Venetian Architecture PDF

A Companion to Venetian
History, 1400–1797
Edited by
Eric R. Dursteler
LEIDEN •• BOSTON
2013
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

CONTENTS
List of Maps and Figures .............................................................................. ix

Contributors ..................................................................................................... xiii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ xxi
Introduction: A Brief Survey of Histories of Venice ............................. 1

Eric R. Dursteler
Venice and Its Surroundings ....................................................................... 25

Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan
Politics and Constitution .............................................................................. 47

Alfredo Viggiano
The Terraferma State ..................................................................................... 85

Michael Knapton
Venice’s Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period ..................... 125

Benjamin Arbel
The Venetian Economy ................................................................................. 255

Luciano Pezzolo
Industry and Production in the Venetian Terraferma

(15th–18th Centuries) ............................................................................... 291
Edoardo Demo
Family and Society

Anna Bellavitis ............................................................................................. 319
Society and the Sexes in the Venetian Republic ................................... 353

Anne Jacobson Schutte
Religious Life
Cecilia Cristellon and Silvana Seidel Menchi ....................................... 379

vi contents
Charity and Confraternities ......................................................................... 421

David D’Andrea
Venice and its Minorities ............................................................................. 449

Benjamin Ravid
The Anthropology of Venice ....................................................................... 487

Edward Muir
Liturgies of Violence: Social Control and Power Relationships

in the Republic of Venice between the 16th and
18th Centuries ............................................................................................. 513
Claudio Povolo
Wayfarers in Wonderland: The Sexual Worlds of Renaissance

Venice Revisited ......................................................................................... 543
Guido Ruggiero
The Venetian Intellectual World ................................................................ 571

Margaret L. King
Venetian Literature and Publishing .......................................................... 615

Linda L. Carroll
Book Publishing and the Circulation of Information .......................... 651

Mario Infelise
Education in the Republic of Venice ........................................................ 675

Paul F. Grendler
Science and Medicine in Early Modern Venice .................................... 701

William Eamon
Venetian Architecture ................................................................................... 743

Deborah Howard
Art in Venice, 1400–1600 ............................................................................... 779

Wolfgang Wolters

contents vii
Venetian Art, 1600–1797 ................................................................................ 811

Massimo Favilla, Ruggero Rugolo, and Dulcia Meijers
Music in Venice: A Historigraphical Overview ...................................... 865

Jonathan Glixon
Clothing, Fashion, Dress, and Costume in Venice (c.1450–1650) ..... 889

Margaret F. Rosenthal
Venetian Language ......................................................................................... 929

Ronnie Ferguson
Appendix One: Venetian Doges 1400–1797 ............................................. 959

Appendix Two: Patriarchs of Grado 1400–1451 and Patriarchs
of Venice 1451–1800 ................................................................................... 960
Index ................................................................................................................... 961

VENETIAN ARCHITECTURE
Deborah Howard
This city, amidst the billowing waves of the sea, stands on the crest of the
main, almost like a queen restraining its force. It is situated in salt water,
and built there, because before there were just lagoons, and then, wanting to
expand, fĳirm ground was needed for the building of palaces and houses.1
Sited on a series of marshy islands in a shallow lagoon, Venice developed
unique architectural characteristics in direct response to the peculiar
needs of the amphibious terrain. Its architecture therefore reflects the
complex interaction of physical and human forces. After the inhabitation
of the fĳirst few islands of the archipelago before the year 1000, even the
land itself was mainly reclaimed artifĳicially.2 Land for building was an
expensive, hard-won commodity, and the structures themselves were a
technological feat on the poorly consolidated sandy ground battered by
the tides. Through legislation and the constant monitoring of the size and
position of infĳills, the Republic had the power to determine the overall
shape of the city.3 This is the stage upon which the spectacle of the
Republic’s last four centuries was played out.
Architectural Fabric
The most eloquent source for the study of Venetian architecture of the
early modern period is the fabric of the city itself. Free from the impact
of trafffĳic, Venice has changed far less than most of the historic cities of
Europe, at least in terms of its physical materiality. Many of the spaces
and structures depicted in Jacopo de’ Barbari’s huge bird’s-eye view of the
1 Marin Sanudo, De origine, situ et magistratibus urbis Venetae, ovvero la città di Venetia
(1493–1530), ed. Angela Caracciolo Aricò (Milan, 1980; rev. edn, 2011), p. 20. Translation from
David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History (Oxford, 1992), p. 4.
2 Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse”: Espaces, Pouvoir et Société à Venise à
la fĳin du moyen âge, 2 vols (Rome, 1992); Wladimiro Dorigo, Venezia origini: Fondamenti,
ipotesi, metodi, 3 vols (Milan, 1993); idem, Venezia romanica: La formazione della città
medioevale fĳino all’età gotica, 2 vols + map folder (Verona/Venice, 2003).
3 Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse,” pp. 72–96; Richard J. Goy, Building Renaissance
Venice: Patrons, Architects and Builders, c.1430–1500 (New Haven/London, 2006), pp. 36–37.

744 deborah howard
Figure 20.1. Jacopo de’ Barbari, bird’s-eye view map of Venice, woodcut on six
sheets, 1350 × 2820 mm., detail of Grand Canal (Venice, 1500).
city, published in 1500, are still easily recognizable (Fig. 20.1). Despite the
19th-century attempts at modernization by fĳilling in canals and creating
new streets, the urban layout is largely unchanged.4
Over centuries of land reclamation, Venice gradually acquired the
shape of a fĳish—perhaps, more specifĳically, a dolphin—with its gaping
jaw towards the west and tail fĳins spreading out beyond the Arsenal ship-
yards in the east.5 Through its body, the Grand Canal traced an inverted
“S” like a giant alimentary canal. Before the mid-19th century, only the
Rialto Bridge and a series of 13 traghetti or gondola ferries straddled the
Grand Canal, and the street plans evolved in response to these crossing
points. In the oldest settlements, the city developed a dense, labyrinthine
4 On the 19th-century alterations to the urban plan, see Giandomenico Romanelli,
Venezia Ottocento: Materiali per una storia architettonica e urbanistica della città nel secolo
XIX (Rome, 1977).
5 Deborah Howard, “Venice as a Dolphin: Further Investigations into Jacopo de’
Barbari’s View,” Artibus et historiae 35 (1997), 101–12.

venetian architecture 745
urban fabric.6 Houses arranged around interconnected courtyards in a

cellular pattern are still visible in the complex once occupied by Marco
Polo’s family at San Giovanni Crisostomo.7 Each of the islands became
a separate parish, with its church facing on to an open space known as
a campo (literally a fĳield, although these were paved one by one over
the centuries). As the islets coalesced, continuous—if tortuous—streets
linked by bridges began to connect the parishes overland. Subsequent
land-drainage schemes, such as those enacted in the district of Cannare-
gio in the northwest in the late 13th and 14th centuries, adopted more
orderly layouts along straight parallel canals, through numerous individ-
ual private reclamations coordinated by strict planning controls.8
The individuality of the Venetian townscape depends on form, function,
and materials. The relative political stability and the strength of the public
realm ensured a degree of uniformity in the scale and distribution of the
housing stock: a mixture of rich and poor, secular and religious, populated
every parish. Although the workforce of the Arsenal was mainly concen-
trated in the east, and the fĳishermen around San Niccolo dei Mendicoli in
the west, noble families lived all over the city. It was not until the early
modern period that the Grand Canal became the most desirable address,
its banks gradually smoothed out to create a grand ceremonial route.
The city’s building materials created a distinctive palette of red and
white, complementing the greenish-blue of the water. Restorers and
architects alike are becoming only too slowly aware that the modernist
ideals of rigidity and impermeability are an anathema in Venice, where
all structures need to be both flexible and breathable to counteract the
unstable terrain and high humidity.9 Oak piles sunk into the soft sand
and mud provided the raft-like foundations for load-bearing walls, but the
constant flow of the tides made them inconveniently mobile. As a result,
6 Deborah Howard, Venice & the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on the Architecture
of Venice 1100–1500 (New Haven/London, 2000), pp. 6–7, likens this dense urban texture to
that of medieval Islamic cities.
7 Dorigo, Venezia romanica, 2:10–17.
8 Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse,” pp. 111–14, 119–20; Dorigo, Venezia romanica,
1:581–89.
9 On building materials and house construction in Venice, see especially Sansovino,
Venetia città nobilissima, fols 140r–142r; Abraham Rogatnick et al., Venice: Problems and
Possibilities, special issue of the Architectural Review 149/891 (1971); Richard J. Goy, Venetian
Vernacular Architecture (Cambridge, 1989); Goy, Building Renaissance Venice, pp. 79–97;
Dorigo, Venezia romanica, 1:113–16. On the construction trades and the building process, see
Goy, Building Renaissance Venice, pp. 65–77; Giorgio Gianighian “Building a Renaissance
Double House in Venice,” ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly 8 (2004), 299–312.

746 deborah howard
most walls were constructed of the local reddish brick, using a traditional
lime mortar to allow flexibility. Being cheap, lightweight, and porous,
brick perfectly suited the challenging conditions of the lagoon. Roof tiles
of terracotta enhanced the russet hue of the townscape. Many walls were
originally protected by a thin layer of stucco, colored with brick dust or
even frescoed, though modern restorers often remove these traditional
surfaces, applying renderings that are too thick, too rigid, artifĳicially col-
ored, and too impervious.10 Within the houses, horizontal beams and roof
trusses of spruce, fĳir, or larch tied the vertical load-bearing walls together;
these coniferous soft woods were lightweight, elastic, and protected from
the damp by their high resin content.
Perhaps the most precious asset of all was the pure white limestone
from Istria, easily imported by boat straight from the quarries to the build-
ing site. This fĳine-grained stone, almost completely impervious to water,
was the most desirable material for damp-proofĳing courses, steps, gutters,
window-frames, and a multitude of other purposes. Its uniformity and
durability made it ideal for carved ornament on traceries and balconies.
As a walling material, Istrian stone was always applied as cladding over a
brick core to save expense and weight.
Canals permeate the whole city like veins in a leaf, providing water
access for the transport of merchandise, building materials, and people.
Amid the tidal, brackish channels of the lagoon, however, fresh water sup-
ply was in short supply. In response, traditional builders developed an
ingenious method of conserving rainwater, inspired by the underground
water-conservation systems of the Levant. Water falling on rooftops and
paved surfaces drained into underground cisterns—whether in the court-
yards of houses or in parish campi—where it was fĳiltered through sand to
ensure drinkable quality. It has been estimated that in 1856, cisterns still
underlay 11 per cent of the entire surface area of the city.11
In recent years, building restoration projects have encouraged a more
detailed examination of the building fabric—for instance, work on the
Scuola Grande della Misericordia in the 1990s revealed the existence
of experimental arched foundations, installed by the architect Jacopo
10 E. Danzi et al., “Research for Conservation of the Lagoon Building Culture: Catalogue
of the External Plasterwork in Venetian Buildings,” in, C. A. Fletcher and T. Spencer, eds.,
Flooding and Environmental Challenges for Venice and its Lagoon: State of Knowledge
(Cambridge, 2005), pp. 193–98.
11 Giorgio Gianighian and Paola Pavanini, “Il tessuto gotico,” in Francesco Valcanover
and Wolfgang Wolters, eds., L’architettura gotica veneziana (Venice, 2000), pp. 157–73, on
p. 158.

