La Serenissima by Jonathan Keates

Author:Jonathan Keates [Keates, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789545074
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

The gorgeous interior of Pietro Lombardo’s Santa Maria dei Miracoli, built 1481–9 to house an icon of the Virgin Mary.

AA World Travel Library / Alamy Stock Photo

Appropriate spaces in which to display the artworks, antique statues, coins and medals which became status indicators for the patrician class in Renaissance Venice were created amid the extraordinary wealth of palaces built or rebuilt in the early years of the new century. Mauro Codussi was among the most favoured architects for this marmoreal enrichment, in buildings like the Ca’ Corner Spinelli (subsequently enlarged by Michele Sanmicheli) and the imposing Ca’ Loredan, now known by the name of its later occupants, the Vendramin Calergi family. Palaces like these had few if any rivals elsewhere in Europe in terms of the harmony, elegance and dignity of their proportions and their cumulative impact on the Venetian townscape helped in shaping an image of the city’s power and riches that endured even as its actual resources started to diminish. ‘Venezia, Venezia, chi non ti vede non ti prezia’ – ‘Venice, Venice, whoever hasn’t seen you can’t measure your worth’ – ran an Italian saying. It was the knockout vision of these massive structures, uncompromising in their handsomeness, rising so abruptly from the water that surrounded them, which asserted the Republic’s supremacy as well as underlining the entitlement, sophistication and exceptionalism of its governing elite.

Not surprisingly, such palpable manifestations of beauty and wealth fuelled a growing envy among other Italian states. The need to bring Venice to heel, to humiliate the Most Serene Republic, to plunder its wealth and choke its arrogance was not new, as we have seen, but this particular hunger demanded satisfying more strongly than ever before as the new century got into its stride. A wider context for this general longing to see an appropriate nemesis visited on the overmighty Serenissima had arisen from events shaking the whole of Italy in 1494, when Charles VIII, King of France, encouraged by several of his fellow sovereigns, resolved to claim what he deemed his rightful inheritance in the shape of the Kingdom of Naples. Leading an army of nearly 50,000 men over the Alps, he had advanced, largely unopposed, into the heartland of his new realm, entering Naples itself on 22 February 1495 amid jubilant crowds. The ease with which the whole operation had been carried out was unnerving to Italian rulers, the more so since the actual Neapolitan sovereign, Alfonso of Aragon, had preferred to abdicate rather than stand and fight. If the French king could swoop so successfully on one portion of the peninsula, what was to prevent him from snapping up the rest?

Swiftly a hostile alliance was formed that included the Republic of Venice, Pope Alexander VI, Ludovico Sforza, claimant to the Duchy of Milan, and Emperor Maximilian of Austria, with the stated objects of defending Italy against Turkish invasion and, much more ominously, that of protecting their own territories in the process. King Charles’s ambassador to Venice at this juncture was Philippe

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