Commerce, Peace, and the Arts in Renaissance Venice : Ruzante and the Empire at Center Stage

Drawing material from a wide range of original sources, this book identifies a network of early modern Venetian patrician merchant and banking families. The book explores their commercial activities and consequent preferences in international relations as well as how both were served by cultural works, all within the monumental changes taking place in fifteenth - and sixteenth-century Venice. In a study of patronage in the broadest sense, Linda L. Carroll reads vast quantities of unpublished primary sources, uncovering remarkable and unsuspected connections. She documents the well-known links between declining trade and the need for new investments in the mainland (re)gained by Venice, as well as links between problems of governance and political networks. She unveils the potential purposes of those at the highest levels who invited Ruzante to perform in what are interpreted as 'rudely' metaphorical truth telling plays for their fellow Venetian patricians. Focusing on patrons of an works in S. Maria Gloria dei Frari, the first chapter establishes interrelated commercial and political interest, connecting them to the works and the artists. The second chapter analyzes an important Venetian literary manuscript in the Bodleian Library or Oxford University and identifies its copyist, a central figure in the Venetian patrician turn from commercial to cultural pursuits and connected to the cultural worlds of Venice, Padua, and Rome. The third chapter demonstrates the economic and political tensions behind the presence of many high ranking officials at a scandalous 1525 Ruzante performance, drawing on extensive documentation to provide a new picture of Beolco's relationships with his Venetian supporters including Frari patrons. The fourth chapter explores Venice's first state lotteries and a connection between one of the managers and Machiavelli. Book jacket.