Sansovino in the 1530s but since forgotten.12 However, archaeology in the

city is still in its infancy because of the problems of waterlogged founda-
tions and the danger of disturbance to existing structures.13
Imago Urbis
The distinctive quality of the townscape fostered an obsession with its

visual representation. Whether in paint, woodcut, or engraving, city
views constituted one of the favorite subjects for artists during the last
four centuries of the life of the Republic. Jacopo de’ Barbari’s remarkable
view, laid out on six sheets each more than 90 cm wide, not only involved
a major surveying operation undertaken from the tops of the city’s
campanili but also exploited innovations in both papermaking and printing
(Fig. 20.1).14 In the same period, the city’s principal confraternities, the six
scuole grandi, commissioned ambitious cycles of narrative paintings on
canvas, many of which adopted city views as their settings. The so-called
“eye-witness style” helped to make their religious themes credible through
the meticulous realism of the architectural backgrounds.15
The age of the Grand Tour in the 18th century swelled the market for
topographical views as souvenirs, leading to a remarkably comprehensive
documentation of the face of the city in works by artists such as Carlevaris,
Canaletto, Visentini, and Guardi.16 The city’s unique equilibrium of uni-
formity and variety conferred an immediately recognizable geographical
identity to these images. Yet, at the same time, the viewer of each print or
painting could savor its particularity in both space and time through the
recognition of landmarks and costume. Utopian qualities apparent at fĳirst
12 Gianni Fabbri, “Dal progetto di Sansovino alle catastrofĳi del moderno” in G. Fabbri,
ed., La Scuola Grande della Misericordia a Venezia: Storia e progetti (Venice, 1999),
pp. 101–43, on pp. 105–09.
13 See, for example, Albert J. Ammerman and Charles E. McClennen, eds., Venice before
San Marco: Recent Studies on the Origins of the City (Hamilton, N.Y., 2001).
14 Juergen Schulz, “Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Making, City Views and
Moralized Geography before 1500,” Art Bulletin 60 (1978), 425–74; idem, La cartografĳia
tra scienza e arte: Carte e cartografĳi nel Rinascimento italiano (Modena, 1990), pp. 13–63;
Howard, “Venice as a Dolphin”; Giandomenico Romanelli, Susanna Biadene, and Camillo
Tonini, eds., A volo d’uccello: Jacopo de’ Barbari e le rappresentazioni di città nell’Europa del
Rinascimento, exh. cat. (Venice, 1999).
15 As defĳined by Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of
Carpaccio (New Haven/London, 1988), p. 4.
16 See, for example, Andrew Wilton and Ilaria Bignamini, eds., Grand Tour: The Lure of
Italy in the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. (London, 1996).

748 deborah howard
sight could often dissolve into random untidiness, squalor, or mischief

at closer range. Despite the deconsecration and/or destruction of many
churches after the fall of the Republic in 1797, this comprehensive body
of images has allowed lost or altered buildings to be integrated into our
narrative of the city’s architectural history.17
Archives and Antiquarians
In addition to the rich body of visual and textual description from the
early modern period, the city possesses unrivaled archival resources.
Despite the ravages of two fĳires in the Doge’s Palace in 1574 and 1577, a
large proportion of the Republic’s written records now fĳills the shelves
of the Archivio di Stato, housed in the former Franciscan friary of Santa
Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.18 These codices, ledgers, and fĳiles reveal that
state bodies often engaged in lively debate over architectural issues.19
Meanwhile, the institutional patronage of the confraternities and guilds
(the scuole grandi e piccole) is often meticulously recorded, despite some
frustrating lacunae. Just as the elected magistracies of the Republican
government were constantly re-elected, so too the boards of the scuole
rotated annually, leading to bizarre discontinuities in building policy.20
Although relatively few family archives have been preserved, profuse
information on private individuals survives in the notarial records, in
the form of testaments and records of legal disputes.21 These sources are
amplifĳied by further caches of documents left by those who entrusted
their afffairs to the Procurators of St Mark’s on the death of the head of
17 Alvise Zorzi, Venezia scomparsa, 2 vols (Milan, 1977).

18 Andrea da Mosto, Archivio di Stato di Venezia: indice generale, 2 vols (Rome, 1937–
40). See also <http://www.archiviodistatovenezia.it/>.
19 Deborah Howard, “Architectural Politics in Renaissance Venice,” Proceedings of the
British Academy 154 (2008), 29–68. These debates are discussed at greater length in eadem,
Venice Disputed: Marc’Antonio Barbaro and Venetian Architecture 1550–1600 (New Haven/
London, 2011).
20 These discontinuities are narrated in works on the individual scuole grandi, such
as Philip L. Sohm, The Scuola Grande di San Marco, 1437–1550: The Architecture of a
Venetian Lay Confraternity (New York, 1982); Fabbri, ed., La Scuola Grande; and Gianmario
Guidarelli, “Una giogia ligata in piombo”: la fabbrica della Scuola Grande di San Rocco in
Venezia, 1517–1560 (Venice, 2003).
21 On the possible reasons for the paucity of family records in Venice, see James S.
Grubb, “Memory and Identity: Why Venetians Didn’t Keep ricordanze,” Renaissance
Studies 8 (1994), 375–87. Some of the few surviving examples have been published as
Family Memoirs from Venice, 15th–17th Centuries, ed. James S. Grubb (Rome, 2009).

the family. An exceptional case of a surviving private archive relating to

a building project is that of Marino Contarini, the patron of the famous
Gothic palace known as the Ca’ d’Oro, begun in 1421.22 In almost obses-
sive detail, Contarini documented the whole process of construction of
his house and chronicled his employment of bricklayers, masons, carpen-
ters, glassworkers, and blacksmiths, offfering us an intimate glimpse into
the day-to-day life of a 15th-century building site.
The documentation of the city’s religious architecture is similarly
patchy. Because the Venetian Republic insisted on retaining jurisdic-
tion over the parishes and nunneries in its long-standing rivalry with the
papacy, the patriarchal archives help to fĳill some lacunae. In particular,
apostolic visitations and patriarchal inspections of parish churches yield
invaluable information on the state of the buildings, their liturgical func-
tions and their decoration during the Counter Reformation.23 After the
fall of the Republic, the devotional life of the city was transformed by a
large-scale reorganization of the parish boundaries and changes to the
functions of the churches, but, despite the closure of numerous monas-
teries, friaries, and convents after 1797, many of the suppressed orders’
records were preserved.
The study of Venetian architecture is also indebted to the effforts of
dedicated antiquarians. As an avid collector of documents in the decades
following the fall of the Republic, Emmanuele Cicogna published his multi-
volume book Delle iscrizioni veneziane between 1824 and 1853.24 Adopting
epigraphy as the focus of the research, the work is a profuse anthology of
information on individual buildings, patrons, and artists. Cicogna’s rich
personal collection of documents is preserved for posterity in the Biblio-
teca Correr in Venice.
The serious exploitation of the Venetian archives for research in
architectural history began in the late 19th century with Pietro Paoletti’s
magisterial work L’architettura e la scultura del Rinascimento in Venezia,
22 Richard J. Goy, The House of Gold: Building a Palace in Medieval Venice (Cambridge,
1992).
23 See, for example, Silvio Tramontin, “La visita apostolica del 1581 a Venezia,” Studi
veneziani 9 (1967), 453–533.
24 Emanuele Cicogna, Iscrizioni veneziane, 6 vols (Venice, 1824–53). Giuseppe Tassini
collated local oral tradition with historical data to inform his lively compendium Delle
curiosità veneziane, fĳirst published in 1863, which ran into numerous editions, including
modern reprints.

750 deborah howard
published in Venice in 1893.25 Paoletti was the fĳirst scholar to attempt

to disentangle the identities of the numerous Lombard, Dalmatian, and
Venetian stonemasons active in early Renaissance Venice, using pay-
ments, contracts, and other documentary sources as evidence. One of the
earliest books on the subject to be illustrated with photographs, Paoletti’s
analysis remains a starting point for any serious research in the fĳield, now
amplifĳied by more recent scholarship.26
Print Culture
In parallel with the fascination with topographical images, Venice

developed a lively tradition of verbal descriptions of the townscape. While
Jacopo de’ Barbari, Gentile Bellini, and Carpaccio were depicting the city
visually, the manuscript descriptions of Venice by Marin Sanudo (Marino
Sanuto) and Marc’Antonio Sabellico launched the genre that was to lead to
the fĳirst full guidebook, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare by Francesco
Sansovino, published in 1581.27 As one of the foremost centers of printing
and publishing in Europe, Venice benefĳited from the relative cheapness
of the printed text to difffuse standardized versions of the iconography
of civic buildings to the wider public.28 For example, in 1541 Pietro
Contarini’s poem L’argoa volgar explained the meaning of the bronze
standard bases in front of St Mark’s.29 Similarly, Francesco Sansovino’s
short dialogue between a Venetian and an outsider, fĳirst published under
a pseudonym in 1556, discussed the signifĳicance of the sculptures on the
new Loggetta at the foot of the Campanile of St Mark’s designed by his
father, the architect and sculptor Jacopo Sansovino.30 These standardized
25 Pietro Paoletti, L’architettura e la scultura del Rinascimento in Venezia, 3 vols (Venice,

