From Library Journal
Venice has inspired both Wills (St. Augustine) and Rosand (Painting in Sixteenth Century Venice) to write remarkably laudatory works on the artistic legacy generated by the Renaissance mythmakers and propagandists of that city. Both authors emphasize the importance Venetians placed on creating a historical identity that would set them apart from other Italians and other nations. Venice was unique in Italy for being a city created after the fall of the Roman Empire. The mythical date for the foundation of Venice, March 25, is also the date of the Annunciation and of Christ's crucifixion significant, as Venetians saw it, in giving a unique spiritual flavor to their city. Wills and Rosand look at the paintings, sculpture, and architecture in Venice with the aim of examining how these works illustrated and glorified incidents in the history or myth that the Venetians created for themselves and the wider world. Rosand stresses the importance of English writers in propagating the myth of Venice as a unique state possessing an exemplary political constitution and so ensuring the city a literary immortality in the English-speaking world. Wills's more anecdotal book covers Venetian literature and politics to a greater degree, showing how various social and political factors were crucial to the formation of Renaissance Venice. But both stress the importance that art played in the creation of the city's sense of identity, and both are highly recommended for public and academic libraries. [Wills's book was previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/01.] Robert J. Andrews, Duluth P.L., M.- Robert J. Andrews, Duluth P.L., MN Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


LIBRARY JOURNAL
"Highly recommended for public and academic libraries."


WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
"[This book] helps us better understand just why this beguiling city has, for so many centuries, fascinated the world."


NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
"Provide[s] expert guidance. . . . Designed for the curious general reader, physically compact, fluidly written . . . [an] ideal . . . traveling companion."


Times Literary Supplement
"Impressive. . . . Rosand's exposition . . . is thorough and convincing, and will appeal to all but the most iconoclastic historians of Venice."


Book Description
Over the course of several centuries, Venice fashioned and refined a portrait of itself that responded to and exploited historical circumstance. Never conquered and taking its enduring independence as a sign of divine favor, free of civil strife and proud of its internal stability, Venice broadcast the image of itself as the Most Serene Republic, an ideal state whose ruling patriciate were selflessly devoted to the commonweal. All this has come to be known as the myth of Venice." Exploring the imagery developed in Venice to represent the legends of its origins and legitimacy, David Rosand reveals how artists such as Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian, Jacopo Sansovino, Tintoretto, and Veronese gave enduring visual form to the myths of Venice. He argues that Venice, more than any other political entity of the early modern period, shaped the visual imagination of political thought. This visualization of political ideals, and its reciprocal effect on the civic imagination, is the larger theme of the book.


About the Author
David Rosand, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University, is well known for his studies of Venetian art. His books in that field include Titian, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, and The Meaning of the Mark: Leonardo and Titian.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Over the course of several centuries, Venice fashioned and refined a portrait of itself that responded to and exploited historical circumstance. Never conquered and taking its enduring independence as a sign of divine favor, free of civil strife and proud of its internal stability, Venice broadcast the image of itself as the Most Serene Republic, an ideal state whose ruling patriciate were selflessly devoted to the commonweal. All this has come to be known as the "myth of Venice."

In this gracefully written work, David Rosand explores the imagery Venice developed to represent the legends of its origins and legitimacy, its divine favor and holy purpose. These themes found public expression throughout the city: in the basilica of San Marco and the Ducal Palace, at the Rialto and in the decoration of the confraternities, and in the monuments of the Piazza, the Loggetta, and the Libreria di San Marco. Indeed, among the most significant political resources of the Most Serene Republic were the imagination and talents of her greatest artists -- Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian, Jacopo Sansovino, Tintoretto, and Veronese -- who gave enduring visual form to the myths of Venice.

Venice shaped the visual imagination of early modern political thought: just as the republic's celebrated constitution instructed Europe (and the newly independent colonies of the Americas) in the idea of statehood, Venice taught how to give that idea eloquent pictorial form. Myths of Venice is concerned not only with the official iconography of state per se, but with the ways in which such imagery resonates within a culture, the ways in which visual motifs acquire an aura of association and allusion dependent upon a network of shared values and habits of interpretation.

FROM THE CRITICS

Times Literary Supplement

Prodigiously learned in iconography, David Rosand has provided an impressive account, with copious illustrations, of the 'visualization of political ideal' in late medieval and early modern Venice. . . . Rosand's exposition of the decorative schemes and their allusions is thorough and convincing, and will appeal to all but the most iconoclastic historians of Venice.

New York Review Of Books

Rosand's Myths of Venice provide[s] expert guidance through the intricacies of this more private Venetian artistic symbolism, revealing its underlying sense much as a good map will reveal the basic rationality behind the city's complex web of islands, paths, and waterways. Designed for the curious general reader, physically compact, fluidly written . . . [an] ideal . . . traveling companion.

Stanley Chojnacki

Rosand here provides specialists with a synthesis of his authoritative studies of Venetian culture; at the same time his accessible eloquence will claim a wide readership among Venice's many non-specialist admirers.

Washington Post Book World

[An] impressively learned volume. . . .The book also provides numerous illustrations, some in color, extensive endnotes and a wide-ranging bibliography. . . . [This book] helps us better understand just why this beguiling city has, for so many centuries, fascinated the world.

Patricia Fortini Brown