Building Renaissance Venice

This book brings to life the story of the construction of some of the most outstanding early Renaissance buildings in Venice. Through a series of individual case studies, Richard J. Goy explores how and why great buildings came to be built. He addresses the practical issues of constructing such buildings as the Torre dell’Orologio in Piazza San Marco, the Arsenale Gate, and the churches of Santa Maria della Carita and San Zaccaria, focusing particular attention on the process of patronage. The book is the first to trace the complete process of creating important buildings, from the earliest conception in the minds of the patrons--the Venetian state or other institutional patrons--through the choice of architect, the employment of craftsmen, and the selection of materials. In an interesting analysis of the participants’ roles, Goy highlights the emerging importance of the superintending master, the protomaestro.

Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters provide the first contemporary single-volume survey of the three arts of Venice -- painting, sculpture, and architecture. They offer an important counterbalance to the traditional orientation toward painting as the city's preeminent art by focusing on architecture as the essential Venetian artistic medium. In the process, they define the distinctly Venetian terms by which the city and culture should be understood. Huse and Wolters begin their study with 1460, when Venice was one of the key powers of Italy, and end their discussion with the death of Tintoretto in 1594, a period of waning international power. Wolfgang Wolters outlines the city's development and present a typological survey of Venetian architecture. A review of sculptors and their works follows. Norbert Huse opens the next section, on painting, by describing the changed situation of painters at the end of the fifteenth century. He explores the different forms and functions of Venetian paintings in three distinct periods. With over three hundred illustrations and an exhaustive bibliography, this volume successfully fills a gap in art historical scholarship. -- From publisher's description.

A guide to Venetian architecture that covers all the major architects of the period 1460-1525, with special attention to the work of Pietro Lombardo and Mauro Codussi.

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

A glamorous and unprecedented exploration of Palladio's work in one of the most beautiful of all cities

The idea of a Venetian forestry service might strike one as the beginning of a joke. The statement that it began in the fourteenth century would surprise most people. Venice is built on a lagoon with no timber resources. This book reveals the story of Venice's attempt to establish protected forests in order to have a constant supply of wood. Beyond the need for wood for heating and cooking, tall beams of oak and beech were needed for ship building and the shoring up of breakwaters that kept the sea from flooding the city. The author follows the practice of forest conservation and management from its inception in the 1300s to the end of the eighteenth century. He details the administrative and legal debates as well as problems with the implementation of policies. This study is a corrective to histories that assume a lack of interest in forest conservation in Europe at this time. The experience of the Venetians also serves as an example for timber use and conservation today.

Pursuing the intersections of Venetian culture from the beginning of the sixteenth century through the first decades of the seventeenth, Manfredo Tafuri develops a story crowded with characters and full of surprises. He engages the doges Andrea Gritti and Leonardo Dona; architects and artists Sansovino, Serlio, Palladio, and Scamozzi; and scientists Francesco Barozzi and Galileo. He records the battle that was fought for architecture as metaphor for absolute truth and good government, and contrasts these with the myths that inspired them.