1893).
26 See especially Susan M. Connell, The Employment of Sculptors and Stonemasons
in Venice in the Fifteenth Century (New York/London, 1988); and Goy, The Building of
Renaissance Venice.
27 Sanudo, De origine; Marc’Antonio Sabellico, Del Sito di Venezia Citta (1502), ed.
G. Meneghetti (Venice, 1957); Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare
(Venice, 1581).
28 Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity
(Toronto, 2005).
29 On Pietro Contarini, see Bruce Boucher, The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, 2 vols
(New Haven/London, 1991), 1:82–83; and Chambers and Pullan, Venice, pp. 398–99.
30 Boucher, The Sculpture, 1:73–88; David Rosand, The Myths of Venice: The Figuration of
a State (Chapel Hill, 2001), pp. 128–37.

interpretations displaced the slippery meanings doubtless propagated in

numerous everyday conversations in the Piazza.
Writers of the early modern period not only pioneered the guidebook
and the topographical description; they also established the tradition of
the artist’s biography. The most influential model was, of course, Giorgio
Vasari, who made at least two visits to Venice in 1542 and 1566.31 Most of
his information about architects in Venice and the Veneto is found not in
the fĳirst edition of his Lives of the Artists of 1550 but in the second edition
published in 1568. Two years later, on the death of the Florentine archi-
tect and sculptor Jacopo Sansovino, Vasari amplifĳied the biography of his
fellow Tuscan in a separate revised edition, published in Venice by the
architect’s grandson Giacomo Sansovino.32 It is now recognized that, on
Jacopo’s death, Francesco furnished Vasari with additional material—not
only to inflate his late father’s reputation but also to support his attempts
to reclaim outstanding payments. Vasari’s biography stressed Jacopo’s
radical impact on the townscape of Venice:
Sansovino’s method of building was the reason why public and private
edifĳices began to be constructed with new designs and better order, and
according to the ancient teaching of Vitruvius [. . .] he has, as said, with his
knowledge and judgment caused that city to be made almost completely
new, and to learn the true and good method of architecture.33
As in antiquity, epistolary collections offfered a particularly personal
angle. One of the most prolifĳic and influential poligrafĳi of 16th-century
Venice, Pietro Aretino, originated from Vasari’s home town of Arezzo.34
The initial volumes of his correspondence, addressed to popes, princes,
emperors, artists and literati, were issued by Francesco Marcolini, a pivotal
cultural fĳigure who also published the fĳirst volumes of Serlio’s treatise on
architecture and the earliest printed compositions of the composer Adrian
Willaert.35 As a close friend of both Jacopo Sansovino and Titian, Aretino
31 Juergen Schulz, “Vasari at Venice,” Burlington Magazine 103 (1961), 500–10.
32 Bruce Boucher, The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, 2 vols (New Haven/London, 1991,
1:160–62.
33 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols (Florence 1878–85), 7:502–03;
English trans. from Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, vol. 2, trans. George Bull (London,
1987), pp. 325, 328.
34 Christopher Cairns, Pietro Aretino and the Republic of Venice: Researches on Aretino
and his Circle in Venice, 1527–1556 (Florence, 1985).
35 Aretino’s letters were published in Venice in six volumes between 1538 and 1557.
See Ettore Camesasca, ed., Lettere sull’arte di Pietro Aretino, with commentary by Fidenzio
Pertile, 3 vols (Milan, 1957–60). Francesco Marcolini published the fĳirst volume of Aretino’s

752 deborah howard
bequeathed an invaluable body of background information for the study of

both artists. Though disguised as spontaneous, intimate communications,
most of Aretino’s letters were composed expressly for publication and
therefore need to be carefully deconstructed. At the same time, it is
crucial to recognize the power of Aretino’s pen, for the dissemination of
ostensibly private correspondence created a potent publicity machine to
support the careers of his friends such as Titian and Sansovino.
Venice’s publishing trade also generated a substantial number of influ-
ential architectural treatises. Aldus Manutius’s Hypnerotomachia Polifĳili of
1499, a complex medievalizing romance infused with architectural con-
tent, brilliantly demonstrated the potential of the woodblock and movable
type to combine text and image.36 In 1511, during the troubled times of the
Wars of the League of Cambrai, the Veronese architect and engineer Fra
Giovanni Giocondo published his edition of Vitruvius’s De architectura.37
This seminal work was not only the earliest coherent version of the text
but also the fĳirst to be illustrated with woodcut plates. A particularly use-
ful edition of Vitruvius by Francesco Lutio Durantino, published in Venice
in 1524, combined Fra Giocondo’s lucid illustrations with a slightly modi-
fĳied version of Cesare Cesariano’s Italian translation of 1521.38 The fĳirst two
books of Sebastiano Serlio’s treatise on architecture—his Book 4 (1537)
and Book 3 (1540)—again demonstrated how the interaction between
text and plates could create a powerful medium for the propagation of
the classical orders of architecture (Fig. 20.2).39 It was Serlio who pro-
vided the Venetian public with the theoretical framework for the under-
standing of the new buildings of Sansovino—the Mint, the Library, and
letters in 1538, as well as books 4 and 3 of Serlio’s treatise on architecture in 1537 and 1540
respectively, and the Liber quinque missarum Adriani Willaert in Venice in 1536. For the
other side of Aretino’s correspondence, also issued by Marcolini in 1551, see Gonaria Floris
and Luisa Mulas, eds., Lettere scritte al signor Pietro Aretino da molti signori (Rome, 1997).
On Marcolini, see Paolo Procaccioli, Paolo Temeroli, and Vanni Tesei, eds., Un giardino
per le arti: Francesco Marcolino da Forlì, la vita, l’opera, il catalogo, Atti del Convegno
internazionale di studi, Forlì, 11–13 ottobre 2007 (Bologna, 2009).
36 Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia poliphili (Venice, 1499); idem, Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream, trans. Joscelyn Godwin (London, 1999).
37 Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De architectura, ed. Fra Giovanni Giocondo (Venice, 1511).
38 This edition seems to have been well received, for it was republished in Venice in
1535.
39 John Onians, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages,
and the Renaissance (Princeton, 1988), pp. 263–309; Christof Thoenes, ed., Sebastiano Serlio
(Milan, 1989); Myra Nan Rosenfeld, Serlio on Domestic Architecture (New York, 1997).

Figure 20.2. Sebastiano Serlio, The Five Orders of Architecture from his Book IV,
the Regole generali dell’architettura (Venice, 1537).

754 deborah howard
the Loggetta—that were rising in Piazza San Marco in the same years.40
Later, Andrea Palladio created the woodcuts for Daniele Barbaro’s Italian
translation of Vitruvius in 1556, providing a canonical version of Vitruvian
theory.41 Palladio’s I quattro libri dell’architettura (1570) refĳined the legacy
of Serlio, presenting his own portfolio of domestic designs alongside the
works of antiquity.42
In 16th-century architectural culture, the printed treatise furnished a
body of theoretical knowledge that continually interacted with practice.43
The use of the vernacular, the role of images, and the relative cheap-
ness of the editions allowed architectural theory to permeate down the
social scale. No longer the preserve of princes, churchmen, and humanist
scholars, architectural theory became accessible to the educated public,
the architect, and even the proto [supervisor of building works]. More-
over, the printed treatise embodied the authority of the editio princeps:
the unchanging consistency to be found in every copy of each edition,
ready for annotation by the owners who formulated their own responses
as marginalia. Although theory and practice followed parallel tracks, each
with its own narrative, at the same time information and ideas passed
continually to and fro between them. The ultimate victory of classicism
over the Gothic style in Venice was assured by its support in print cul-
ture. Subsequently, the treatises of Scamozzi, Bertotti Scamozzi, and Mili-
zia developed the orthodox classicism of Palladio from an increasingly
academic perspective.44
40 The Mint (Zecca) was begun in 1536, the Library in 1537, and the Loggetta in 1538.
Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice
(New Haven/London, 1987), pp. 8–47; Manuela Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino (Milan, 2000),
pp. 182–227.
41 I dieci libri dell’architettura di M. Vitruvio, trans. and ed. Daniele Barbaro (Venice,
1556). The publisher was Francesco Marcolini.
42 Andrea Palladio, I quattro libri dell’architettura (Venice, 1570).
43 Jean Guillaume, ed., Les traités d’architecture de la Renaissance (Paris, 1988); Vaughan
Hart and Peter Hicks, eds., Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise
(New Haven/London, 1998).
44 Vincenzo Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura universale, 2 vols (Venice, 1615); Ottavio
Bertotti Scamozzi, Le fabbriche e i disegni di Andrea Palladio (Vicenza 1796); Francesco
Milizia, Le vite de’ più celebri architetti d’ogni nazione e d’ogni tempo, precedute da un saggio
sopra l’architettura (Rome, 1768); idem, Principi di architettura civile (Finale [Vicenza],
1781). See also Daniel McReynolds, Palladio’s Legacy: Architectural Polemics in Eighteenth-
Century Venice (Venice, 2011).

