Venice

This study analyzes the campo of San Pietro di Castello from its mythologized origins to the Renaissance, paying particular attention to the architectural and political forces that shaped it. Although San Pietro was Venice's cathedral from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, civic leaders marginalized the site, which incarnated the contentious relationship between the Roman Church and the Venetian republic. The essay places the campo at the center of inquiry because the episcopal complex's significance is best discerned through diachronic analysis of the urban landscape. The building activities of its medieval and Quattrocento patrons generated a heterogeneous campo that incorporated morphological elements from two Venetian urbanistic types: the parish campo and the monastic island. Its sixteenth-century patriarchs created a new architectural vision of the campo, contesting its slippage from the center of Venetian life and forging a distinctive ensemble that differs markedly from the better-known piazzas at San Marco and Rialto.

Current research on the cartography of the Venetian Empire rests on a state-centred perspective which reduces maps to mere technical tools in the service of maritime expansion and colonial government. In contrast, this paper argues that such an approach cannot sufficiently account for the multiple ethnocartographic transactions between Venetian authorities and local communities which defined Venetian map-making projects. Taking the seventeenth-century conquest of the Peloponnese as its focus, the paper proposes to rethink the Venetian cartographic archive as constituted through a set of socio-cultural and political practices involving both colonial surveyors and native inhabitants. By analysing the assemblage of cartographic knowledge in the context of the encounter between colonisers and colonised, the paper examines topographical surveys as the product of cross-cultural communication shaped through negotiation, competition and unequal dialogue. Ultimately, the paper aims to show the heuristic value of a dialogic approach to cartography for a better understanding of both the colonial society of the Venetian Peloponnese and the making of knowledge in Venice's overseas empire.

A number of longstanding questions have surrounded the early life of the fifteenth-century Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516), generally believed to have been the son of Jacopo Bellini (ca. 1400–70/71) and the younger brother of Gentile Bellini (1429/35–1507). The artist’s year of birth and the legitimacy of his birth have been the subjects of debate for well over a century. By reevaluating Bellini-related legal documents under the relevant fifteenth-century Venetian civil laws, this article makes a case that Giovanni Bellini was not Jacopo Bellini’s son, but rather his half-brother, and that they were both sons of Nicol
o Bellini; that Giovanni was therefore Gentile Bellini’s uncle rather than his brother; and that he was born legitimate between the late summer of 1424 and 13 September 1428, several years earlier than the birth year of ca. 1435 (or later) favored by many contemporary Bellini specialists. The ramifications of situating Bellini’s birth year in the mid- to late 1420s are then considered.

Celtic music and mythology have played a crucial role in several contemporary processes of nation-building, usually addressed to stateless regions in Atlantic Europe. Nonetheless, when after the disintegration of the Soviet bloc Europe faced becoming a unified market (with the Maastricht Treaty), the Celts of the Iron Age appeared as the perfect ethnic explanation to endorse the idea of a rooted communal past. The lavish exhibition held in Venice in 1991—with the meaningful name I Celti: La prima Europa—became the official celebration of the new identity. The list of Celtic expansion after Venice 1991 is endless, music being a crucial component because of its popularity and communicativeness.

The water bus docks at the Rialto Bridge, unloads and loads, then sets off down the Grand Canal. A foreign man in his forties boards, tucks his ticket into his pocket, and takes a seat inside. He came to Venice to observe some Titian masterworks in their original site. Once on the boat, he looks out and absorbs the reflections of the palaces bordering the canal that waver with the flow of the water. He alights a few stops away and walks into the Church of San Rocco, where his eye is caught by the shape of the main altar: too similar to the one framing Titian's famous Pesaro Madonna (1519-26) in the nearby Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. He then searches his pocket, finds the waterbus ticket, pulls out his pen, and jots down a sketch of the altar (figs. 1a, 1b).

