Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Venice (Italy) – Guilds – History'

My dissertation examines the cultural history of the Renaissance Venetian maritime empire. In this project I bring into conversation two historiographical subfields, the intellectual history of Venetian Renaissance humanism and the colonial history of the early modern Mediterranean, which have previously developed separately. In doing so, I examine the relationship between power and knowledge as it unfolded in the early modern Mediterranean. The ways in which Venetian Renaissance intellectual culture was shaped by its imperial engagements - and, conversely, how Venetian approaches to governance were inflected by humanist practices - are the central axes of my dissertation. In the first part of the dissertation, I examine the ways in which writing and textual collecting were used by elite Venetian readers to represent the geopolitical dimensions of their empire. I consider a group of manuscripts and printed books which contain technical, navigational, and cartographic writing and images about Venetian mercantile and imperial activity in the Mediterranean. In the second part, I undertake two case-studies of Venetian patrician governors who were trained in the humanist schools of Venice, before being posted to colonial offices in Dalmatia and the Aegean, respectively. I examine how their education in Venice as humanists influenced their experience and practice of governance in the stato da mar. Their personal texts offer an alternative intellectual history of empire, one which demonstrates the formation of political thought amongst the men actually practicing and experiencing imperial governance. Overall, I aim to build a picture of the ways in which literary culture, the physical world of the stato da mar, and political thought came to be entwined in the Venetian Renaissance; and then to describe how these dense relationships worked for the Venetian administrators who experienced them in the Mediterranean.

This dissertation reconstructs the original form and sixteenth-century decoration of the lost Venetian church of Santa Maria Assunta dei Crociferi, destroyed after the suppression of the Crociferi in 1656 to make way for the present church of the Gesuiti. The destruction of the church, the scattering of its contents, and the almost total lack of documentation of the religious order for which the space was built, has obscured our understanding of the many works of art it once contained, produced by some of the most important Venetian artists of the sixteenth century. This project seeks to correct scholarly neglect of this important church, and to restore context and meaning to these objects by reconstructing their original placement in the interest of a collective interpretation. Various types, patterns and phases of patronage at the church—monastic, private and corporate—are discussed to reveal interconnections between these groups, and to highlight to role of the Crociferi as architects of a sophisticated decorative programme that was designed to respond to the latest artistic trends, and to visually demonstrate their adherence to orthodoxy at a moment of religious upheaval and reform.

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.

Lawyers have widely been recognized as playing a role in the transition from the medieval to the modem state. Their presence in Renaissance Venetian politics, however, remains largely unexplored. Relying primarily on a prosopographical analysis, the thesis explores the various roles played by lawyers, dividing those roles into three main categories: diplomats, territorial governors, and domestic legislators. What emerges is a clear pattern of significant involvement by legally trained patricians in the Venetian political system. Noble lawyers were most often ambassadors, serving in many of the principal courts inside and outside of Italy as Venice was extending her influence on the Italian peninsula. They also served as administrators of Venetian rule throughout the Venetian terraferma (mainland) state. Lastly, their domestic political officeholding further confirms their continuing participation, as they held many of the most important domestic offices throughout the Quattrocento. The thesis ends with short biographies of each of the nearly three-dozen lawyers who make up this study, as well as chronologies of the offices they held. These chronologies include archival references for each office.

Art History
M.A.
This thesis evaluates the artistic contributions of convent women in Renaissance Italy during the period c. 1450-1550 with individual case studies in Venice and Prato. As the cost of the traditional marriage dowry inflated markedly over the course of the fifteenth century, an increasing number of girls from affluent family backgrounds were sent to the convent in an effort to spare their families the financial burden of marrying them off. Convent vocations were not only financially convenient for families with daughters but offered a socially respectable alternative to marriage that many came to rely upon over the course of the latter fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The heightened presence of highborn girls in Italian convents seems to correspond with a concurrent development in female monastic artistic production. This point will be demonstrated in my study through analysis of two objects: the illustrated convent chronicle of Santa Maria delle Vergini (c. 1523), now in the Museo Correr in Venice and the illustrated frontispiece of Beatrice del Sera's convent play Amor di virtù (1555), preserved in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence. Both of the considered works complement a text also written by convent women during the same period that demonstrate their knowledge of historic and current events, in addition to contemporaneous developments in the visual arts. The corresponding texts will be examined in a supporting manner to aid in interpreting the subject matter of the illustrations. Subsequent to identifying the pictorial content of these illustrations, I will elucidate how the convent artists successfully assert a female identity through their respective visual representations, and determine what specific type of identity they were motivated to promote.
Temple University--Theses