Typologies
More than that of any other Italian city, the architecture of Venice lends
itself to study by typology. During the last four centuries of the Republic,
building plans and typologies changed little, for the exorbitant cost of
new foundations discouraged radical changes in plan. At the same time,
social conventions, both private and public, remained far more constant
than in many other Italian cities, reducing the need for new spatial
arrangements. During the 20th century, the study of typology became a
favorite practice of Modernist architects and critics, who sought universal
themes based on the search for truth to function.45 Yet typology is not
an invention of Modernism. From antiquity onwards, treatise writers—
including Vitruvius, Alberti, Palladio, and Scamozzi—tended to organize
their chapters typologically. Similarly, Francesco Sansovino’s guide of 1581,
while arranging the religious buildings by geographical area, discussed
most of the other monuments according to their type.
The most distinctive typology in the townscape was the Venetian palace,
although in deference to republican values, only the palaces of the doge
and the patriarch were given the denomination of palazzo. Meanwhile,
the rest of the patrician homes—however magnifĳicent—were known as
case [houses]. In 1549, a Welsh visitor admired the profusion of palaces
that lined the banks of the Grand Canal, remarking that “in Venice be
above 200 palaces able to lodge a king.”46 The façade of the palace defĳined
its public identity, striking a delicate balance between individuality and
conformity. It is now clear that the wealthiest cittadini occupied houses
that resembled those of rich members of the patrician class, while many
patricians lived in relatively impoverished circumstances.47 The constant
subdivision of family patrimony over the generations, combined with the
decline in overseas trade, whittled away the wealth of many Venetian
noble lines. During the last two centuries of the Republic, however, a num-
ber of rich new families were admitted to the offfĳicially “closed” nobility,
and their effforts to create a sense of lineage and assert their integration
stimulated some of the notable design innovations in the period. At the
same time, many formerly powerful clans witnessed the fragmentation of
45 Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types (London, 1976). Richard J. Goy, Venice:
The City and its Architecture (London, 1997) adopts a typological framework.
46 William Thomas, The History of Italy (1549), ed. G. B. Parks (Ithaca, 1965), p. 65.
47 Blake de Maria, Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice

756 deborah howard
their palaces into numerous smaller properties, through repeated subdivi-

sion of their inheritance.
Like variations on a musical theme, the palaces exhibit shared char-
acteristics that endured for centuries. The underlying type that became
the standard model from about 1200 onwards consisted of four parallel
load-bearing walls perpendicular to the façade (Fig. 20.3).48 On each floor,
these four spine walls enclosed a long central circulation space running
from front to back—known on the main living storeys as the portego—
flanked on either side by smaller, more private rooms. There is consider-
able evidence to suggest that the mercantile oligarchy used the ground
floors of their palaces for the storage of merchandise, although this view
has recently been challenged.49 The amount of space needed for storage
of imported goods varied over time, depending on the timing of sea voy-
ages and fluctuations in commodity prices, but merchants often sublet
surplus space to each other during slack periods. Commodities particu-
larly susceptible to damp, such as sugar, might be stored in the attic, and
additional warehousing at the Rialto market could supplement the stor-
age space in the owner’s house.
Despite the resistance to change, long-established traditions did
undergo modifĳications. In the design of palaces, for example, the pic-
turesque external staircases that adorned the courtyards of 15th-century
palaces reached their climax in the remarkable spiral ascent of the Scala
del Bovolo of 1500. From this date onwards, the more ostentatious fam-
ilies sought instead to display their wealth by means of grand internal
staircases that swallowed up valuable floor space. Similarly, by the 18th
century, in the grandest palaces the ballroom replaced the central hall or
portego as the principal room for entertaining.50
It is the tension between the shared features of the type and the indi-
viduality of the particular example that enlivens the discussion of any
typology. Some building types, such as the confraternity meetinghouses
48 Paolo Maretto, La casa veneziana nella storia della città: Dalle origini all’Ottocento
(Venice, 1986), pp. 76–139 (with useful plans); Goy, Venetian Vernacular Architecture,
pp. 126–35; Dorigo, Venezia romanica, v1:298–333, 352–95; Juergen Schulz, The New Palaces
of Medieval Venice (University Park, Pa., 2004), pp. 10–21.
49 The term casa fondaco, suggesting a hybrid between the house and the warehouse,
is a 20th-century term (Richard Goy’s variation, “palazzo-fondaco,” as introduced in his
Venetian Vernacular Architecture, p. 123, has not gained wide acceptance). On the use
of palaces for storing merchandise, see Howard, Venice & the East, pp. 133–37; for an
alternative interpretation, see Schulz, The New Palaces, pp. 23–27.
50 Elena Bassi, Architettura del Sei e Settecento a Venezia (Naples, 1962); eadem, Palazzi
di Venezia: Admiranda urbis Venetae (Venice, 1976).

venetian architecture
757

Figure 20.3. Plan (at fĳirst-floor level) and section of a typical Venetian palace, from Richard J. Goy,
Venetian Vernacular Architecture (Cambridge, 1989).
758 deborah howard
known as the scuole grandi, are unique to Venice in their functions as

well as their architectural form.51 These institutions struck a precarious
balance between charity and display in their blending of secular and
religious typologies.52 The huge assembly room furnished with an altar
resembled the interior of a church or large chapel, though raised on the
piano nobile like the portego of a palace. At the Scuola Nuova della Mise-
ricordia, this room even borrowed the vast dimensions of the Great Coun-
cil Chamber in the Doge’s Palace.53 The smaller meeting room known as
the albergo, for use by the banca or governing body, combined aspects of
the monastic chapter house and the palace camera. Intense competition
between the institutions encouraged continual cross-referencing, leading
both to conformity and diffference. The tension between benevolence and
ostentation, as well as the regular rotation of offfĳicers, complicated their
patronage of art and architecture.
Other typologies fostered conformity with examples outside Venice
rather than within. In the case of the male religious orders, each mon-
astery or friary formed part of an international network of institutions
governed by shared religious aspirations and linked by continual personal
and verbal communication.54 The religious orders provided a vital conduit
for the absorption of new ideas from outside the city. Nevertheless, the
51 Brian Pullan fĳirst analyzed the social functions of the scuole in his seminal work, Rich
and Poor in Renaissance Venice (Oxford, 1971); brief histories of the important scuole are
charted in the catalogue of Brown’s Venetian narrative painting. Sohm, The Scuola Grande
di San Marco, gives a useful account of the architectural functions of the Scuola grande
on pp. 50–79.
52 See the chapter on the “Scuole grandi” in Manfredo Tafuri, Venezia e il Rinascimento:
Religione, scienza, architettura (Turin, 1985), pp. 125–54; in English as Venice and the
Renaissance, trans. Jessica Levine (Cambridge, Mass./London, 1989), pp. 81–101.
53 Deborah Howard, “La Scuola Grande della Misericordia di Venezia,” in Fabbri, ed.,
La Scuola Grande, pp. 13–70, on p. 41.
54 The study of the architecture of the religious orders is still patchy. No parallel exists
for the early modern period to Herbert Dellwing’s studies of the mendicant orders in
the Veneto: Studien zur Baukunst der Bettelorden im Veneto: die Gotik der monumentalen
Gewölbebasiliken (Berlin, 1970) and Die Kirchenbaukunst des späten Mittelalters in Venetien
(Worms, 1990). A valuable contribution on the Observant Franciscans is Antonio Foscari
and Manfredo Tafuri, L’armonia e i conflitti: La chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna nella
Venezia del ’500 (Turin, 1983). Even such well-studied orders as the Jesuits have been
relatively little explored in the case of Venice. See Mario Zanardi, “I ‘domicilia’ o centri
operativi della Compagnia di Gesù: Venezia,” in Mario Zanardi, ed., I Gesuiti e Venezia:
Momenti e problemi di storia veneziana della Compagnia di Gesù (Padua, 1994), pp.
97–153; Howard, Venice Disputed, pp. 109–10. Much valuable information on the Counter
Reformation orders, though not specifĳically concerning architecture, is to be found in
William L. Barcham, The Religious Paintings of Giambattista Tiepolo: Piety and Tradition in
Eighteenth-Century Venice (Oxford, 1989).

need to adapt innovations to local building practice assisted their visual

integration into the townscape.
Similarly, the fondaci—merchants’ lodgings with warehousing on the
ground floor, both in Venice and in overseas trading concessions—are
now recognized in their pan-Mediterranean context, equivalent to the fun-
duq, wikala, (k)han, or caravanserai in various parts of the Islamic world.55
Recent studies of the Ghetto and the quarters of immigrant communities
in Venice have been complemented by a growing interest in the archi-
tecture of overseas colonies, both civic and military.56 It is curious that
the hammam or bath-house, to be found in most Venetian trading posts
in the Levant, never took root in Venice. One cannot blame this neglect
wholly on the difffĳiculties of fresh water supply in the city, for many of the
overseas bases were located in areas with similar water shortages.
Architectural Hierarchy
The hierarchy of typologies established in treatises such as those of

Alberti and Scamozzi has been brought into question by the renewed
interest in vernacular building. The pioneering study Venezia minore
by Egle Renata Trincanato, fĳirst published in 1948, laid the groundwork
for research in the fĳield of popular housing.57 A challenging question is
the extent to which vernacular domestic architecture emulated palace
building.58 Recent studies have indicated that many of the structures that
displayed the external features of palaces were in fact built as complexes
of separate apartments for letting.59 In these ingenious structures, each
55 Ennio Concina, Fondaci: Architettura, arte e mercatura tra Levante, Venezia, e Alemagna
(Venice, 1997); Olivia Remie Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World:
Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2003).
56 Ennio Concina, Ugo Camerino, and Donatella Calabi, La città degli ebrei: il ghetto
di Venezia: Architettura e urbanistica (Venice, 1991); Donatella Calabi, “Gli stranieri e la
città,” in Gino Benzoni and Antonio Menniti Ippolito, Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla
caduta della Serenissima, 14 vols (Rome, 1992–2002), vol. 5 (1996): Il Rinascimento. Società
ed economia, ed. Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci, pp. 913–46. Useful historical background
is to be found in Brünehilde Imhaus, Le minoranze orientali a Venezia 1300–1510 (Rome,
1997).
57 Egle Renata Trincanato, Venezia minore (Venice, 1948).
58 As proposed in Goy, Venetian Vernacular Architecture, pp. 150–71. For detailed studies
of traditional middle-rank housing, see Maretto, La casa veneziana; and Dorigo, Venezia
romanica, 1:334–52.
59 Giorgio Gianighian and Paola Pavanini, Dietro i palazzi: tre secoli di architettura
minore a Venezia 1492–1803 (Venice, 1984); Giorgio Gianighian, “Building Castelforte,” ARQ:
Architectural Research Quarterly 9 (2005), 51–68.

760 deborah howard
tenant enjoyed all the components of a true palace—portego, camere,

mezzanine, storerooms, attic rooms, and private staircase—interlocking
with those of the other inhabitants in a complex three-dimensional spatial
distribution. These multi-occupancy schemes, disguised as enormous
palaces, became a potent expression of the “Myth of Venice.” Francesco
Sansovino’s encomiastic statements that all houses in the city, no matter
how simple, had windows of “the clearest and fĳinest glass,” and that no
visitable house was too poor to affford “walnut furniture, green draperies,
carpets, pewter, copper, gold chains, silver forks and rings,” swelled the
image of prosperity and equality that the Republic sought to convey.60
The recognition of the city as a complex organism of interdependent
parts has widened the fĳields of interest yet further. The study of the
city’s commercial and naval infrastructure now benefĳits from the fruits
of detailed archival research—especially in the case of the Rialto mar-
ket and the Arsenal.61 Research on these centers has not only elucidated
the building histories of their individual structures but also has set them
in the context of similar complexes in other cities in Europe and further
afĳield.62 In the fĳield of utilitarian architecture work already carried out
for the Trecento could serve as the basis for future studies.63 Moorings,
waterways and bridges, too, are now becoming better integrated into our
view of the urban fabric.64
The industrial architecture of Venice and its territories still needs fur-
ther study. Outside the Arsenal, our knowledge is limited to certain specifĳic
examples, such as the ships’ biscuit factories on the Riva degli Schiavoni,
though even these are largely known by their façades.65 The number of
patents for mechanical inventions granted by the Senate in the last few
decades of the 16th century testifĳies to a remarkable concern for industrial
60 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, fols 141v–142v.