The present study aims to analyze the diplomatic relations entered by Venice with two Islamic potentates in order to ransom Venetian prisoners, from the 14th century to the 15th century. The author investigates in particular, as a case study, the relations with the Hafside Emirate and the rising Ottoman authority. The former have been examined until 1436, when the Muda of Barbary was established. The research concerning the relations with the Ottoman authority has been brought forward until the siege of Costantinople. Thanks to the documents, consisting mostly in Senate deliberations, it is possible to recreate the development of a multifaceted diplomatic praxis, before the establishment, from the 16th on, of specific institutions with the only purpose of ransoming the captives held by Islamic potentates.
//////////////
Il presente studio si offre di indagare le relazioni diplomatiche di Venezia con due potentati islamici finalizzate al riscatto di prigionieri veneziani a cavallo tra il XIV e il XV secolo. Saranno in particolare presi come caso di studio le relazioni intrattenute con l’emirato hafside e la nascente potenza ottomana. Per i negoziati con l’emirato tunisino, è stato posto come termine ante quem il 1436, anno dell’istituzione della muda di Barberia. Le ricerche sulle relazioni con gli ottomani sono state invece interrotte alla conquista di Costantinopoli del 1453. Attraverso tale documentazione, consistente soprattutto in delibere del Senato, sarà possibile quindi ricostruire lo sviluppo di una prassi diplomatica sfaccettata, prima che, dal XVI secolo in poi, si giungesse alla creazione di apposite magistrature aventi come scopo unicamente il riscatto dei prigionieri nelle mani di potentati islamici.

The article seeks to draw attention to the saintly bodies depicted by Crivelli in the polyptych for Montefiore dell’Aso, considering them from different points of view. As written in the introduction, the figures painted by Carlo Crivelli are not simple representations of people, but contain deep religious meanings. The second part of the article focuses on the importance of the technical process of gilding used in the Montefiore panels for the definition of the holy figures, and its significance for a more precise dating. In its third part, the paper suggests a new identification for the Franciscan saint painted in half length with St. Anthony of Padua; the final section looks into Crivelli’s mode of representing the holy bodies of St. Francis and, above all, of St. Louis of Toluse, who wears a ring in which the artist left a previously unnoticed inscription.

Colonization of newly created habitats is a challenge for waterbird populations in a changing world. Knowing which habitat characteristics are required by waterbird populations is a research challenge for rational management of the new ecosystems and their aquatic bird populations. Since 1989 intertidal dredge islands have been built in the lagoon of Venice using sediments coming from regular dredging of lagoon channels and inlets. Kentish Plover, a species declining in Europe, readily uses these new sites as soon as they become available. Between 2005 and 2007, 75 dredge islands were surveyed each year and the number of breeding pairs of Kentish Plover estimated. Each year about one-third of available dredge islands was used by Kentish Plover. Between 34 (in 2005) and 131 (in 2007) breeding pairs were found, and possible differences in vegetation and morphological characteristics between occupied and unoccupied sites were investigated. Only age, mean elevation above sea level and extension of bare ground were statistically different;

"The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how participating in a branded Biennale (Venice) may legitimate and promote selected artists from the emerging markets of Venezuela and Thailand alongside art market leaders.
Research was conducted at the 53rd International Art Biennale in Venice, Italy, in June 2009. Underpinned by a Constructivist approach, qualitative data was collected via participant observation, illustrative photography and semi structured interviews (average interview time 55 minutes) with curators and participating artists from 2 emerging markets: Venezuela and Thailand.
This research indicates that merely attending the Venice Biennale does not mean automatic branding for success: each artist’s signature style must stand out within its cultural context for the branding effect to succeed. The conclusion compares and contrasts the effective relationship between identification and success for the two emerging economies within the world-leader arts event in Venice.
This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on arts management and events management, focusing on the until now unexplored area of contemporary arts marketing for the emerging economies of Venezuela and Thailand. The paper may aid emerging market art professionals in their strategy and planning to better benefit from the Venice Biennale’s branding opportunity, as well as guiding scholarly research to a better understanding of the area."

Giovanni Labus's journalistic experience (1797-1799) is the only example of political journalism in Brescia territory during the ‘Republican Triennio’ and it allows us to better understand the patriotic mood that characterized Brescia from the foundation of the Repubblica Bresciana (March 1797). Through an analysis of the Brescian periodicals, the author will try to clarify the apparent contradiction of dialectical between “small nation” and “italian nation”. Labus seems to interpret both points of view, though combining them into a clear political project meant to create a republican national State.
His aim was to create a Republic ex novo starting with local traditions - that is from the small Brescia State - as to arrive, later, to a full democratization of the Peninsula through a revolutionary uprising which should have been carried out by patriots.
Similarly, the difficulties that Labus faced during during his activity - represented especially by the real purposes of the French government - will also be thoroughly considered since, as a consequence, the young Brescian journalist began to reject the situation, to deeply criticize the French authorities and, finally, to lose faith in the possibility to create a new democratic and republican order.

