Private Lives in Renaissance Venice
Subtitle: Art, Architecture, and the Family
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: July 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780300102369
Subjects: High Renaissance (c 1500-1530); Social history; c 1500 to c 1600; Art; History - General History; European; History - Renaissance; Renaissance; History / Renaissance; Decoration & Ornament; 15th century; Decoration and ornament; Decoration and ornament, Renai; Decoration and ornament, Renaissance; History; Interior decoration; Italy; Social aspects; Venice
First sentence: IN THE SPRING OF 1608 a young Englishman set off on a five-month tour of Europe and became one of the best eyewitness informants on life and customs in late Renaissance Venice.
Description: "This book offers a perspective on the private lives and material culture of aristocratic families in sixteenth-century Venice. 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." "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."--BOOK JACKET.