Inaug.-diss.--Heidelberg, 1908. / Lebenslauf. "Ein Teildruck des im gleichen Verlag erscheinenden Buches 'Die venezianischen Relazionen und ihr Verhältnis zur Kultur der Renaissance'."--Vorwort. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis reconstructs the activities of a single print workshop, active from 1515 to 1593. By providing a microcosm of the Venetian print industry, it both challenges preconceived notions of the inherent competitiveness of the industry, and demonstrates the sheer variety of printed material available for purchase during the sixteenth century. Chapter One begins by reconstructing the life of Giovanni Andrea Vavassore, a woodcarver from a small Bergamasco town in the Venetian terra-ferma. By charting his integration into a new city and a new trade, it questions the role of religious and social institutions in enabling ‘foreigners’ to feel at home in Venice, and considers the push and pull factors at work among immigrants in the Renaissance. Chapter Two focuses closely on reconstructing the workshop’s output, using a catalogue of works compiled for this thesis to demonstrate the quantity and variety of printed material sold in a sixteenth century printshop. It also gives an insight into the world of the Venetian bottega and the artisans who worked within it. Chapter Three highlights the importance of networking and collaboration in the world of Venetian print. By drawing on a selection of illustrations produced by Vavassore for other publishers, it demonstrates the close working relationships – and geographical proximity – that enabled new printers to enter the trade, and continued to support them in the decades that followed. Chapter Four nuances the idea of the network further, demonstrating the importance of copying, and the sharing of resources, in the workshop’s production of maps. It also offers a new perspective on the purchasing habits of people in the Renaissance, questioning why large multi-sheet maps and prints were popular and how they were used. Chapter Five focuses on ‘popular’ books and pamphlets, relating printed material to the contemporary events, interests, and material objects that both inspired and were derived from it. Chapter Six reconstructs the workshop’s interactions with the Venetian authorities, questioning why certain texts and images were protected by Senatorial privileges and others were not. Finally, Chapter Seven charts the impact of religious reform on the workshop across the eight decades of its activity. By focusing on specific case studies, it examines the devotional texts issued by the workshop in the years prior to, during, and after, the meetings of the Council of Trent; and demonstrates the extent to which the activities of a Renaissance printer and his shop were monitored and restricted by the Inquisition.

The reputation of the Venetian Republic as a model regime provided substance for a number of sixteenth century political writers. Moreover, the diffuse nature of this reputation, which has more recently been characterized as the 'myth of Venice', made it possible for these men to utilize the Venetian model for three wholly disparate conceptions of the nature of politics. Although the writers under investigation all employed the model of Venice to address the issues of 'polities', we find that, in fact, they portray three separate and alternative conceptions of politics--of the purpose of the civil society and of the nature of political action. Gasparo Contarini drew upon the reputation of Venice to portray a conception of politics as the lessons of history. The heritage of the Republic contained within it the traditions which not only provided the individual with a sense of civic identity, but also a number of patterns for political action which the founding fathers of Venice had wisely fashioned after those patterns infused by God into nature. The task of the political man, then, was to discover (or re-discover) those patterns and infuse them into positive law. Paolo Paruta and Paolo Sarpi portrayed politics as a moral endeavour, and drew upon the Venetian experience to bolster their notions of the sanctity of the individual and the importance of individual action. For these men the civil society was of value in that it was properly an institution for the ennoblement of men and an aide in their quest for perfection. Political man is portrayed here as a participant in the affairs of the civil society, and the value of that participation derives from the fact that it allows him to exercise his moral potential. Lastly, Franceso Patrizi and Ludovico Agostini drew upon the reputation of the Republic for the efficient provision of goods and service to her inhabitants and upon the bureaucratic nature of her government' to portray political man as an artificer who relies upon reason and expertise to construct and maintain a government whose task it is to co-ordinate the various functions of society. Government here is dedicated to ensuring the material goods of life, and its value is as a tool to achieve those goods. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The trumpet is among the most ancient of all musical instruments, and an examination of its history reveals that it has consistently maintained important and specific symbolic roles in society. Although from its origins this symbolic identity was linked to the instrument’s limited ceremonial and signaling function, the seventeenth century represents a period in which a variety of new roles and identities emerged. Bologna and Venice represent the two most important centers for trumpet writing in Italy during the seventeenth century. Because of the differing ideologies at work in these cities, two distinctive symbolic images of the instrument and two different ways of writing for it emerged. The trumpet’s ecclesiastic role in Bologna and its participation in Venetian opera put the instrument at the service of two societies, one centered around the Church, and another around a more permissive state. Against the backdrop of the social and political structures in Venice and Bologna, and through an examination of its newly-emerging musical roles in each city, the trumpet’s changing identities during a most important point in the history of the instrument will be examined.