Original contribution. A discussion of Carlo Lodoli's bi-fold understanding of indole (inherent nature); with respect to both meaning in architecture and the education of architects.
Carlo Lodoli (1690--1761) exists as a footnote in most major history books of modern architecture. He is typically noted for either his influence on the Venetian Neoclassical tradition or as an early prophet to some sort of functionalism. Though I would not argue his influence, I doubt his role in the development of a structurally determined functionalism. The issue of influence is always present as very little of his writings have survived and his built work amounts to a few windowsills. He did, however, teach architecture. I propose to explore the pedagogic potential of Lodoli's lessons of architecture.
Lodoli's teaching approach was not necessarily professional in that he did not instruct his students in the methods of drawing or construction techniques. Rather, his approach was dialogical. The topics were sweeping, often ethical, and ranged from the nature of truth to the nature of materials. Existing scholarship pertaining to Lodoli most often focuses upon his students' production of texts, projects, and projections. Andrea Memmo's Elementi dell'Architettura Lodoliana (1786, 1833) and Francesco Algarotti's Saggio sopra l'architettura (1756) are both specifically named by the respective authors as advancing Lodoli's architectural theories. Often overlooked are the apologues, or fables, used by Lodoli in lessons to his students. The main source for these fables is the Apologhi Immaginati (1787). Others were included in Memmo's Elementi. Apologues from both sources have been translated for the first time into English and can be found in Appendix I of the dissertation.
I look specifically to these stories to understand and illustrate Lodoli's approach to making, teaching and thinking. This is understood through Lodoli's characterisation of the identity of materials and of the self. Within this dissertation I intend to flesh out the textual and architectural fabric surrounding the pedagogic activities of the Venetian Friar known as the Socrates of Architecture, Carlo Lodoli.

The present work examines the literary criticism expressed by Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi in several of her unpublished letters.
The first part outlines the cultural and historical tradition of Venice during the Eighteenth Century. Particular attention is subsequently given to the intellectual role of women, their contribution to the literary salons of the time, and the neoclassical tradition. This first part is essential in that it supplies a valuable context to Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi's writings.
In the second part, I examine Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi's literary criticism of major European authors and works. Through these criticisms she exposes her misvision of the literary world to which she aspired, and reveals that although she was influenced by the subtle preromantic tendencies, she remained faithful to the neoclassical school.

In 17th century Italy, the trend toward small sacred concertato forms precipitated the publication of a number of volumes devoted exclusively to sacred solo vocal music. Several of these, including the Ghirlanda sacra (Gardano, 1625) and Motetti a voce sola (Gardano, 1645) contain sacred solo motets by some of the best Italian composers of the period. Venetian composers were at the forefront of the move toward the smaller concertato forms and, to fulfill various needs of church musicians, wrote in an increasingly virtuoso style intended to highlight the solo voice. This study traces the development of the solo motet in the sacred works of Venetian composers from the time of Monteverdi to Vivaldi. It revolves around sacred solo motets composed at Saint Marks and the Venetian ospedali (orphanages). It includes works of Alessandro Grandi, Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, and Antonio Vivaldi. It also deals with solo motets of lesser composers whose works are available in modern critical and performing editions or in recently published facsimiles. In addition to providing a more detailed survey of the genre than has been previously available, this study provides an overview of highly performable (but largely neglected) repertoire.

