The Myth of Venice
HTAV student lecture 2006
Dr K. Peterson
The way Venice presented itself as La Serenissma to the world.
The phrase ‘myth of Venice’ is modern but the ideas it encompases
were clearly articulated in Renaissance Venice and had their origins
even earlier.
The Venetian self concept can be summed up with words like:Republican/ the home of liberty
Harmonious/stable
Just
Pious
Productive/prosperous/wealthy
Beautiful
Benevolent/cosmopolitan
‘Venice’s reputation for beauty, religiosity, liberty, peacefulness and
republicanism modern scholars call the “myth of Venice”. This
catalogue of attributes constituting the myth is not just the creation
of latter-day scholars, however: the Renaissance Venetians
acknowledged the same myth in their visual arts, musical lyrics,
poetry, official and popular history, humanist works and, above all,
in ritual and pageantry.’
Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, p. 21
‘ Over the course of several centuries Venice has refined a portrait
of itself that responded to and exploited historical circumstance
and vicissitude’
David Rosand, Myths of Venice, p. 1
Martin da Canale, C 13th ‘Venice, which is today the fairest and
pleasantest in the world, full of beauty and of all good things’
Pier Tafur (Spaniard ) ‘The city has no wall, nor any fortress, except
those two castles which enclose the harbour, since its defence lies in
the sea.’ 1430s
Marin Sanudo _ Venice built ‘more by divine than human will’.
Medieval engraving: The City in the Sea
The Porta
della Carta
The arch,
built by
Doge
Foscari,
linking the
treasury of
San Marco
and the
Ducal
Palace.
Identify the
significant
elements
C1400,
Marco
Polo’s
departure,
an
illumination
Crowned kingdom above kingdoms
O the universe, where of Christianity
In holy baptism
Your equal in the world is not to be found
You are in the world a living phoenix
That renews itself and never changes form
Just as your custom
Seems to me transformed into what I speak
….
I speak the truth, I speak of what I love,
That Troy was never so powerful
Nor Rome in ancient times
As Venice, and now it is clearly shown.
…
The great lion has one paw in the meadow,
The other on the mountain, the third on the plain,
The fourth is set in the sea
So as to make a wide passage
Anon early 1400s
Crowned kingdom above kingdoms
O the universe, where of Christianity
In holy baptism
Your equal in the world is not to be found
You are in the world a living phoenix
That renews itself and never changes form
Just as your custom
Seems to me transformed into what I speak
….
I speak the truth, I speak of what I love,
That Troy was never so powerful
Nor Rome in ancient times
As Venice, and now it is clearly shown.
…
The great lion has one paw in the meadow,
The other on the mountain, the third on the plain,
The fourth is set in the sea
So as to make a wide passage
Anon early 1400s
Mansuetti, Miracle at the Bridge
Part of the
Miracle of the
Holy Cross,
Carpaccio
1496+
Healing of the
Possessed Man
Gentile Gellini, Miracle of the Bridge of San Lorenzo
1500
Bassano,
The
Consignment of
the Sword
(1580s)
Celebrates
events in 1170s
when the Doge
mediated
between the
Holy Roman
Emperor,
Frederick
Barbarossa and
the Pope `
Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco 1496
Lion of St Mark, 1516, (painting on canvas) Vittore
Carpaccio. Originally painted for the Magistrates of
the Treasury, whose officers were in the Rialto. Later
hung in the Doge’s Palace.
Allegory of the League of Cambrai,Palma il Giovane,
1590
Veronese:
Apotheosis
of Venice
(Triumph of
Venice
Jacopo Tintoretto,
The Voluntary
Subjugation of the
Provinces to
Venice, 1578-85
Some comments by modern historians:
‘In response to diplomatic failures, the Venetians retreated into
the comfort of the myth, which seemed to grow…in an inverse
proportion to the decline of Venice’s actual political power.’
Muir, Civic Ritual
Venetian narrative painters had to satisfy their self-conscious
public in two ways. Renaissance Venetians needed to see
historical truths verified by depiction in paint, as Fortini Brown
has so persuasively shown in her work on the pictorial cycles in
the Venetian scuole. But they also needed narrative paintings
visually to reinforce and to confirm the political, economic and
social strength and authority of the Serenissima.
Francis Ames-Lewis, “The image of Venice in Renaissance narrative
painting”, from New Impressions of Venetian Renaissance Painting
(1994) pp.17-29
Just yesterday evening there was a man in front of
the bishop who said he was a marchesco (a follower
of St Mark and therefore of Venice) and marchesco
he would die, for he did not want to live any other
way; so the Bishop had him hanged.. it is impossible
that the king can keep these lands with such
countrymen living.
Machiavelli, the Florentine secretary and sometime
critic of Venice, commenting in Verona in 1509 on
the way many of the popolani preferred Venetian
rule to that of the feudal nobles who regained
control of the city under the League of Cambrai.
Benedetto Dei (Florentine writer and information disseminator, client of
the Medici) 1472 denied that Venice was a stable, just republic,
the false and futile claims, that the state and the Signoria of
Venice has ruled for a thousand years without ever changing or
making any innovations – you are simply scattering your
counterfeit money for those who know no better. …Venice has
undergone more revolutions and innovation and bloodshed than
have the four most violent and warlike cities in Italy.
Pius11, who tried and failed to get the Venetians to agree to a crusade
against the Turks, admitted thatVenetian gov.t:
within the memory of our fathers Venetian justice was rated very high.
yet in 1465 he wrote:
What do fish care about law? As among brute beats aquatic
creatures have the least intelligence, so among human beings the
Venetians are the least just and the least capable of humanity and
naturally for they live on the sea and pass their lives in the
water… not so much companions of men as of fish and crowds of
marine monsters.
Lament of the Venetians. Anonymous,
German woodcut 1509