Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past

Venice was unique among major Italian cities in having no classical past of its own. As such, it experienced the Renaissance in a manner quite different from that of Florence or Rome. In this pathbreaking book, Patricia Fortini Brown focuses on Venice's Golden Age - from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century - and shows how it was influenced by antiquity, by its Byzantine heritage, and by its own historical experience. Drawing on such remains of vernacular culture as inscriptions, medals, and travelers' accounts, on more learned humanist and antiquarian writings, and, most importantly, on the art of the period, Brown explores Venice's evolving sense of the past. She begins with the late middle ages, when Venice sought to invent a dignified civic past by means of object, image, and text. Moving on to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, she discusses the collecting and recording of antiquities and the incorporation of Roman forms and motifs into its Byzantine and Gothic urban fabric. She notes, as well, the emergence of a new imperializing rhetoric in its historical writing. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, Brown observes the personal appropriation of classical motifs and prerogatives to celebrate not only the state, but also the individual and the family, and the fabrication of a lost world of pastoral myth and archaeological fantasy in art and vernacular literature. Through the adoption of a literary and architectural vocabulary of classical antiquity in the sixteenth century, civic Venice is shown to claim for itself an identity that is universalizing as well as unique. Venice was unique among major Italian cities in having no classical past of its own. As such, it experienced the Renaissance in a manner quite different from that of Florence or Rome. In this pathbreaking book, Patricia Fortini Brown focuses on Venice's Golden Age -- from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century -- and shows how it was influenced by antiquity, by its Byzantine heritage, and by its own historical experience.Drawing on such remains of vernacular culture as inscriptions, medals, and travelers' accounts, on more learned humanist and antiquarian writings, and most important, on the art of the period, Brown explores Venice's evolving sense of the past. She begins with the late Middle Ages, when Venice sought to invent a dignified civic past by means of object, image, and text. Moving on to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, she discusses the collecting and recording of antiquities and the incorporation of Roman forms and motifs into its Byzantine and Gothic urban fabric. She notes, as well, the emergence of a new imperializing rhetoric in its historical writing. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, Brown observes the personal appropriation of classical motifs and prerogatives to celebrate not only the state, but also the individual and the family, and the fabrication of a lost world of pastoral myth and archaeological fantasy in art and vernacular literature. Through the adoption of a literary and architectural vocabulary of classical antiquity in the sixteenth century, civic Venice is shown to claim for itself an identity that is universalizing as well as unique. Brown thus weaves the visual arts into a tapestry of historical and aesthetic sensibilities thatembrace both the public and private spheres and the "high" and so-called "minor" arts, giving voice to those who created and participated in the culture that was Renaissance Venice. Frontmatter (page N/A) Acknowledgments (page ix) Preface (page xi) PART I THE HISTORICAL IMPERATIVE: INVENTING A CIVIC PAST Prologue (page 3) 1 Implied Origins (page 11) 2 A Documented Past (page 31) PART II THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: DISTANCING THE PAST Prologue (page 49) 3 Expanded Horizons, a Heightened Awareness (page 55) 4 Antique Fragments, Renaissance Eyes (page 75) PART III THE HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS: ACCOMMODATING THE CLASSICAL TRADITION Prologue (page 95) 5 A More Perfect Present (page 99) 6 Distant Times, Nearby Places (page 117) PART IV THE HISTORICAL RESTITUTION: ACQUIRING AN ANCIENT PAST Prologue (page 145) 7 The Still Visible Past (page 149) 8 A Perpetual Empire (page 163) PART V THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION: CONSTRUCTING AN ALTERNATE REALITY Prologue (page 183) 9 Antiquity in the Mind (page 189) 10 A Special License (page 207) PART VI THE HISTORICAL ECHO: CREATING NEW IDENTITIES Prologue (page 225) 11 A Noble Bloodline (page 231) 12 A New Triumphal Vocabulary (page 263) Epilogue (page 285) Appendix 1 A note on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the identity of Francesco Colonna (page 287) Appendix 2 Pietro Aretino's De Tempore (page 291) Abbreviations (page 292) Notes (page 293) Bibliography (page 336) Photographic Credits (page 352) Index (page 353)