This study is an art history of Santa Maria dei Carmini, Venice, from its foundation in c. 1286 to the present day, with a special focus on the late Renaissance period (c. 1500-1560). It explores a relatively overlooked corner of Renaissance Venice and provides an opportunity to study the Carmelite Order's relationship to art. It seeks to answer outstanding questions of attribution, dating, patronage, architectural arrangements and locations of works of art in the church. Additionally it has attempted to have a diverse approach to problems of interpretation and has examined the visual imagery's relationship to the Carmelite liturgy, religious function and later interpretations of art works. Santa Maria dei Carmini was amongst the largest basilicas in Venice when it was completed and the Carmelites were a major international order with a strong literary tradition. Their church in Venice contained a wealth of art works produced by one of the most restlessly inventive generations in the Western European tradition. Chapter 1 outlines a history of the Carmelites, their hagiography and devotions, which inform much of the discussion in later chapters. The second Chapter discusses the early history of the Carmelite church in Venice, establishing when it was founded, and examining the decorative aspects before 1500. It demonstrates how the tramezzo and choir-stalls compartmentalised the nave and how these different spaces within the church were used. Chapter 3 studies two commissions for the decoration of the tramezzo, that span the central period of this thesis, c. 1500-1560. There it is shown that subjects relevant to the Carmelite Order, and the expected public on different sides of the tramezzo were chosen and reinterpreted over time as devotions changed. Cima da Conegliano's Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1511) is discussed in Chapter 4, where the dedication of the altar is definitively proven and the respective liturgy is expanded upon. The tradition of votive images is shown to have influenced Cima's representation of the donor. In Chapter 5 Cima's altarpiece for the Scuola di Sant'Alberto's altar is shown to have been replaced because of the increasing ambiguity over the identification of the titulus after the introduction of new Carmelite saints at the beginning of the century. Its compositional relationship to the vesperbild tradition is also examined and shown to assist the faithful in important aspects of religious faith. The sixth chapter examines the composition of Lorenzo Lotto's St Nicholas in Glory (1527-29) and how it dramatises the relationship between the devoted, the interceding saints and heaven. It further hypothesises that the inclusion of St Lucy is a corroboration of the roles performed by St Nicholas and related to the confraternity's annual celebrations in December. The authorship, date and iconography of Tintoretto's Presentation of Christ (c. 1545) is analysed in Chapter 7, which also demonstrates how the altarpiece responds to the particular liturgical circumstances on the feast of Candlemas. The final chapter discusses the church as a whole, providing the first narrative of the movement of altars and development of the decorative schemes. The Conclusion highlights the important themes that have developed from this study and provides a verdict on the role of ‘Carmelite art' in the Venice Carmini.

Orientador: Milton Jose de Almeida
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação
Made available in DSpace on 2019-01-04T15:17:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rodrigues_UbirajaraAlencar_M.pdf: 90714835 bytes, checksum: 3a881fbca943a7ba06c7c2e7fcb234a1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008
Resumo: Esse texto é uma introdução ao livro "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili", de autoria do dominicano Francesco Colonna, publicado em 1499 pelo editor Aldo Manuzio. É também uma introdução às técnicas da impressão xilográfica utilizadas nas ilustrações desse livro, e à história da tipografia veneziana em fins do século XV. A concepção gráfica e visual desse livro famoso são modelares e persistem até hoje
Abstract: This is an introduction to the book "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili", from dominican Francesco Colonna, and published by Aldo Manuzio, in 1499. It's also na introduction to the techniques of xylography printing used to illustrate this book, and the history of venetian typography at the end of the 15th century. The graphic tradition and visual approach of this remarkable book persist as model up to now
Mestrado
Educação, Conhecimento, Linguagem e Arte
Mestre em Educação