The 2011 Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation by UNESCO defines cities as dynamic environments subject to cultural processes, tangible/intangible heritage and community values, leaving some key questions open. Is the heritage sector better defining historic places, or because their complexity defies verbal description, it reiterates simplified concepts? Are existing boundaries between disciplines such as architecture, planning and landscape design enriching or constraining heritage? This paper analyses the urban morphology of Venice and the Piazza San Marco, a key context in which architecture emerges as legitimised vehicle for urban regeneration in early modernity. Looking at the relationship between the Piazza and the urban networks of Venice alongside intangible spatial practices and symbols, the paper makes three contributions to urban conservation: a) it defines the HUL as the interrelationship of the anonymous city with the authored products of design, b) it revisits the foundations of early modern consciousness about architecture, urban conservation and innovation in order to better understand interdisciplinary knowledge in the heritage sector and c) it approaches heritage as social construction , involving the selection of structures, from buildings to entire areas, and from legal documents and political instruments to ideologies through which societies are seen from dominant positions, often disguising conflict.

Islands are often associated with isolation, peripherality and disconnectedness, and fixed links such as bridges and causeways are often regarded as factors that decrease the quality of islandness. The present paper sheds light on the complexity of island and archipelago connectivities by considering the transport infrastructure and relationships between, within and among the numerous islands of Venice Lagoon, Italy. The paper argues that island communities face diverse sets of challenges, and there is no one right connectivity‐enhancing solution that is applicable to all islands.

Considering two very different novels, Fortuny by Pere Gimferrer and La isla inaudita by Eduardo Mendoza, which indicated a clear recovery of Venice as a narrative space in the 1980s, this essay proposes to contextualise this renewed interest in Spanish Peninsular literature, including, due to his direct relationship with Pere Gimferrer, also some examples from Spanish-American literature and Italian cinema.

Cyprus was an important medieval emporium, which maintained its commercial importance after the Ottoman conquest. The aims of this study are: to identify the consuls of Venice in Cyprus and their dragomans; to list the items of trade exported by the Venetians and the disagreements experienced between the merchants of Venice or the consuls in Cyprus and the Cyprus administrators in the first part of 17th century; and to investigate what the Venetian presence meant to the daily lives of the Cypriots. In addition, an attempt is made to illustrate Ottoman– Venetian relations from the Ottoman point of view, and to describe the role that the sea captains of Venice played in Ottoman trade between Cyprus and Istanbul in the second half of the 18th century. Finally, the Venetian consulate in Cyprus is compared with the one in Aleppo at the end of 18th century. The evidence used is derived principally from the records of the Nicosia cadi's court and of the Ottoman Prime Ministry archives in Istanbul.

In the poster child of overtourism, social movements against tourism emerged as a reaction to vastly unsustainable tourist flows that have had a dramatic and transformational impact on the life of Venetians. While Venice's unique geographical position as a historic city, located on an island and surronded by a lagoon, adds to the complexity of how tourism flows are managed effectively, this work offers an approach to measurements are translated into stress indicators associated with characteristics of tourism unsustanability, with implications on the lives of local residents, and serve as a useful tool for understanding the underlying causes of anti-tourism and as warning signs in benchmarking overtourism in other destinations.

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

The volume contains a reassessment of the economic and social impact of the printing revolution on the development of early modern European society, using 15th-century printed books, which still survive today in their thousands, as historical sources. Papers on production, trade, the cost of books in comparison with the cost of living, literacy, the transmission of texts in print, and the use and circulation of books and illustration are the result of several years of international, collaborative, and multidisciplinary research coordinated by the 15cBOOKTRADE project funded by an ERC Consolidator grant (2014-2019) and supported by the Consortium of European Research Libraries.

