London Times, June 26, 2004
"captures the way Venice's developed sense of interior design profoundly reflected and enhanced its natural beauty."

Review
“[Brown’s] book, much aided by sumptuous illustrations and photography, captures the way Venice’s developed sense of interior design profoundly reflected and enhanced its natural beauty.”—Sarah Dunant, The Times (London)


The Art Newspaper, April 2004
"describes in detail the use of the fine, applied and decorative arts by the city's patrician families."

Times Literary Supplement, August 27, 2004
". . . will entertain and inform anyone interested in Venice . . . who accept[s] her invitation to travel with her across the centuries."

Boston Globe, December 5, 2004
"marvelously readable and opulently illustrated . . ."

New York Times, December 5, 2004
"brings a lost chapter in Venetian history to life... and the curious reader could not wish for a wiser guide."

New York Times Book Review, December 12, 2004
Editors' Choice

Choice, January 2005 (Debra Pincus)
"that rare thing: a book that will instruct the scholar and delight the general reader...Essential"

Book Description
A lively account of how life was lived behind the imposing doors of the sixteenth-century Renaissance palaces of Venice

This book offers an engaging and original perspective on the private lives and material culture of patrician families in sixteenth-century Venice. Distinguished art historian Patricia Fortini Brown takes us behind the elegant façades of grand palaces built along the Venetian canals and examines the roles of both fine and applied arts in family life as well as the public messages that these impressive homes conveyed.

Illustrated with hundreds of varied and unusual images, the book provides a lively picture of the aristocratic lifestyle during a period of changing definitions of nobility. The author considers such wide-ranging themes as attitudes toward wealth and display, the articulation of family identity, and the visual culture of Venetian women--how they decorated their homes, dressed, undertook domestic tasks, entertained, and raised their children. Recapturing the interplay between the public and private, she offers an account of Venetian households unequalled in vividness and detail.



Also available by Patricia Fortini Brown

Venice and Antiquity:
The Venetian Sense of the Past
ISBN 0-300-06700-3 $75.00sc

Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio
paper ISBN 0-300-04743-6 $40.00sc




About the Author
Patricia Fortini Brown is professor and chair of the department of art and archaeology at Princeton University.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This book offers an engaging and original perspective on the private lives and material culture of aristocratic families in sixteenth-century Venice. Distinguished art historian Patricia Fortini Brown takes us behind the elegant, closed doors of grand palaces built along the Venetian canals -- the homes of families who wished to live in a noble manner. She examines the roles of both fine and applied arts in family life as well as the public messages that these impressive homes conveyed.

Illustrated with many varied and unusual images, the book provides a lively picture of the aristocratic lifestyle during a period of changing definitions of nobility. 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 and arrives at an account of Venetian households unequalled in vividness and detail.

FROM THE CRITICS

Bruce Boucher - The New York Times