestor of the modern one, had a double development: on the one hand she evolved reaching up her stern and increasing the bow bill, giving origin to the modern gondola; on the other hand she kept her features and, for this reason, was called 'barkéta' (little boat) or 'mèza gondola' (half gondola).

A further important change affected the gondola after the fall of the Venetian state in 1797, since, for economical reasons, the number of oarsmen was reduced from two to one and to increase its manoeuvrability, its extremeties got lengthened and the hull surface touching the water got reduced.

Only at the end of XIX century did the gondola appear in her final shape: the deviation of the lines going from stern to bow increased just like the length of her extremity and consequently her draught was reduced.