61 Roberto Cessi and Annibale Alberti, Rialto: L’isola, il ponte, il mercato (Bologna, 1934);
Donatella Calabi and Paolo Morachiello, Rialto: Le fabbriche e il ponte 1514–1591 (Turin, 1987);
Ennio Concina, L’Arsenale della Repubblica di Venezia: Tecniche e istituzioni dal Medioevo
all’età moderna (Milan, 1984); Dorigo, Venezia romanica, 2:397–418.
62 Ennio Concina, Arsenali e città nell’Occidente europeo (Rome, 1987), Donatella Calabi,
The Market and the City: Square, Street and Architecture in Early Modern Europe, trans.
Marlene Klein (Aldershot, 2004).
63 Michela Agazzi, “Edilizia funzionale veneziana del XIV secolo,” in Francesco
Valcanover and Wolfgang Wolters, eds., L’architettura gotica veneziana (Venice, 2000), pp.
139–56; Dorigo, Venezia romanica, 2:418–35.
64 A pioneering study is Donatella Calabi, “Canali, rive, approdi,” in Storia di Venezia,
vol. 12 (1991): Il mare, ed Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci, pp. 135–43.
65 Concina, L’Arsenale, p. 58; Donatella Calabi, “Una città ‘seduta sul mare,’ ” in Storia
di Venezia, vol. 12: Il mare, ed Tenenti and Tucci, pp. 761–88, on p. 802.

innovation, using both water power and furnace technology.66 In the

period of this essay, Venice was a thriving center for the manufacture of
glass, soap, ceramics, and a wide range of textiles, not to mention the
mills and factories of the terraferma, but the architectural context of these
activities has so far received little attention.67 Because of Vitruvius’s inter-
est in machines, Daniele Barbaro included woodcuts of various devices for
water management in his editions of 1556 and 1567, but early modern trea-
tise writers showed little interest in the architectural fabric of mills and
kilns.68 The discussion of industrial buildings in print was largely confĳined
to works on metallurgy, furnace technology, and fortifĳication.69
The military architecture of the Venetian Republic became progres-
sively more technically sophisticated during the 16th century, as gunpow-
der technology advanced and defenses were modifĳied to resist its threat.
Gradually, during the course of the 16th century, the design of fortifĳica-
tions became the preserve of military engineers rather than architects.70
In the city gates, such as those designed by Falconetto in Padua and San-
micheli in Verona, ideology and classical references still held symbolic
value. Sanmicheli’s Fortezza di Sant’Andrea in the Venetian lagoon dis-
played its rusticated Doric frontage to the incoming seafarer, just as the
city gates of Verona confronted the incomer by road.71 Elsewhere, how-
ever, fortifĳications now took the form of unspectacular low earthworks
punctuated by angle bastions. In contrast to the picturesque walls and
towers of medieval towns such as Montagnana, these ramparts created a
rather unimpressive periphery to the townscape, though their star-shaped
plans, as depicted in military treatises, held a geometrical and strategic
fascination. The ideal fortress town of Palmanova, erected by the Serenis-
sima on the eastern borders of Friuli at the end of the 16th century as a
66 Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of
Knowledge from Antiquity to the Present (Baltimore/London, 2001), pp. 89–96.
67 Pioneering studies are Ennio Concina, Venezia nell’età moderna: Struttura e funzioni
(Venice, 1989); and Donatella Calabi, “Magazzini, fondaci, dogane,” in Storia di Venezia,
vol. 12: Il mare, ed Tenenti and Tucci, pp. 789–817.
68 Daniele Barbaro, ed., I dieci libri dell’architettura di M. Vitruvio (Venice, 1567),
pp. 463–64.
69 See, for example, Vannoccio Biringuccio, De la pirotechnia: Libri X (Venice, 1540); and
Bonaiuto Lorini, Le fortifĳicationi (Venice, 1609).
70 Useful overviews are André Chastel et al., L’architettura militare veneta del
Cinquecento (Milan, 1988); and Ennio Concina and Elisabetta Molteni, La fabrica della
fortezza: L’architettura militare di Venezia (Verona, 2001).
71 See especially the city gates designed by Sanmicheli, analysed in Paul Davies and
David Hemsoll, Michele Sanmicheli (Milan, 2004). On those of Falconetto in Padua, see
Giuliana Mazzi, Adriano Verdi, and Vittorio Dal Piaz, Le mura di Padova (Padua, 2002).

762 deborah howard
Figure 20.4. Plan of the Venetian fortress town of Palmanova in eastern Friuli,

from Georg Braun and Frans Hogenburg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum, woodcut
(Amsterdam, 1598).
defense against Turkish invasion, never had to prove its military worth,
but its form became celebrated across Europe through maps and engrav-
ings (Fig. 20.4).72 Such was the skill of the military strategists and archi-
tects in the 16th century that fortifĳications evolved relatively little over the
next three centuries.
In the last few decades, research into public building in Venice’s over-
seas colonies and on the terraferma has begun to allow a fuller understand-
ing of the ways in which architecture both projected Venetian authority in
the empire and sought the loyalty of the subject peoples.73 As if to afffĳirm
the reorientation of the focus of study in this direction, a recent study
of Venetian architecture of the Quattrocento devotes the fĳirst third of its
72 A useful introduction to the erection of Palmanova is Silvano Ghironi and Antonio
Manno, Palmanova: Storia, progetti e cartografĳia urbana (1593–1866) (Padua, 1993). See also
Howard, Venice Disputed, pp. 193–211 (with further bibliography).
73 See, for example, Maria Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies: Architecture
and Urbanism (Cambridge, 2001).

text to the stato da mar.74 Post-colonial theories of center and periphery,

hybridity and local identity, now frame investigations into Venetian build-
ing in the oltremare, but it must be stressed that the Venetian “colonies”
in the Islamic world were in reality concessionary trading posts where the
rhetoric of colonial discourse has no place.
Style
During the fĳirst two-thirds of the 20th century, the history of architecture
was treated as a history of style. A useful tool for connoisseurship, style
describes and defĳines the visible characteristics manifested by a period,
artistic center, or architect.75 According to this model, tradition becomes
the antithesis of style, that is, the conservative element in culture that
resists stylistic change. Whereas tradition is static through time but varies
geographically, style changes through time but is relatively independent
of regional context. Modifĳications in style are led by artistic innovation
from a perceived center, encountering varying degrees of resistance as
they spread out, and this preoccupation with the new has led critics to
attribute negative characteristics to tradition.
Because of the distinctive nature of Venetian building types, fostered
by the conservative reuse of foundations and the relative social stability,
innovations in architectural design tended to concern superfĳicial stylistic
changes: from Gothic to Renaissance and thence to Baroque and Rococo.76
Interestingly, all these style names originated with negative connotations.
In Venice, stylistic transformations manifested themselves in the design
of windows, portals, altars, and interior decoration, and it was here that
both artists and patrons concentrated their inventiveness.
74 Ennio Concina, Tempo novo: Venezia nel Quattrocento (Venice, 2006).

75 For general observations on style, see, for example, J. S. Ackerman, “Style,” article of
1963 repr. in his Distance Points (Cambridge, Mass./London, 1991); E. H. Gombrich, “Style,”
International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences (New York, 1968), vol. 15, pp. 352–61; and
Philip L. Sohm, Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2001).
76 Essays on Venetian architecture of particular periods may be found in general
studies of Italian architecture of the individual centuries, such as the Pelican History of Art
volumes: Ludwig H. Heydenreich, Architecture in Italy, 1400–1500, rev. by Paul Davies (New
Haven/London, 1996); Wolfgang Lotz, Architecture in Italy, 1500–1600, intro. by Deborah
Howard (New Haven/London, 1995); Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600–
1750, rev. by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu, 3 vols (New Haven/London, 1999); and
the more recent series of multi-author monographs entitled Storia dell’architettura italiana
and edited by Francesco Dal Co (Milan, 1997–).

764 deborah howard
In its showpieces the Gothic of the early Quattrocento became increas-

ingly ornate. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, however, a growing
enthusiasm for the legacy of antiquity encouraged the introduction of
rounded arches and classical ornament.77 At fĳirst these two styles coex-
isted harmoniously, but with the arrival of the printed treatise in the
16th century, the theory of the classical orders grew in authority until
the Gothic heritage fĳinally died out. The Roman-orientated classicism of
Sansovino, Serlio, and Sanmicheli, initiated during the dogeship of Doge
Andrea Gritti, provided the perfect language for the Republic’s bold asser-
tion of its Roman roots and constitution (Fig. 20.5). Later in the century,
Palladio’s more idealized and monumental interpretation of antiquity cre-
ated a new paradigm that was to command respect and emulation for
the rest of the lifetime of the Republic. In the Seicento, Longhena’s con-
fĳident Baroque syntax reinterpreted Palladio’s legacy in a more dynamic
vein (Fig. 20.6).78 Finally, in the 18th century a Palladian version of neo-
classicism created demure exteriors combined with decorative Rococo
interiors. Following the fall of the Republic in 1797, the classicism of the
Academy continued to dominate the public’s critical perspective.79
It was to be the publication of John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1851–
53) that would revolutionize the public’s view of Venetian architecture.80
Ruskin unashamedly adopted a standpoint in direct opposition to aca-
demic classicism. Indeed, he deplored the architecture of Palladio, seen
as the paragon ever since the architect’s own death in 1580. To justify his
personal preference for Venetian Gothic architecture, Ruskin created a
historical framework that viewed the Renaissance as a period of moral
decline. While his version of history is now regarded as subjective and
warped, his architectural criticism remains a formidable legacy.
77 John McAndrew, Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass./

London, 1980); Ralph Lieberman, Renaissance Architecture in Venice 1450–1540 (London,
1982); Concina, Tempo novo.
78 See Andrew Hopkins, “Venezia e il suo dominio,” in Aurora Scotti Tosini, ed., Storia
dell’Architettura Italiano: il Seicento (Milan, 2003), pp. 400–23; Andrew Hopkins, Baldassare
Longhena (Milan, 2006); and Augusto Roca De Amicis, ed., Storia dell’architettura nel Veneto:
Il Seicento (Venice, 2008). These works build on and supersede Bassi, Architettura.
79 The need for measured surveys led to the lavish two-volume work Leopoldo Cicognara,
Antonio Diedo, and Giovanni Antonio Selva, Le fabbriche più conspicue di Venezia, 2 vols
(Venice, 1815–20), containing large-format engravings of the plans, elevations, and sections
of the most prominent historic buildings in Venice.
80 John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 3 vols (London, 1851–53). See also Robert Hewison,
Ruskin on Venice: “The Paradise of Cities” (New Haven/London, 2009).

