"As the sixteenth century opened, members of the patriciate were increasingly withdrawing from trade, desiring to be seen as "gentlemen in fact" as well as "gentlemen in name." The author considers why this was so and explores such wide-ranging themes as attitudes toward wealth and display, the articulation of family identity, the interplay between the public and the private, and the emergence of characteristically Venetian decorative practices and styles of art and architecture. Brown focuses new light on the visual culture of Venetian women - how they lived within, furnished, and decorated their homes; what spaces were allotted to them; what their roles and domestic tasks were; how they dressed; how they raised their children; and how they entertained. Bringing together both high arts and low, the book examines all aspects of Renaissance material culture."--BOOK JACKET.

Originally published in 1987. Since Machiavelli, historians and political theorists have sought the sources of the stability that earned for Venice the appellation La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic. In Patricians and Popolani, Dennis Romano looks to the private lives of early Renaissance Venetians for an explanation. Fourteenth-century Venice escaped the tumultuous upheavals of the other Italian city-republics, Romano contends, because the patricians and common people of the city did not divide sharply along class or factional lines in their personal associations. Rather, Venetians of the era moved in a variety of intersecting social networks that were shaped and influenced by an overriding sense of civic community. Drawing on the private archives of Venice—notarial registers, collections of testaments, and records of estates maintained by the procurators of San Marco—Romano analyzes the primary social bonds in the lives of the city's inhabitants. In separate chapters, Patricians and Popolani examines the forms of association in everyday Venetian life: marriage and family structure; artisan workshops and relations among tradesmen; the role of the parish clergy and the "sacred networks" that formed around convents, hospitals, and confraternities; and neighborhood and patron–client ties. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, Romano argues, all these networks of association had been transformed as a new hierarchical spirit took hold and overwhelmed the older, more freewheeling tendencies of Venetian society. The old sense of community yielded to a new and equally compelling sense of place, and La Serenissima remained stable throughout the later Renaissance.

"What was Venice like during the Renaissance, at the height of its power? How did the city look, and how did its citizens live? And just who were the people of this most cosmopolitan republic, a leading port city of Europe and gateway to Byzantium and the Muslim Levant? How did its splendid art differ from that of mainland Italy, and why? Through close examination of Renaissance paintings, drawings, book illustrations, and other art works, Patricia Fortini Brown brings this world alive, revealing a culture of high beauty, artifice, and craftsmanship." -- book jacket.

Based on a fascinating body of previously unexamined archival material, this book brings to life the lost voices of ordinary Venetians during the age of Catholic revival. Looking at scripts that were brought to the city's ecclesiastical courts by spouses seeking to annul their marriage vows, this book opens up the emotional world of intimacy and conflict, sexuality, and living arrangements that did not fit normative models of marriage.

Venetian art connoisseur, interior designer, and hotelier Francesca Bortolotto Possati knows the intricacies of Venice. To have her as a guide is to experience firsthand her passion for the private side of the mythic city whose daily visitors outnumber its population. Join her to visit artists’ studios, elegant Venetian friends, and palaces’ secrets. Everywhere one wanders, a sense of history saturates the buildings and landscapes, harking back to the artists of the Renaissance and the chic masquerade balls of centuries past.The discerning eye of photographer Robyn Lea makes this book a revelation of the Venice of dreams, which will surely allow readers to see this iconic destination through new eyes.A sentimental foreword by Jeremy Irons perfectly complements this stunning volume.

Overzicht van de Venetiaanse architectuur, vanaf de stichting in de Romeinse tijd tot nu.

What does writing Greek books mean at the height of the Cinquecento in Venice? The present volume provides fascinating insights into Greek-language book production at a time when printed books were already at a rather advanced stage of development with regards to requests, purchases and exchanges of books; copying and borrowing practices; relations among intellectuals and with institutions, and much more. Based on the investigation into selected institutional and private libraries – in particular the book collection of Gabriel Severos, guide of the Greek Confraternity in Venice – the authors present new pertinent evidence from Renaissance books and documents, discuss methodological questions, and propose innovative research perspectives for a sociocultural approach to book histories.