This chapter is aimed to explore the role of tourism in reshaping historical cities, particularly into forms of cosmopolitan consumption. New mobility paradigms seem to merge production and consumption patterns of tourists and residents, all influenced by similar gazing and performing places. The iconic case of Venice shows patterns of staged authenticity, reconstructed ethnicity, and economy of subordination. Drivers to visit Venice include experiences in a setting that is densely characterised by cultural heritage; however, the tourist monoculture and cosmopolitan consumption have depleted the original elements of this attraction: traditional places, residents, livelihoods, material and immaterial cultures. Culture markets and international events, architectural and environmental restoration, together with private forms of transport in the fragile lagoon ecosystem, have transformed the historical city and its unique lifestyle into a place for cosmopolitan consumption, involving tourists together with new residents, sometimes integrating wealthy long-term residents in this overall tourism gentrification. Deprived of great part of what is considered to be the old and conservative block of residents, the gentrified residents acquire spaces for their cultural activities and political acts in their ‘saving Venice’ projects. Two gentrifying groups are described in this chapter: super rich with their philanthropic associations, and intellectuals. Despite clear differences in their causes and agency, both share common visions over leisurely uses of the lagoon city, artistic production and consumption of its heritage. Sustainability questions could instead propose to start from local memories to reconstruct Venice as a complex urban space with more inclusive sense of place.

Еврейские общины имели сложную структуру, включавшую различные формы ассоциаций и объединений, набор которых варьировался в зависимости от исторического периода и региона. В венецианской еврейской общине XVII в. зафиксировано существование нескольких сообществ, носивших названия, отсылавшие к религиозным ритуалам ближневосточного происхождения, однако в качестве приоритетных решавшие социально-экономические задачи. Одно из таких сообществ, а именно Братство соблюдающих утро, рассматривается в настоящей статье на материале рукописи книги записей. // Forms of organizations of Jewish communities displayed considerable variations depending on place and time. The Jewish community of Venice in the 17th century was home to several fraternities that carried names of religious organizations. These organizations, however, in their actual functioning were focused on socioeconomic issues. One of these fraternities was called Hevrat Shomrim la-Boker. Its primary characteristics are examined in the article on the basis of its minute book.

Desde la década pasada ha empezado a extenderse en varios destinos turísticos, sobre todo urbanos, una crítica contra la saturación turística liderada –en muchos casos– por colectivos sociales. A partir de la segunda mitad del siglo pasado, la diseminación del turismo en barrios y centros urbanos ha ido generado lo que los angloparlantes definen como overtourism.
A pesar de que en el ámbito español los medios de comunicación hayan hecho eco del fenómeno nombrándolo como turismofobia, el asunto en cuestión es mucho más complejo de lo que parece. Por ello, el informe abordará algunas cuestiones sobre el fenómeno a partir del análisis de casos concretos.

Resumen: Se comenta la importancia que los artrópodos tuvieron en la historia de la ciudad de Venecia y, consecuentemente, en la propia historia de la Europa medieval-renacentista-barroca. Se hace referencia de los artrópodos relacionados con la peste negra, con su importante comercio naval, con la contribución de algunos de sus aventureros al desarrollo zoológico y con las aportaciones de Venecia a la Ciencia y a la Entomología en particular. Con todo este acervo entomológico, se anota y se comenta la frecuente presencia de artrópodos en las manifestaciones artísticas venecianas, especialmente en su arquitec-tura, mosaicos, pavimentos, escultura y pintura. Palabras clave: Etno-entomología, arte entomológico, Italia, Venecia. Arthropods in the history and art of the city of Venice Abstract: Comments are made about the importance that arthropods had in the history of Venice and, consequently, in the history of medieval – Renaissance – baroque Europe. Reference is made to the arthropods connected with the Black Death, on its maritime trade, on the contribution of some of its adventurers to zoological development and on the contributions of Venice to Science and particularly to Entomology. With all this entomological heritage, the abundant presence of arthropods in Venetian art, especially in its architecture, mosaics, floors, sculpture and painting, is analysed and commented upon.

Architecture is often charged with narrative content; it foregrounds certain elements and underplays others; it constructs space, time and sequence; it facilitates the exploration of identity according to the specificity of the context in which it is embedded. But what is interesting in architecture is how these mechanisms are used not to tell stories, but to engage the imagination and arrive at a creative formation. This paper looks at two unrealised projects in Venice (Alvise Cornaro's proposition for the Bacino San Marco, 1560, and Jullian's Venice Hospital, 1964) and the urban morphology of the city. It identifies two main questions:

