Volume 34, Number 12 · July 16, 1987
Venetian Secrets
By Felix Gilbert
The Venetian Patriciate: Reality versus Myth
by Donald E. Queller
University of Illinois Press, 386 pp., $29.95
Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance
by Margaret L. King
Princeton University Press, 524 pp., $65.00
Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice: Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans
by Rona Goffen
Yale University Press, 285 pp., $40.00
On October 30, 1500, Anton Kolb, a German living in Venice, asked the Venetian government to waive customs duties and to permit him to export a woodcut that, at Kolb's expense, had been made 'to honor the reputation of the famous city of Venice.' The woodcut was a bird's-eye view of Venice, the work of the painter Jacopo de Barbari; the original can be seen in the Museo Correr, where it is still the wonder and delight of every visitor. The Church of Saint Geminiano, which the woodcut shows standing on the west side of the Piazza San Marco, is no longer there; Napoleon ordered its destruction so that the Piazza would become the largest ballroom of the world. Santa Maria della Salute, rebuilt in commemoration of the end of the plague in 1630, did not yet dominate the entrance to the Grand Canal, and the long front of Byzantine-Gothic houses along the Grand Canal was not interrupted by the splendor of Baroque palaces. Yet De Barbari's Venice is still the Venice of today: in his woodcut you can find the churches you have visited, the route you took from the Piazza San Marco to the Church of San Paolo e Giovanni.
Review, 3546 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |