page_title: Procuratie
section_title: Historical background
hierarchical_section_title: Procuratie / Procuratie Vecchie / Historical background
context_page_description: The Procuratie are three connected buildings along the perimeter of Saint Mark's Square in Venice, Italy. Two of the buildings, the Procuratie Vecchie and the Procuratie Nuove, were constructed by the procurators of Saint Mark, the second-highest dignitaries in the government of the Republic of Venice, who were charged with administering the treasury of the Church of Saint Mark as well as the financial affairs of state wards and trust funds established on behalf of religious and charitable institutions.
  The Procuratie Vecchie on the northern side of the square was built during the War of the League of Cambrai in the early sixteenth century to replace an earlier structure, damaged by fire. Although the war imposed financial constraints and limited innovation, it was nevertheless the first major public building in Venice to be erected in a purely classical style. It always contained apartments that were rented by the procurators as a source of revenue to finance building projects and repairs. Rental income was significant, given the prestige of the location.
context_section_description: Following the enlargement of Saint Mark's Square in the second half of the twelfth century, several buildings and lands in and near the square were donated as rental properties to the Commune of Venice, principally by Doge Sebastiano Ziani and his immediate descendants. Subsequently, the administration of many of the properties was delegated to the procurators de supra. The intention was to create a steady flow of revenue in order to fund further work on the Church of Saint Mark and provide charitable assistance to the poor, thus avoiding the need to rely upon private pious donations and state financing.  The properties included the long building erected by Ziani along the northern side of the square. As shown in Gentile Bellini's Processione di Corpus Domini in Piazza san Marco (1496), it was a two-storey building with a series of apartments above and shops on the ground floor that were leased.
  A fire in June 1512 destroyed one of the apartments near the clock tower and led to the collapse of a portion of the façade. It was subsequently decided that notwithstanding the financial constraints at the time of the War of the League of Cambrai (1508–1516), the entire structure would be rebuilt as a statement of Venice's self-confidence. Significantly, Marin Sanudo remarked in his diary that the reconstruction was "in order to make it very beautiful for the glory of the land … despite the war" ("farle di novo e bellissime, che sarà onor di la terra … ben sia la guerra").
  The architect of the Procuratie Vecchie is not known from any official source, and various names have been suggested, primarily on the basis of stylistic considerations and the prominence of the individual architect at the time. These include Mauro Codussi, Pietro Lombardo, and Antonio Abbondi. With regard to the sixteenth-century sources, Marin Sanudo mentions the little-known Tuscan architect Zuan Celestro in his diary (1514), whereas Francesco Sansovino in his guide to the city (1581) attributes the design to Pietro Bon, the proto (consultant architect and buildings manager) to the procurators de supra. But the precise contributions of Bon and Celestro to the design remain unclear. Bon, as proto, was nevertheless responsible for oversight during construction.
caption: Gentile Bellini, Processione di Corpus Domini in Piazza san Marco (1496). The detail shows the northern side with the twelfth-century building, administered by the procurators de supra, that housed rental apartments and shops.
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