"Il contributo è dedicato all’analisi di alcune poesie funebri composte in greco dal giovane Bessarione e contenute nel codice autografo Marciano greco 533, che documentano l’iter della formazione culturale e ideologica del loro autore tra i sedici e i trent’anni.
Oltre alla Monodia per Manuele II Paleologo (scritta in prosa ma falsariga per la successiva poesia bessarionea), vengono presi in esame l’iscrizione tombale in giambi per l’ambasciatore Michele Amirutza, i versi per gli arazzi raffiguranti i Paleologhi Manuele ed Elena in veste imperiale e monastica, i giambi funebri per Cleopa Malatesta Paleologina. Del primo e dell’ultimo componimento poetico viene inoltre fornita, in appendice, l’edizione critica.
L’analisi retorico-letteraria e storica di questi versi permette di desumere informazioni sia sul pensiero politico del giovane Bessarione, sulla sua formazione culturale e sul suo precoce ruolo alle corti di Costantinopoli e di Mistrà, sia sulla complessa situazione dinastica dell’ultima corte bizantina (quest’ultima oggetto di un breve résumé circa l’alleanza Paleologhi/Malatesta e la figura di Cleopa).

The essay analyses several funeral poems composed in Greek by Bessarion and contained in the Greek Marcian autograph manuscript 533. The poems reflect the author’s cultural and ideological education between sixteen and thirty years of age.  In addition to the Monodia for Manuel II Palaeologus (written in prose, although the model for Bessarion’s later poem), the author examines the tomb inscription in iambs for the ambassador Michael Amiroutzes, the verses on the tapestries representing Manuel and Helena Palaeologi in imperial and monastic dress, and the funeral iambs for Cleopa Malatesta Palaeologina, probably conceived, as those for Amiroutzes, as a tomb inscription. Further, the appendix includes the critical edition of the first and last of these compositions.
The literary and rhetorical analysis of these verses makes it possible to draw a portrait of the young Bessarion’s political thought, his cultural education, and precocious role at the courts of Constantinople and Mystras, in addition to the complex dynastic context of the last Byzantine court (the latter the subject of a brief résumé on the Palaiologoi/Malatesta alliance and the figure of Cleopa).
"

The main sources of this article are 750 matrimonial trials discussed before the ecclesiastical court in Venice (1420-1545). This article analyzes the differing conceptions of marriage held by the laity and by the ecclesiastical hierarchy as these ideas were expressed in a dialectical relationship in court. Central to this analysis is the concept of consent, since consent, with widely differing interpretations, formed the foundation and the essence of both canonical and lay customary marriage. In the pre-Tridentine ecclesiastical court, custom played a leading role in deciding matters related to the marriage bond. These sources allow access to aspects of marriage that are usually not recorded and make it possible to reevaluate social phenomena which have been defined from a post-Tridentine perspective as transgressive. Practices such as bigamy, concubinage, and stuprum appear not as deviant, but as part of socially accepted marital behavior that is much broader and more heterogeneous than historians have appreciated.

In this intervention, we reflect on the potential of environmental justice and climate justice approaches to reveal the politics of climate change adaptation. Taking the attempts at dealing with extreme flooding events in Venice as an example, we illustrate that different dimensions at the core of the environmental justice concept (distributive and procedural justice and justice as recognition) are helpful to analyse and to politicise climate change adaptation interventions. We call for a transformative research agenda to reconfigure interventions and expertise to more closely account for the socio-political processes and narratives shaping coastal environments and to foster multiple epistemologies. Above all, this entails strengthening the inclusion of local (environmental) knowledge, the involvement of the populations affected by interventions in adaptation planning and the open discussion of political questions and values shaping interventions.

Whoever wishes to see how clean and candid his mind is should look at his face and his house, look at them, I say, and you will see as much serenity and beauty as one can desire in a house and in a face.1 Aretino compares the two parts of his house, the back entrance and the principal room and front, to his own mul tiple "fa?ades"?his terribilit? contrasted with his "pure, plain and natural friendship." To visit Aretino's residence is like entering into the man himself; one passes through a sequence of spaces that physically evoke his contradictory persona.11 Aretino uses the house/inhabitant analogy in his letter to Odoni to simultaneously describe the cittadino's house and evoke his character. (The full text of the letter is trans lated in Appendix 1.) The passage that begins my essay sets up the conceit and also contains an important double mean ing that, to my knowledge, has not previously been noted. Aretino employs the word fronte to mean both building

In the 1568 edition of his Lives, Giorgio Vasari attributed a miracle-working icon to Titian. The magnitude of this claim has not been appreciated. Titian’s final painting, the Pietà (Galleria dell’Accademia), cannot be understood outside of this heritage of miraculous efficacy. In it Titian capitalized on the anxieties that attended his reputation as the producer of a miraculous image. While recalling this earlier moment in Titian’s career, his final painting layers references to miraculous agency by including votive objects associated with miracles; appropriating the history of the painting’s intended site; and citing a little known miracle-working image, the Madonna della Navicella.