Figure 20.5. Jacopo Sansovino, Mint (Zecca), Library and Loggetta, Piazzetta di

San Marco, begun 1536–8 (photo: Cameraphoto, Venice).
Figure 20.6. Baldassare Longhena, Santa Maria della Salute, begun 1631

(photo: Deborah Howard).

766 deborah howard
Writing with energy and passion, Ruskin instilled a renewed admiration

for the fĳine craftsmanship of the city’s long-neglected Gothic heritage. His
sensitive eye and attention to fĳine detail infuse every page of The Stones
of Venice, its prose propelling the reader along like the waters of a moun-
tain stream. Without the historical documentation needed to construct
a reliable chronology of Venetian Gothic, Ruskin used his own fĳirst-hand
observation of medieval architectural detail to construct an evolutionary
sequence. In order to give intellectual rigor to his studies, Ruskin devised
a series of “orders” of Gothic architecture, corresponding to the transi-
tion from Romanesque to late Gothic (Fig. 20.7), just as Thomas Rickman
had classifĳied the phases of English Gothic architecture in 1817.81 Ruskin’s
approach needs to be situated in the context of the 19th century’s obses-
sion with evolutionary theory and classifĳication. In defĳining his “orders”
of Venetian Gothic architecture, he hoped to provide the subject with a
theoretical basis comparable to that of the classical tradition. Although in
reality the middle “orders” of the sequence did not evolve in an orderly
fashion, the scheme still retains its usefulness for describing and dating
Gothic domestic buildings.
Ruskin’s Stones ushered in another highly signifĳicant innovation: the
use of the color lithograph. Ever since the fĳirst illustrated treatises of the
early 16th century, architectural literature had been printed in black and
white. It was Ruskin who renewed critical interest in the polychromy of
the townscape. The process of chromo-lithography, originally pioneered
for banknotes and playing cards, allowed his watercolor studies to be
translated into print—not as perfected, tidied-up versions but enlivened
by the intensity of the hues and the picturesque signs of erosion and dam-
age. Ruskin not only brought about a revolution in public taste; he also
challenged the theory and practice of building conservation. Appalled
by the Austrians’ radical restoration of St Mark’s, he pressed for a more
respectful approach to the historical fabric, aiming to halt further deterio-
ration rather than to replace damaged elements with new imitations.
Despite Ruskin’s effforts, modern studies of the architecture of early
Renaissance Venice still tend to dwell on the city’s perceived delay in grasp-
ing the principles of Vitruvian classicism.82 This Vasarian viewpoint fails
to take account of the cultural independence and commercial strength of
81 Thomas Rickman, An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture

(London, 1817).
82 This is a perspective that underlies McAndrew, Venetian Architecture. See the per-
ceptive review by Debra Pincus in The Art Bulletin 65 (1983), 342–46.

Figure 20.7. John Ruskin, The ‘Orders’ of Gothic Architecture, from The Stones of
Venice, 3 vols (London, 1851–3).

768 deborah howard
Quattrocento Venice, for the Gothic style in architecture coincided with

the height of Venice’s power and prosperity.83 With its main trading links
aligned towards the Islamic world in the east and Germany in the north,
the vocabulary of Venice was continually enriched by contact with visual
cultures based on the pointed arch, profuse vegetal ornament, and intri-
cate two-dimensional relief carving.84
It is only in the past two decades that this wider cross-cultural perspec-
tive has come to the fore in academic debate.85 Venice had no reason
to emulate the achievements of Brunelleschi and his contemporaries in
Florence. In the very years in which Michelozzo was building the Palazzo
Medici in Florence, Doge Foscari erected his huge family palace in Venice,
highlighting the city’s pride in its Gothic heritage.86 As the largest palace
in the city when Francesco Sansovino published his guidebook in 1581,
Ca’ Foscari continued to house high-prestige visitors long after Roman
classicism had made its triumphant entry onto the Venetian scene.87
Architectural Patronage
The impact of Marxism’s focus on the economic and political context,

combined with the Modernists’ enthusiasm for functionalism, ushered
in a growing interest in architectural patronage from the 1970s onwards.
Research into patronage illuminates a number of important factors: the
function and later use of buildings; construction history; the methods of
fĳinance; and institutional or dynastic structures. Patronage studies benefĳit
especially from the nature of the documentation, but its interpretation
needs careful reassessment, for while powerful individuals and institutions
alike often leave copious evidence of their activities, it must be recognized
that they themselves influenced the content and perspective of the sources.
More recently, the impact of post-modernist theory has encouraged a
83 This is underlined by Ralph Lieberman who chose a Gothic palace for the cover of
his Renaissance Architecture in Venice.
84 These influences are discussed in Howard, Venice & the East; and Bernard Aikema
and Beverly Louise Brown, eds., Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the
Time of Dürer, Bellini and Titian, exh. cat. (London, 1999).
85 See, for example, Howard, Venice & the East; Stefano Carboni, ed., Venice and
the Islamic World, 828–1797, exh. cat. (New York, 2007) (also available in French and in
shortened form in Italian); and Concina, Tempo novo.
86 Dennis Romano, The Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari 1373–1457
(New Haven/London, 2007), pp. 245–53.
87 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, fol. 149r–v.

more subtle deconstruction of the evidence. Issues of class, gender, and

ethnicity have entered the debate, and historians have begun to consider
how patrons seek to fashion identities through architectural patronage.
The role of the viewer as the “reader” of the agenda presented by the
building has also begun to receive attention.
Yet patronage studies bring their own limitations. The Marxist legacy
tended to foster an over-deterministic approach to architectural design,
perceiving the architect as propelled by inexorable social, political, and
economic forces. The architect-patron relationship may be elucidated in
considerable detail, but it is skewed by the bias towards the patronage
which generated the primary-source material in the fĳirst place. Unless a
substantial body of drawings survives, it is challenging task, in a study
based on patronage, to give due attention to artistic development and
design issues, or to assess the more conceptual aspects of the design phi-
losophy. Nonetheless, the multiple nuances conferred by complex patron-
age situations may add a revelatory new dimension—even to an architect
as well studied as Palladio—when based on ground-breaking research.88
The inherent interdisciplinarity of patronage-based studies ensures their
lasting value to scholarship.
Architects and Proti
The architect’s monograph, enlivened by its human interest, focuses

attention on the development of an individual designer’s personal style
and achievement. One of the fĳirst architects in Venice to become the
subject of a modern monograph was Mauro Codussi, whose career had
been almost entirely forgotten since his death in 1504 until his identity
was rediscovered by Paoletti at the end of the 19th century.89 Thanks to
his mastery of space and light, Codussi’s economical style appealed to
Modernist taste and theory. At the same time, the monographic format
tends to privilege the better documented architect, educated in the
classical tradition, over the more technically trained local proto. Pietro
Lombardo’s career ran parallel to that of Codussi, but his refĳined, erudite
use of classical ornament, executed with consummate skill, appeals less
88 This is impressively demonstrated by Tracy E. Cooper, Palladio’s Venice (New Haven/

London, 2005).
89 Luigi Angelini, Codussi (Milan, 1945); Lionello Puppi and Loredana Olivato Puppi,
Mauro Codussi e l’architettura veneziana del Primo Rinascimento (Milan, 1977).

770 deborah howard
to the modern aesthetic. Pietro still lacks a full architectural monograph,

although his son Tullio has benefĳited from the fruits of recent scholarship,
mainly devoted to his sculpture.90
The careers of Sansovino, Sanmicheli, and Palladio, preserved for pos-
terity in the published biographies of Vasari and later Temanza, have
long attracted monographic study.91 Both Vasari and Francesco Sansovino
devoted long passages to praising the technical achievements of Jacopo
Sansovino—just as Vasari had praised the Medici architect Michelozzo’s
triumphant restoration of the foundations of a Venetian palace while the
family slept undisturbed upstairs—as if to underline the supremacy of the
Tuscan tradition.92 During the second half of the 20th century, the study
of Palladio achieved a unique prominence: it is said that he has attracted
more publications than any other architect except Frank Lloyd Wright.93
The study of Palladio’s architecture, raised to a new academic level by the
four richly documented volumes by Giangiorgio Zorzi in 1959–69, benefĳits
in particular from the survival of a remarkable corpus of architectural draw-
ings, most of them now in England, especially the major collection held by
90 Anna Pizzati and Matteo Ceriana, eds., Tullio Lombardo: Documenti e testimonianze
(Verona, 2008); Alison Luchs, et al., Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance
Sculpture, exh. cat. (New Haven/London, 2009). See the fundamental study of Pietro
Lombardo’s life and career by Matteo Ceriana, ‘Lombardo, Pietro’, in Dizionario biografĳico
degli italiani, 65 (Rome, 2009), available on-line as http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/
pietro-lombardo_(Dizionario-Biografĳico)/; and also Deborah Howard, “Space, Light and
Ornament in Venetian Architecture: Pietro Lombardo Reconsidered,” in Blake de Maria
and Mary Frank, eds., Reflections on Renaissance Venice; A Celebration of Patricia Fortini
Brown (Milan, 2013), pp. 94–103.
91 Because the attribution of buildings according to stylistic criteria is more difffĳicult
than that of painting and sculpture, relatively few monographs on architects emerged
from the golden age of connoisseurship in the mid-20th century. The large square-format
volumes on published by Marsilio in the late 1960s and early 1970s brought the fĳirst modern
architectural monographs on Jacopo Sansovino by Manfredo Tafuri (Padua, 1969) and
Michele Sanmicheli (Padua, 1971) by Lionello Puppi. These volumes drew together existing
knowledge, analyzing the architecture within a framework of Marxist criticism. Excited
by the new possibilities of the telephoto lens, their photographers gave new prominence
to unfamiliar details, but also created some deceptive foreshortening efffects. Meanwhile
the comprehensive researches of Giangiorgio Zorzi led to the publication by Neri Pozza
in Vicenza of four richly documented volumes on Andrea Palladio’s work in Venice and
the Veneto. See below, note 94. The fruits of recent decades of documentary research have
been synthesized in the new series of architectural monographs published by Electa.
92 Vasari, Le vite, 2:434–35, 7:505; Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, fol. 144r.
These texts are analyzed in Deborah Howard, “Renovation and Innovation in Venetian
Architecture,” Scroope: Cambridge Architecture Journal 6 (1994), 66–74.
93 Deborah Howard, “Four Centuries of Literature on Palladio,” Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 39 (1980), 224–41.

