Venice Reconsidered offers a dynamic portrait of Venice from the establishment of the Republic at the end of the thirteenth century to its fall to Napoleon in 1797. In contrast to earlier efforts to categorize Venice's politics as strictly republican and its society as rigidly tripartite and hierarchical, the scholars in this volume present a more fluid and complex interpretation of Venetian culture. Drawing on a variety of disciplines—history, art history, and musicology—these essays present innovative variants of the myth of Venice—that nearly inexhaustible repertoire of stories Venetians told about themselves.
The Johns Hopkins University Press
— Thomas Kuehn
— Christopher Carlsmith
— Jonathan Walker
— Filippo de Vivo
A welcome and illuminating book.
Succeeds both in reassessing outdated conceptions of life under the Venetian Republic and in proposing new fields of research... This book contributes substantially toward a more comprehensive, complex view of Venice... This is an exemplary collection of essays that provides a fresh look at five hundred years of Venetian social and political history.
Provides an excellent survey of the state of current research on the city.
Chronological width is matched by thematic wealth... The volume is likely to become a landmark in Venetian historiography.
Contents:
PrefaceList of ContributorsReconsidering Venice
John Martin and Dennis Romano Part I. The Setting1 Toward an Ecological Understanding of the Myth of Venice
Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan Part II. Politics and Culture2 The Serrata of the Great Council and Venetian Society, 1286–1323
Gerhard Rösch3 Hard Times and Ducal Radiance: Andrea Dandolo and the Construction of the Ruler in Fourteenth-Century Venice
Debra Pincus4 Was There Republicanism in the Renaissance Republics? Venice after Agnadello
Edward Muir5 Confronting New Realities: Venice and the Peace of Bologna, 1530
Elisabeth G. Gleason6 "A Plot Discover'd?"Myth, Legend, and the "Spanish"Conspiracy against Venice in 1618
Richard Mackenney7 Opera, Festivity, and Spectacle in "Revolutionary"Venice: Phantasms of Time and History
Martha Feldman Part III. Society and Culture8 Identity and Ideology in Renaissance Venice: The Third Serrata
Stanley Chojnacki9 Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites
Patricia Fortini Brown10 Elite Citizens
James S. Grubb11 Veronese's High Altarpiece for San Sebastiano: A Patrician Commissionfor Counter Reformation Church
Peter Humfrey12 Early Modern Venice as a Center of Information and Communication
Peter Burke13 Toward a Social History of Women in Venice: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
Federica Ambrosini14 Slave Redemption in Venice, 1585–1797
Robert C. Davis Part IV. After the Fall15 The Creation of Venetian Historiography
Claudio Povolo
Index
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Overview
Venice Reconsidered offers a dynamic portrait of Venice from the establishment of the Republic at the end of the thirteenth century to its fall to Napoleon in 1797. In contrast to earlier efforts to categorize Venice's politics as strictly republican and its society as rigidly tripartite and hierarchical, the scholars in this volume present a more fluid and complex interpretation of Venetian culture. Drawing on a variety of disciplines—history, art history, and musicology—these essays present innovative variants ...