Located in the Venetian Lagoon, the uninhabited island of Poveglia has recently gained global renown as ‘the world’s most haunted island’. This article reconstructs how this ghost island narrative originated and began to circulate and analyses the social, cultural and geographical preconditions that fostered it. It also considers how such a narrative rebounded on the island, attracting believers in the paranormal and tourists interested in ghosts. The research presented here is based on qualitative methods, such as the critical reading of various texts (social media content, newspaper articles, blogs, videos, pieces of music and television programmes) and semi-structured interviews with some of the involved actors.  Behind an apparently trivial island narrative, the ‘in betweenness’ of ghosts (intended as cultural objects able to activate an emotional sphere that goes beyond the rational understanding of places) allows for a reconceptualization of the discontinuities of time and space, the disconnection between vernacular and academic cultures and many classical dichotomies assigned to insular spaces. The case of Poveglia demonstrates how ghosts can shape not only the way island narratives are told but also the way islands are approached and practiced.

Among the Italian merchant communities settled in the Crown of Castile Venetians are the least known. It seems clear that in the last decades of the 15th century there were only a few acting from Seville. To approach this group, scholars have mainly studied the information held in Castilian archives –notarial deeds, royal and municipal documents– which are limited both in number and chronology. The discovery of the testament of Andrea de Razi (1477), which I publish and study for the first time, sheds new light on the reality of the Venetian Nation in the Iberian Peninsula and allows to enlarge our knowledge of the mercantile network and the commercial strategies developed. At the same time, it reveals more solid connections of Seville with the Eastern Mediterranean, related to the exports of oil (Venice), and antimony sulphate (Alexandria).

Sebastiano Ricci was not only one of the greatest Italian and European painters in Eighteenth Century, but also an operatic impresario and a stage designer. With the aid of unpublished archival documents, this book reconstructs and interprets the phases of his theatrical career, which was successfully established in Parma and Rome in 1690 and 1694 and pursued with interruptions in Venice in the first decades of Eighteenth Century. Through this portrait of the artist and impresario, enriched with new biographical elements, the author throws light on the still unacknowledged theatrical and operatic microcosm of the time, enlivened by such well-known figures as the Red Priest Vivaldi, the castrato Cortona, the impresario Orsatto and more unfamiliar names, e.g. the impresario Modotto, the factotum Viola, and the violinists Madonis. / Sebastiano Ricci non fu solo uno dei massimi pittori del Settecento italiano e internazionale, ma un impresario d’opera e uno scenografo. Grazie a inediti documenti d’archivio questo libro ricostruisce e interpreta le fasi della sua carriera teatrale, accertata a Parma e a Roma nel 1690 e nel 1694 e proseguita con discontinuità nel circuito dei teatri pubblici di Venezia lungo i primi tre decenni del Settecento. Attraverso il ritratto dell’artista-impresario, arricchito da nuovi dati biografici, l’autore fa luce sull’ancora sfuggente mondo teatrale e musicale del tempo, animato da personaggi noti come il Prete Rosso Vivaldi, il castrato Cortona, l’impresario Orsatto e sconosciuti quali l’impresario Modotto, il faccendiere Viola, i violinisti Madonis.

During the years 1627 and 1628, Charles I of England purchased the cream of the Gonzaga art collection, belonging to the dukes of Mantua, in what would become the greatest art deal of the 17th century. Among the treasures sold were ancient statues and stunning paintings by Titian, Raphael, Correggio, and Rubens. This book examines this fascinating and significant art sale from the perspective of the man who orchestrated it—Daniel Nijs (1572–1647), a Flemish merchant, collector, and dealer living in Venice.  Asserting that he was more than the avaricious and unscrupulous trader that most modern writers and scholars deem him to be, Christina Anderson describes Nijs’s unique talent as a dealer, rooted in superior commercial skills, connections to artistic and diplomatic circles, and a deep love of art. The narrative reveals that Nijs was ultimately the pivotal figure involved with the Gonzaga sale, though also—when he later fell into bankruptcy and dishonour due to a deal gone awry—the most tragic.