Inventing the World

Inventing the World PDF Author: Meredith Small
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643135392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
An epic cultural journey that reveals how Venetian ingenuity and inventions—from sunglasses and forks to bonds and currency—shaped modernity. How did a small, isolated city—with a population that never exceeded 100,000, even in its heyday—come to transform western civilization? Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith Small, the author of the groundbreaking Our Babies, Ourselves examines the the unique Venetian social structure that was key to their explosion of creativity and invention that ranged from the material to social. Whether it was boats or money, medicine or face cream, opera, semicolons, tiramisu or child-labor laws, these all originated in Venice and have shaped contemporary notions of institutions and conventions ever since. The foundation of how we now think about community, health care, money, consumerism, and globalization all sprung forth from the Laguna Veneta. But Venice is far from a historic relic or a life-sized museum. It is a living city that still embraces its innovative roots. As climate change effects sea-level rises, Venice is on the front lines of preserving its legacy and cultural history to inspire a new generation of innovators.

The World in Venice

The World in Venice PDF Author: Bronwen Wilson
Publisher: Studies in Book and Print Cult
ISBN: 9781487525835
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

Get Book Here

Book Description
Positing a dynamic relationship between print culture and social experience, Bronwen Wilson's The World in Venice focuses on the printed image during a century of profound transformation. City views, costume illustrations, events, and portraits of locals and foreigners are brought together to show how printmakers responded to an expanding image of the world in Renaissance Venice, and how, in turn, prints influenced the ways in which individuals thought about themselves. Woodcuts and engravings of cities and inhabitants of Europe, and those of distant lands, initiated a sudden and pervasive experience with alterity that redefined the relations of Europeans to the world. By condensing the world into pictures, print enabled a radically novel and vicarious experience of others. Wilson explores the overlapping and evolving relations between space, vision, print, and identity, and engages with current scholarly debates concerning ethnicities, gender and geography, copies and originals, travel, nationhood, fashion, urban life, visuality, and the body. Venice was one of the largest cities in Renaissance Europe, a trading crossroads, and a centre of print. The World in Venice shows how Venetian identity came to be envisioned within the growing global context that print constructed for it.

Inventing the World

Inventing the World PDF Author: Meredith Small
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643135392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
An epic cultural journey that reveals how Venetian ingenuity and inventions—from sunglasses and forks to bonds and currency—shaped modernity. How did a small, isolated city—with a population that never exceeded 100,000, even in its heyday—come to transform western civilization? Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith Small, the author of the groundbreaking Our Babies, Ourselves examines the the unique Venetian social structure that was key to their explosion of creativity and invention that ranged from the material to social. Whether it was boats or money, medicine or face cream, opera, semicolons, tiramisu or child-labor laws, these all originated in Venice and have shaped contemporary notions of institutions and conventions ever since. The foundation of how we now think about community, health care, money, consumerism, and globalization all sprung forth from the Laguna Veneta. But Venice is far from a historic relic or a life-sized museum. It is a living city that still embraces its innovative roots. As climate change effects sea-level rises, Venice is on the front lines of preserving its legacy and cultural history to inspire a new generation of innovators.

A Brief History of Venice

A Brief History of Venice PDF Author: Elizabeth Horodowich
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472107748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this colourful new history of Venice, Elizabeth Horodowich, one of the leading experts on Venice, tells the story of the place from its ancient origins, and its early days as a multicultural trading city where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together at the crossroads between East and West. She explores the often overlooked role of Venice, alongside Florence and Rome, as one of the principal Renaissance capitals. Now, as the resident population falls and the number of tourists grows, as brash new advertisements disfigure the ancient buildings, she looks at the threat from the rising water level and the future of one of the great wonders of the world.

Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797

Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797 PDF Author: Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris)
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300124309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Get Book Here

Book Description
From 828, when Venetian merchants carried home from Alexandria the stolen relics of St. Mark, to the fall of the Venetian Republic to Napoleon in 1797, the visual arts in Venice were dramatically influenced by Islamic art. Because of its strategic location on the Mediterranean, Venice had long imported objects from the Near East through channels of trade, and it flourished during this particular period as a commercial, political, and diplomatic hub. This monumental book examines Venice's rise as the "bazaar of Europe" and how and why the city absorbed artistic and cultural ideas that originated in the Islamic world. Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797 features a wide range of fascinating images and objects, including paintings and drawings by familiar Venetian artists such as Bellini, Carpaccio, and Tiepolo; beautiful Persian and Ottoman miniatures; and inlaid metalwork, ceramics, lacquer ware, gilded and enameled glass, textiles, and carpets made in the Serene Republic and the Mamluk, Ottoman, and Safavid Empires. Together these exquisite objects illuminate the ways Islamic art inspired Venetian artists, while also highlighting Venice's own views toward its neighboring region. Fascinating essays by distinguished scholars and conservators offer new historical and technical insights into this unique artistic relationship between East and West.

