Academic literature on the topic 'ABasilica di San Marco (Venice, Italy)'

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Venetian society and politics could be considered as a "polychoral culture." The imagination of the republic rested upon a shared set of social attitudes and beliefs. The political structure included several social groups that functioned as identifiable entities; republican ideologies construed them together as parts of a single harmonious whole. Venice furthermore employed notions of the republic to bolster political and religious independence, in particular from Rome. As is well known, music often contributes to the production and transmission of ideology, and polychoral music in Venice was no exception. Multi-choir music often accompanied religious and civic celebrations in the basilica of San Marco and elsewhere that emphasized the so-called "myth of Venice," the city's complex of religious beliefs and historical heritage. These myths were shared among Venetians and transformed through annual rituals into communal knowledge of the republic. Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli and other Venetian composers wrote polychoral pieces that were structurally homologous with the imagination of the republic. Through its internal structures, polychoral music projected the local ideology of group harmony. Pieces used interaction among hierarchical choirs - their alternation in dialogue and repetition - as rhetorical means, first to create the impression of collaboration or competition, and then to bring them together at the end, as if resolving discord into concord. Furthermore, Giovanni Gabrieli experimented with the integration of instrumental choirs and recitative within predominantly vocal multi-choir textures, elevating music to the category of a theatrical religious spectacle. He also adopted and developed richer tonal procedures belonging to the so-called "hexachordal tonality" to underscore rhetorical text delivery. If multi-choir music remained the central religious repertory of the city, contemporary single-choir pieces favored typical polychoral procedures that involve dialogue and repetition among vocal subgroups. Both repertories adopted clear rhetorical means of emphasizing religious notions of particular political significance at the surface level. Venetian music performed in religious and civic rituals worked in conjunction with the myth of the city to project and reinforce the imagination of the republic, promoting a glorious image of greatness for La Serenissima.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1986.
Includes indexes. Publisher's no.: UMI 8711146. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [236]-249).

Gemlike objects are a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon in the medium of glass, although culturally specific studies remain scarce. This dissertation considers the production of such works in the early medieval period, primarily in association with Abbasid rule. The first half attends to several accessory issues, including glass-related terminology, glass-coloring treatises, the lives of glassworkers, gemstone connoisseurship, and the legal status of such products. These demonstrate a range of coexisting attitudes, including the desirability of such works for their own sake rather than as surreptitious substitutes for “true” gemstones. The second half focuses on an exemplary object, an opaque turquoise glass bowl from the Treasury of San Marco in Venice, which I propose was produced in Baghdad for the caliph al-Mutawakkil just after the year 850. I then consider this work’s changing reception from late medieval Venice to modern scholarship, including ways in which “correct” interpretations of its material and/or origin have been repeatedly supplanted by false leads. The fundamental argument is that gemlike vessels like the San Marco turquoise were not deceptive stand-ins but rather intended to exercise complex discursive practices, both political and connoisseurial in nature, a function that ultimately remains in effect today.

Ruskin made his first trips to Venice when the city was under the Austrian domination, a long period which witnessed the dispersion of many Venetian medieval objects. These objects became of interest to a market which had to meet several requests, including not only those of private collectors, amateurs and foreign tourists looking for “souvenirs”, but also high-standard commissions aimed at creating museums and evocative places. This is the case with the massive purchase by Frederick William of Prussia, in the 1840s, of some ancient medieval sculptures in Italy which would become an important core in the medieval and Byzantine art sections of national museums under construction. Among these sculptures we can find an interesting group of Venetian masterpieces all bought from the same Venetian trader (Pajiaro). Frederick William’s brother as well, Charles, bought several Venetian works of art to replicate a Venetian cloister in the Glienicke Palace. Again: the Church of Peace in Potsdam is adorned with a mosaic bought in Murano, once part of the demolished Saint Cyprian Church. Fragments and entire works of art make up collections intended for the public and its education, or for the embellishment of neo-medieval or picturesque buildings, that was a pillage going in the opposite direction ofRuskin’s interests. His eye and his hand gave us the graphic and visual documentation of a heritage in context. His writings are characterized by the attention to each and every fragment as the witness of a manner of doing which is also history. Some traces of the exportation of medieval works of art can be found in Venetians’ reaction, Seguso’s first of all. In their writings and following actions we can appreciate a greater attention and responsibility for an heritage that will be perceived as an element of their identity. After the annexation to Italy, although this market and sales continued to exist, we witness not only a new dynamic which gives more importance to the restoration of buildings relevant on a national level (such as Piazza San Marco and the Doge’s Palace) or on a civil level (the Fondaco dei Tedeschi), but also the establishment of museums where the fragments emerged from the restoration and decontextualized statues can find their place. All of this has been accomplished in the name of a new spirit and of an attention of whom Ruskin has been the main promoter and protagonist.