the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.94 The effforts of the Cen-
tro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura in Vicenza, founded in 1958 to
promote the study of Palladio, have not only stimulated academic research
and debate through conferences, seminars, exhibitions, and publications,
but also have encouraged the restoration of long-neglected buildings.
Following in the footsteps of Elena Bassi, other authors have produced
monographs on architects of the 17th and 18th centuries, but although
Scamozzi, Longhena, Gaspari, and Sardi now profĳit from new scholarly
research, the situation in the case of individual Settecento architects is more
patchy.95 The interdisciplinary perspective of the pioneering new series,
Storia dell’architettura nel Veneto, promoted by the Palladio center in Vicenza,
offfers a hybrid of thematic, typological and monographic approaches,
launched by the fĳirst stimulating volume on Il Seicento in 2008.96
Republic and Empire
As the longest-lived republic in the history of Europe, Venice was proud

of its constitution based on that of ancient Rome. On the one hand,
Republican values, codifĳied in chronicles and printed texts on political
history and theory, molded the city’s townscape in ways that need careful
analysis. On the other, Venice was also an empire, proud of its terraferma
possessions and of its network of overseas colonies. The material legacy
of antiquity on the terraferma and in the colonies—whether extant
monuments, decorative fragments, capitals, precious marble columns,
sculptures, or inscriptions—nourished a rich tradition of antiquarian study
and collecting from the medieval period onwards.97 Venetian despoliation
94 Giangiorgio Zorzi, Disegni delle antichità di Andrea Palladio (Venice, 1959); idem, Le
opere pubbliche e i palazzi privati di Andrea Palladio (Venice, 1964); idem, Le chiese e i ponti di
Andrea Palladio (Vicenza, 1966); idem, Le ville e i teatri di Andrea Palladio (Vicenza, 1969).
95 Bassi, Architettura. On Scamozzi, see especially Franco Barbieri and Guido
Beltramini, eds., Vincenzo Scamozzi. 1548–1616, exh. cat. (Venice, 2003). On Longhena, see
in particular, Andrew Hopkins, Santa Maria della Salute: Architecture and Ceremony in
Baroque Venice (Cambridge, 2002; published in English by Yale University Press); Martina
Frank, Baldassare Longhena (Venice, 2004); and Andrew Hopkins, Baldassare Longhena
(1597–1682) (Milan, 2006). A useful short study is Paola Pifffaretti, Giuseppe Sardi architetto
ticinese nella Venezia del Seicento (Bellinzona, 1996). For the 18th century, Antonio Massari,
Giorgio Massari architetto veneziano del Settecento (Vicenza, 1971) offfers general coverage.
A recent update is provided by Martina Frank, ed., Da Longhena a Selva: Un’idea di Venezia
a dieci anni dalla scomparsa di Elena Bassi (Bologna, 2011).
96 De Amicis, ed., Il Seicento.
97 The fundamental study of this topic is Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity

772 deborah howard
of archaeological remains in the colonies for reuse in Venice has a long

history, justifĳied in a letter of Aretino to Sansovino in 1550:
I am certain that Rome, more than any other city, would be happy to see
that [Pola] had been stripped of the miraculous artifĳice of its [antique]
marbles, with the intention of adorning Venice, her cherished and sacred
daughter.98
The Republic took pride in its supposed foundation by refugees from
the last vestiges of the Roman Empire, a narrative reiterated over the
centuries in chronicles and histories.99 In architectural terms, republican
ideals found their expression in the writings of the ancients. For example,
Suetonius’s remark that the fĳirst emperor, Augustus, found Rome a city
of sun-dried brick and left it a city of marble, bequeathed to humanist
readers the view that precious marbles held imperial associations whereas
brick denoted republican austerity.100 Dedicated to Augustus, Vitruvius’s
treatise described an era before the construction of most of the surviving
monuments of imperial Rome. As a result, Renaissance architects such
as Serlio and Palladio, in their studies of the archaeological remains of
ancient Rome, found a mismatch between the writings of Vitruvius and
the evidence of the imperial remains themselves.
As the “Myth of Venice” became codifĳied in print in the 16th century,
its architectural expression had to confront the divergence of imperial
and republican ideals.101 In Piazza San Marco, the huge program of urban
renewal initiated by Jacopo Sansovino under Doge Gritti adopted a shame-
lessly imperial idiom, based on the classicism of ancient and modern
Rome and underpinned by architectural theory (Fig. 20.5).102 Even within
the private realm, the grandiose imperial language of Sansovino’s Palazzo
Corner and Sanmicheli’s Palazzo Grimani alluded to their role as public
ceremonial scenery adorning the banks of the Grand Canal, as well as to
the power, wealth, and Roman leanings of the two families. Imperial pre-
tension could, however, be deemed inappropriate. It has been suggested

98 Aretino, Lettere sull’arte, 2:321–22.

99 Brown, Venice and Antiquity, pp. 11–45.
100 Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, “Life of Augustus,” in The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert
Graves (Harmondsworth, 1957), pp. 51–108, ch. 28 on p. 66.
101 On the iconography of the “Myth of Venice,” see especially Rosand, The Myths of
Venice.
102 See especially Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, pp. 8–47; Manfredo Tafuri, ed., “Renovatio
Urbis”: Venezia nell’età di Andrea Gritti, 1523–1538 (Rome, 1984); Manuela Morresi, Piazza
San Marco: Istitutioni, poteri e architettura a Venezia nel primo Cinquecento (Milan, 1999);
Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino, pp. 182–227.

that the full-blown classicism of Sansovino’s design for the Scuola Grande
della Misericordia overstepped the social rank of a confraternity of citta-
dini and that this failure of decorum may account for its unfĳinished state.103
At the same time, it could be argued that this remarkable statement of
artistic ambition by the citizen class may have itself stimulated the patri-
cian oligarchy to initiate the renovatio in Piazza San Marco a few years
afterwards.
Whereas “imperial” architectural projects were mainly confĳined to
Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal, on peripheral sites the myth of
the simplicity of the fĳirst settlers encouraged a simpler mode of expres-
sion. A crucial text for the ideals of republican architecture was the letter
of the Roman offfĳicial Cassiodorus, written in 537 c.e., which claimed that
all Venetians “have abundance only of fĳish; rich and poor live together
in equality. The same food and similar houses are shared by all; where-
fore they cannot envy each other’s hearths and so they are free from the
vices that rule the world.”104 Mentioned by Sanudo and published in
full in Sansovino’s guidebook of 1581, Cassiodorus’s text orchestrated the
“memory” of the city’s foundation myth.105 Even wealthy members of the
ruling elite sought to emulate the simple lagoon life in their palaces on
the margins of the city—the palaces of Doge Andrea Gritti, the Senator
Leonardo Moro and Doge Leonardo Donà (Fig. 20.8) all display reticent
exteriors in local vernacular language.106
Town and Country
Ever since the fĳirst edition of Pompeo Molmenti’s lively work La storia di
Venezia nella vita privata, fĳirst published in 1880, curiosity about life within
the walls of Venetian houses has continued to grow.107 The difffĳiculty in
gaining access to domestic interiors, combined with the need to subdivide
and modernize dwellings has highlighted the threat to the preservation
103 Tafuri, ed., Venezia e il Rinascimento, p. 144.

104 As cited in Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice (New Haven/
London, 2002), p. 4.
105 Sanudo, De origine, pp. 11, 14; Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, fols 207v–208r.
106 Foscari and Tafuri, L’armonia e i conflitti, pp. 24–27; Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, pp.
146–54; Giulia Ceriana Sebregondi, “Un doge e il suo manifesto: Il palazzo di Leonardo
Donà (1536–1612) alle Fondamenta Nuove a Venezia,” Annali di architettura 14 (2002),
231–50.
107 Pompeo Molmenti, La storia di Venezia nella vita privata dalle origini alla caduta
della Repubblica (1880) expanded into 3 vols in the 4th edition (Bergamo, 1905–08).