Green Worlds of Renaissance Venice

Green Worlds of Renaissance Venice PDF Author: Jodi Cranston
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271084030
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
From celebrated gardens in private villas to the paintings and sculptures that adorned palace interiors, Venetians in the sixteenth century conceived of their marine city as dotted with actual and imaginary green spaces. This volume examines how and why this pastoral vision of Venice developed. Drawing on a variety of primary sources ranging from visual art to literary texts, performances, and urban plans, Jodi Cranston shows how Venetians lived the pastoral in urban Venice. She describes how they created green spaces and enacted pastoral situations through poetic conversations and theatrical performances in lagoon gardens; discusses the island utopias found, invented, and mapped in distant seas; and explores the visual art that facilitated the experience of inhabiting verdant landscapes. Though the greening of Venice was relatively short lived, Cranston shows how the phenomenon had a lasting impact on how other cities, including Paris and London, developed their self-images and how later writers and artists understood and adapted the pastoral mode. Incorporating approaches from eco-criticism and anthropology, Green Worlds of Renaissance Venice greatly informs our understanding of the origins and development of the pastoral in art history and literature as well as the culture of sixteenth-century Venice. It will appeal to scholars and enthusiasts of sixteenth-century history and culture, the history of urban landscapes, and Italian art.

Venice Synagogues

Venice Synagogues PDF Author: Umberto Fortis
Publisher: Assouline Publishing
ISBN: 1614280525
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 6

Get Book Here

Book Description
Commemorating the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Venice Ghetto, this magnificent hand-bound Ultimate Collection volume introduces readers to the beauty and historical and spiritual significance of the five principal synagogues in Venice, the most important markers of Jewish faith and culture in the Most Serene Republic. Behind the walls of the Ghetto, Venetian Jews expressed strong ties to the traditions of their forefathers in constructing these beautiful places of worship. The architecture, furnishings, and decorations blended the memory of their different countries of origin with traditions of Venetian artistic culture, bequeathing the City on the Lagoon enduring monuments of unparalleled eminence that remain sites of reverence and admiration.

Venetian Chic

Venetian Chic PDF Author: Francesca Bortolotto Possati
Publisher: Assouline Publishing
ISBN: 1614285381
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 3

Get Book Here

Book Description
Venetian art connoisseur, interior designer, and hotelier Francesca Bortolotto Possati knows the intricacies of Venice. To have her as a guide is to experience firsthand her passion for the private side of the mythic city whose daily visitors outnumber its population. Join her to visit artists’ studios, elegant Venetian friends, and palaces’ secrets. Everywhere one wanders, a sense of history saturates the buildings and landscapes, harking back to the artists of the Renaissance and the chic masquerade balls of centuries past.The discerning eye of photographer Robyn Lea makes this book a revelation of the Venice of dreams, which will surely allow readers to see this iconic destination through new eyes.A sentimental foreword by Jeremy Irons perfectly complements this stunning volume.

City of Fortune

City of Fortune PDF Author: Roger Crowley
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book Here

Book Description
“The rise and fall of Venice’s empire is an irresistible story and [Roger] Crowley, with his rousing descriptive gifts and scholarly attention to detail, is its perfect chronicler.”—The Financial Times The New York Times bestselling author of Empires of the Sea charts Venice’s astounding five-hundred-year voyage to the pinnacle of power in an epic story that stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty. City of Fortune traces the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga, from the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminates in the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, to the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503, which sees the Ottoman Turks supplant the Venetians as the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean. In between are three centuries of Venetian maritime dominance, during which a tiny city of “lagoon dwellers” grow into the richest place on earth. Drawing on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers, Crowley paints a vivid picture of this avaricious, enterprising people and the bountiful lands that came under their dominion. From the opening of the spice routes to the clash between Christianity and Islam, Venice played a leading role in the defining conflicts of its time—the reverberations of which are still being felt today. “[Crowley] writes with a racy briskness that lifts sea battles and sieges off the page.”—The New York Times “Crowley chronicles the peak of Venice’s past glory with Wordsworthian sympathy, supplemented by impressive learning and infectious enthusiasm.”—The Wall Street Journal

Venice & the East

Venice & the East PDF Author: Deborah Howard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300085044
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book Here

Book Description
As European cities such as Venice looked further afield, not only for material goods, but also for artistic inspiration and information on new technologies and ideas, they inevitably came into contact with a great many new cultures. In this book Deborah Howard explores the experiences of Venetian merchants and travellers in the East and the influences that were brought to the city from the Islamic cultures encountered. The study is based on the literature of travellers, objects, buildings and architecture, documents and manuscripts, and takes a thematic look at the city: San Marco, the Merchant City, palaces, Palazzo Ducale, the Pilgrim City.

Venice is a Fish: A Cultural Guide

Venice is a Fish: A Cultural Guide PDF Author: Tiziano Scarpa
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847651720
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Get Book Here

Book Description
'Every year, hundreds of books on the city are published, but none resembles this one' - Independent 'This gem of a book offers practical advice but in a distinctly lyrical tone. If you are lucky enough to be going there, take Venice is a Fish and you will want for nothing' - Sunday Telegraph Built on an inverted forest, paved with a tortoiseshell of boulders, Venice is a maze of tiny alleys, bridges and squares. Tiziano Scarpa wanders through the city, recounting the customs and secrets that only Venetians know. With everything from practical advice for aspiring Venetian lovers to hints at where to find the best bacaro, Scarpa waves the tourist in the right direction and, without naming a single restaurant, hotel or bar, relates the secret language needed to experience the real Venice. So ignore the street signs - why fight the labyrinth? Venice, the fish, is ready to swallow you whole.