Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past [Hardcover]

Dr. Patricia Fortini Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 1997

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Unlike the other great centers of Italian Renaissance art, Venice had no connection with ancient Rome; its site was not inhabited until after the fall of the empire. Brown (art and archaeology, Princeton) here argues that because of this lack of a Roman connection, Venetians devised a history for their city, creating a genealogy that they found acceptable. To support this formulation, Venice is examined during its Golden Age (the 13th to 16th centuries) through its arts, crafts, and literature to explore the "evolution of a Venetian view of time, of history and of historical change." Brown is painstaking in her research, using many translations of primary sources from the period. She includes 42 pages of notes and a 15-page bibliography (in small print). Though her writing style may strike the average reader as pedantic, specialists will find this a useful source. For academic history and art collections.?Mary Morgan Smith, Northland P.L., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...an intense and intelligent retelling of [Venice's] story from infancy to maturity..." -- Manifesto, January 1998

"Brown's lavish scholarly study...reconstructs the minds and motives of Venetian merchants who sailed for centuries across the eastern Mediterranean." -- New York Review of Books, November 6, 1997 (Ingrid H. Rowland)

"Persuasively argued...obligatory reading for anyone with an interest in the culture of Venice during its 'golden age." -- The Sunday Telegraph, March 9, 1997 (John Adamson)

"This fascinating book explores a subject that strangely no one has tackled in depth before . . . . -- Rough Guide to Venice, 2001 edition

"formidably erudite ... lucidly written, consistently stimulating and warmed by unmistakable affection for the city . . ." -- The London Times, February 20, 1997

"on my next visit to Venice I shall carry with me a whole sheaf of photocopied pages..." -- The Observer Review, February 23, 1997 (John Julius Norwich)

"succeeds in marshalling a mass of material into a coherent and limpid series of essays..." -- Apollo, December 1997

. . .Venice never settled for mere imitation or replication. The city had a sense of its own distinctiveness that made it adapt all classical and biblical endorsements to its own peculiar history. This led to a persistent ethic of diversity that Patricia Fortini Brown . . . subtly analyzes in Venice and Antiquity. . . . Ms. Brown . . . shows in sensitive detail how the perpetual reinvention of Venice . . . led to peculiarly shifting and illusionistic view of the past, undergoing subtle changes like the light of the city's own watery atmosphere. No one can revisit familiar scenes in Venice, after reading this book, without seeing new aspects to the Venetian performance, that sleight-of-hand that deceives even as it delights. -- The New York Times Book Review, Garry Wills

Book of the week -- Observer Review, March 2, 1997

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 376 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (February 27, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300067003
• ISBN-13: 978-0300067002
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,148,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth browsing, but pedantic style mars enjoyment., January 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (Hardcover)

Terrific photos, could wish more were in color. Prose somewhat academic and overblown, or shall we say "Venetian"? Author and editor should consult Elements of Style. Simple points become elaborate expositions. More wit; less pedantry desirable. Bottom line, don't read this too closely, but do peruse it, and excavate for what you want to know.