My dissertation examines the cultural history of the Renaissance Venetian maritime empire. In this project I bring into conversation two historiographical subfields, the intellectual history of Venetian Renaissance humanism and the colonial history of the early modern Mediterranean, which have previously developed separately. In doing so, I examine the relationship between power and knowledge as it unfolded in the early modern Mediterranean. The ways in which Venetian Renaissance intellectual culture was shaped by its imperial engagements - and, conversely, how Venetian approaches to governance were inflected by humanist practices - are the central axes of my dissertation. In the first part of the dissertation, I examine the ways in which writing and textual collecting were used by elite Venetian readers to represent the geopolitical dimensions of their empire. I consider a group of manuscripts and printed books which contain technical, navigational, and cartographic writing and images about Venetian mercantile and imperial activity in the Mediterranean. In the second part, I undertake two case-studies of Venetian patrician governors who were trained in the humanist schools of Venice, before being posted to colonial offices in Dalmatia and the Aegean, respectively. I examine how their education in Venice as humanists influenced their experience and practice of governance in the stato da mar. Their personal texts offer an alternative intellectual history of empire, one which demonstrates the formation of political thought amongst the men actually practicing and experiencing imperial governance. Overall, I aim to build a picture of the ways in which literary culture, the physical world of the stato da mar, and political thought came to be entwined in the Venetian Renaissance; and then to describe how these dense relationships worked for the Venetian administrators who experienced them in the Mediterranean.

Lawyers have widely been recognized as playing a role in the transition from the medieval to the modem state. Their presence in Renaissance Venetian politics, however, remains largely unexplored. Relying primarily on a prosopographical analysis, the thesis explores the various roles played by lawyers, dividing those roles into three main categories: diplomats, territorial governors, and domestic legislators. What emerges is a clear pattern of significant involvement by legally trained patricians in the Venetian political system. Noble lawyers were most often ambassadors, serving in many of the principal courts inside and outside of Italy as Venice was extending her influence on the Italian peninsula. They also served as administrators of Venetian rule throughout the Venetian terraferma (mainland) state. Lastly, their domestic political officeholding further confirms their continuing participation, as they held many of the most important domestic offices throughout the Quattrocento. The thesis ends with short biographies of each of the nearly three-dozen lawyers who make up this study, as well as chronologies of the offices they held. These chronologies include archival references for each office.

Music published in Venice, Italy in the first half of the seventeenth century includes a substantial amount specifying the trombone. The stylistic elements of this repertoire require decisions regarding general pitch, temperament, and performing forces. Within the realm of performing forces lie questions about specific instrument pitch and compositional key centers. Limiting this study to repertoire performed and published in approximately the first half of the seventeenth century allows a focus on specific performance practice decisions that underline the expressive elements of the repertoire. Using the trombone in A allows the performer several advantages over using the trombone in B-flat. Matching the instrument to the music is more than good decorum, it yields a more effective performance of the rhetorical and expressive elements imbedded in the music, satisfying the goal of music in this early seventeenth-century “modern” style.

Review of Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice by Sarah Gwyneth Ross

No description available.

No description available.