774 deborah howard
Figure 20.8. Palazzo Donà, Fondamenta Nuove, Venice, begun 1610

(photo: Deborah Howard).
of evidence regarding the distribution and functions of rooms and led to

the destruction or deterioration of many aspects of interior decoration.108
The Modernist emphasis on space, light, and volume, too, has led to a
damaging neglect of the study of ornament and craftsmanship.
More positively, over the past few decades, the burgeoning interest in
material culture and micro-history has encouraged the close scrutiny of
household inventories.109 When an individual died in Venice, his or her
goods were often itemized as part of the probate procedures, while over-
seas household possessions were inventoried for repatriation to the heirs.
These inventories provide an enticing view through the keyhole, expos-
ing the cultural spectrum of the owner—whether in terms of intellectual
108 Wolfgang Wolters, Architektur und Ornament: venezianischer Bauschmuck der

Renaissance (Munich, 2005).
109 See especially Patricia Fortini Brown, Art and Life in Renaissance Venice (New
Haven/London, 2004); and De Maria, Becoming Venetian. For Venetians overseas, see
Francesco Bianchi and Deborah Howard, “Life and Death in Damascus: The Material
Culture of Venetians in the Syrian Capital in the Mid-Fifteenth Century,” Studi veneziani,
n.s. 45 (2003), 233–99.

pursuits, the collection of works of art, recreation, or entertainment. In

architectural terms, the location of objects in inventories can cast light on
the use of individual rooms, although it is important to remember that in
the immediate aftermath of a death, objects were often moved around.
Furniture and clothing help to give substance to the social identity of the
subject, often illuminating the geographical provenance of the objects.
The profusion of inventories of women’s possessions helps to illuminate
the gendering of architectural space, but the study of inventories needs
to be approached cautiously, for a woman’s possessions often listed only
those items specifĳied in her dowry at the time of her marriage.
The relationship between family life in the city and the villeggiatura
enjoyed by both Venetians and their subjects on the terraferma now
benefĳits from a more subtle analysis, thanks to recent scholarship and
exhibitions.110 Even the suburban villas of the islands of the lagoon have
become better known.111 Whereas images of country recreations such as
banqueting, music-making, and hunting illuminate the more agreeable
aspects of villa life, the fruits of economic history now go much further
towards explaining the true extent of the period’s agricultural revolution.
It has been shown, for example, that many of Palladio’s patrons were
actively involved in silk production and manufacture.112 This previously
unrecognized dimension helps to establish their close contacts with Vene-
tian commerce and to explain their access to capital for building. The
records of the purchase and sale of farmland now need to be analyzed
in a more subtle way, because of the growing realization of the extent to
which Venetian landowners offfered mortgage loans to their neighbors by
“buying” small parcels of land on a temporary basis.113
The recent explorations of private life and its relationship to architecture
have not yet extended fully enough to the 17th and 18th centuries. Venice
in this period still sufffers from its characterization as a city dominated by
masked balls, carnival antics, theatrical events, gambling, courtesans, and
110 Guido Beltramini and Howard Burns, eds., Andrea Palladio e la villa veneta da
Petrarca a Carlo Scarpa, exh. cat. (Venice, 2005).
111 Goy, Venetian Vernacular Architecture, pp. 172–250; Patrick Monahan, “Sanudo and
the Venetian villa suburbana,” Annali di architettura 21 (2009), 45–64.
112 Edoardo Demo, “Le attività economiche dei committenti vicentini di Palladio.
Nuove suggestioni sulla base dei recenti ritrovamenti archivistici,” in Franco Barbieri
et al., Palladio 1508–2008: Il simposio del cinquecentenario (Venice, 2008), pp. 25–28.
113 Brian Pullan, “The Occupations and Investments of the Venetian Nobility in the
Middle and Late Sixteenth Century,” in J. R. Hale, ed., Renaissance Venice (London, 1974),
pp. 379–408, on pp. 388–89; Lucia Bullian, “La villa come centro di credito rurale: il caso dei
Barbaro a Maser,” in Renzo Derosas, ed., Villa: Siti e contesti (Treviso, 2006), pp. 211–20.

776 deborah howard
villeggiatura. Further study of the industries, religious life, and intellectual

activities of the last two centuries of the Republic would help to create a
more balanced view of the period and its architectural fabric.
Devotion and Memorialization
The impact of the fall of the Republic on ecclesiastical life has already
been mentioned, and its full implications must be carefully borne in mind,
for it was at this point that the understanding of the functions of diffferent
types of churches fell into near oblivion. In the early years of the 19th
century, some churches were transformed into sterilized art-historical
“monuments”: the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, for instance, was
stripped of all its nave altars and post-Quattrocento fĳittings.114 Others were
converted into factories, munition stores, or prisons.115 Churches designed
for use by mendicant friars, such as the Frari, San Francesco della Vigna,
and the Redentore, became parish churches, while many altarpieces were
either removed or transferred to other locations. The effforts of medieval
Venice to fashion itself as a Holy City—the fĳirst stage on the pilgrimage to
Jerusalem—were forgotten, as relics and precious liturgical objects were
moved or lost.116
At the same time, St Mark’s became the cathedral of Venice in 1806,
a function formerly held by the church of San Pietro di Castello on the
eastern margins of the city. Originally both a palatine chapel and a shrine
for the evangelist’s body, the building of St Mark’s had been modeled on
the Justinian church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople (destroyed
in 1457). As Martino da Canal remarked in the later 13th century, “hav-
ing built such a beautiful church, the Venetians decided that it should be
embellished every year for ever and ever, and this is what they do.”117 Thus
the church, though deeply rooted in Byzantine tradition, was continually
modifĳied by later accretions and alterations that continued throughout the
lifetime of the Republic. In the 16th century, a major modifĳication to the
interior was implemented by the proto Jacopo Sansovino at the request of
114 Deborah Howard, “The Church of the Miracoli in Venice and Pittoni’s ‘St Jerome’
altar-piece,” Burlington Magazine 131 (1989), 684–92.
115 Alvise Zorzi, Venezia scomparsa, 2 vols (Milan, 1977).
116 Howard, Venice & the East, pp. 189–216.
117 Cited in Howard, Venice & the East, p. 99.

Doge Andrea Gritti.118 Overweight and sufffering from gout, Gritti became
unable to climb the steep narrow stairs to the octagonal porphyry-rimmed
pulpit just outside the rood-screen. In consequence, Sansovino installed a
new ducal throne in the chancel, surrounded by new seating for the high-
est dignitaries of state. The clergy were thus forced to move to the back
of the chancel near the high altar. The transfer of the ducal party into the
presbytery gave added sanctity to the role of the doge.
Recent attention to the relation of liturgy to its architectural setting has
opened up new approaches to the study of ecclesiastical space.119 Inves-
tigations into institutional patronage, complemented by new research in
religious history, have encouraged a more interdisciplinary approach to
research in ecclesiastical architecture. Church interiors may now more
easily be viewed as settings for devotional practices and cults, their spaces
brought to life by music and liturgy. The interaction between lay and reli-
gious patronage, too, informs the study of tombs and monuments, cha-
pel decoration and works of art. Francesco Sansovino’s list of the ducal
andate—the doge’s annual visits to 11 particular churches—highlights
their former prominence in the liturgical calendar, but even the surviv-
ing ceremonial books are often tantalizingly reticent about the spatial
choreography of these visits.120 Lively snippets in Sanudo’s diaries record
some of the uses of individual churches, and the apostolic and patriar-
chal visitations of the Counter Reformation help to reconstruct devotional
practices, but the positions of musicians, clergy, and singers are not easily
disentangled.121
* * *
Venice and the Veneto offfer unrivaled opportunities to the architectural
historian in their historic patrimony and rich archival resources. The
profusion of research over the last few decades has opened up new
approaches, ranging from micro-history to broader thematic studies, and
from theoretical enquiries to surveys of building fabric. But architectural
history is far more than the history of architecture: in urban life it is the
118 Deborah Howard, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music,
Acoustics (New Haven/London, 2009), pp. 26–42, with further bibliography.
119 Jorg Stabenow, ed., Lo spazio e il culto: Relazioni tra l’edifĳicio ecclesiale e il suo uso
liturgico dal XV al XVII secolo (Venice, 2006); Iain Fenlon, The Ceremonial City: History,
Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice (New Haven/London, 2007); Howard and Moretti,
Sound and Space.
120 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, fols. 193v–206v.
121 Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space.

778 deborah howard
setting for all human activity, and it is the potential to weave architecture
into the warp of broader historical discourse that creates exciting research
possibilities for the young scholars of the future.
A Note on Sources
Giulio Lorenzetti, Venezia e il suo estuario (Rome, 1935); and in English

Venice and its Lagoon, trans. John Guthrie (Trieste, 1960), is still an
essential resource for scholars and serious tourists. See also Richard J.
Goy, Venice: An Architectural Guide (New Haven/London, 2010). Synthetic
studies of Venetian architecture, intended for the general reader, the
educated visitor, and the university student include Deborah Howard,
The Architectural History of Venice (London, 1980 and 1987), rev. and enl.
edn. (New Haven/London, 2002); Richard J. Goy, Venice: The City and its
Architecture (London, 1997); and Ennio Concina, A History of Venetian
Architecture, trans. Judith Landry (Cambridge, 1998). In all cases these
extend to modern times, although Goy’s book is arranged typologically
rather than by period.
This essay cannot offfer a complete literature review of early modern
Venetian architecture, but further bibliography may be found in the core
works listed in the notes.

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A Companion to Venetian

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

List of Maps and Figures .............................................................................. ix

Introduction: A Brief Survey of Histories of Venice ............................. 1

Venice and Its Surroundings ....................................................................... 25

Politics and Constitution .............................................................................. 47

The Terraferma State ..................................................................................... 85

Venice’s Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period ..................... 125

The Venetian Economy ................................................................................. 255

Industry and Production in the Venetian Terraferma

Family and Society

Society and the Sexes in the Venetian Republic ................................... 353

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

Charity and Confraternities ......................................................................... 421

Venice and its Minorities ............................................................................. 449

The Anthropology of Venice ....................................................................... 487

Liturgies of Violence: Social Control and Power Relationships

Wayfarers in Wonderland: The Sexual Worlds of Renaissance

The Venetian Intellectual World ................................................................ 571

Venetian Literature and Publishing .......................................................... 615

Book Publishing and the Circulation of Information .......................... 651

Education in the Republic of Venice ........................................................ 675

Science and Medicine in Early Modern Venice .................................... 701

Venetian Architecture ................................................................................... 743

Art in Venice, 1400–1600 ............................................................................... 779

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

Venetian Art, 1600–1797 ................................................................................ 811

Music in Venice: A Historigraphical Overview ...................................... 865

Clothing, Fashion, Dress, and Costume in Venice (c.1450–1650) ..... 889

Venetian Language ......................................................................................... 929

Appendix One: Venetian Doges 1400–1797 ............................................. 959

Index ................................................................................................................... 961

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

urban fabric.6 Houses arranged around interconnected courtyards in a

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

Sansovino in the 1530s but since forgotten.12 However, archaeology in the

The distinctive quality of the townscape fostered an obsession with its

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

sight could often dissolve into random untidiness, squalor, or mischief

Archives and Antiquarians

17 Alvise Zorzi, Venezia scomparsa, 2 vols (Milan, 1977).

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

the family. An exceptional case of a surviving private archive relating to

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

published in Venice in 1893.25 Paoletti was the fĳirst scholar to attempt

In parallel with the fascination with topographical images, Venice

25 Pietro Paoletti, L’architettura e la scultura del Rinascimento in Venezia, 3 vols (Venice,

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

interpretations displaced the slippery meanings doubtless propagated in

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

bequeathed an invaluable body of background information for the study of

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-25251-6

their palaces into numerous smaller properties, through repeated subdivi-