À la fin du Moyen Âge, les paroisses urbaines traversèrent une période de crise, qui se traduisit par une profonde déprise, temporelle et spirituelle, des cadres paroissiaux sur les fidèles. Cette recherche entend considérer un ensemble de paroisses urbaines dans les derniers siècles du Moyen Âge afin d’observer, « de l’intérieur », les conditions, les enjeux et les conséquences de l’évolution des interactions entre les paroisses et leurs communautés paroissiales. Venise, du fait de la richesse de ses archives paroissiales, a été retenue pour mener cette enquête. Dans un premier temps de l'étude, une vue d’ensemble des cadres paroissiaux vénitiens est proposée dans une confrontation constante avec le droit canonique médiéval : les territoires, les clergés et la liturgie sont ainsi examinés. Alors que le droit canonique juxtaposait ces trois cadres, la réalité paroissiale vénitienne en souligne au contraire les interactions. On en vient ensuite à envisager les évolutions à l'œuvre, qu’il s’agisse de l’affirmation du juspatronat laïc, de l’élaboration d’une nouvelle économie paroissiale et des transformations des pratiques dévotionnelles. Enfin, la thèse s’attache à mesurer les effets de ces mutations, qui se reflétaient dans la concurrence exercée par les autres établissements religieux, concurrence qui porta à une désagrégation des droits coutumiers paroissiaux. Aussi, l’ordinaire vénitien entreprit-il à la fin du XVe siècle de réformer les paroisses et d’en unifier les coutumes, donnant ainsi naissance à une institution paroissiale vénitienne qui se maintint jusqu’à la chute de la République
In the late Middle Ages, urban parishes went through a period of crisis, which resulted in a profound abandonment by the parochial structures of whole sections of faithfuls'life, both temporal and spiritual. The aim of this research involves the study, through the analysis of their own archives, of a collection of urban parishes in the last centuries of the Middle Ages in order to observe, "from within" conditions, issues and consequences of changing interactions between parishes and their faithful communities. Because of its vast parish records, Venice has been chosen as the particular object of this investigation. The first part provides an initial overview of the Venetian parochial structures, comparing them to medieval canon law, therefore the territories, the clergy and the liturgy are discussed. In fact, while canon law juxtaposed these three frameworks, the reality of the Venetian parochial organisations instead emphasized the existing interactions between these three levels. The second part is therefore considering the various developments : like the assertion of secular juspatronat, the rise of a new parish economy or changes in devotional practices. Finally, a third part attempts to measure the effects of these mutations, which were reflected in the competition from other religious bodies. A competition that led to disintegration of customary parochial rights. So, to solve these difficulties, the Venetian episcopate began, in the late fifteenth century, to reform its parishes and to unify their specific customs, by thus giving birth to the Venetian parochial institution that will continue until the fall of the Republic

While scholarship often focuses on how early modern Italians used images in their devotions, particularly in the post-Tridentine era, little attention has been placed upon how laypeople engaged with devotional text during times of prayer and in their everyday lives. Studies of early modern devotional texts have explored their literary content, investigated their censorship by the Church, or concentrated upon an elite readership. This thesis, instead, investigates how ordinary devotees interacted with holy words in their material form, which I have termed ‘material prayers’. Since this thesis developed under the aegis of the interdisciplinary research project, Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home, 1400-1600, it focuses primarily on engagement with these material prayers in domestic spaces. Using an interdisciplinary approach drawing from material culture studies, literary history, social and cultural history, and art history, it brings together objects, images and archival sources to illuminate how devotees from across the socio-economic and literacy spectrums accessed and employed devotional text in their prayers and daily life. From holy words, Biblical excerpts, and prayers to textual symbols like the Sacred Monogram of the Name of Jesus, this thesis explores how and why these material prayers were employed for spiritual, apotropaic and intercessory purposes. It analyses material prayers not only in traditional textual formats (printed books and manuscripts), but also those that were printed on single-sheets of paper, inscribed on jewellery, or etched into the structure of the home. To convey how devotees engaged with and relied upon these material prayers, it considers a variety of inscribed objects, including those sanctioned by the Church as well as those which might be questioned or deemed ‘superstitious’ by ecclesiastical authorities. Sermons, Inquisition trial records, and other archival documents have been consulted to further illuminate the material evidence. The first part of the thesis, ‘On the Body’, considers the how devotees came into personal contact with texts by wearing prayers on their bodies. It examines a range of objects including prayers with protective properties, known as brevi, that were meant to be sealed in a pouch and worn around the neck, and more luxurious items of physical adornment inscribed with devotional and apotropaic text, such as necklaces and rings. The second part of the thesis enters the home to explore how the spaces people inhabited and the objects that populated their homes were decorated with material prayers. ‘In the Home’ begins with texts inscribed over the entryways of early modern Italian homes, and then considers how devotees decorated their walls with holy words and how the objects of devotion and household life were imbued with religious significance through the addition of pious inscriptions. By analysing these personal objects and the textual domestic sphere, this thesis argues that these material prayers cut across socio-economic classes, genders, and ages to embody quotidian moments of domestic devotion as well as moments of fear, anxiety and change.

Defence date: 30 November 1998
Examining board: Prof. Gerard Delille, European University Institute ; Prof. Olwen Hufton, Merton College, University of Oxford (thesis supervisor) ; Dr. Richard Mackenney, University of Edinburgh (external supervisor) ; Prof. Brian Pullan, University of Manchester
First made available online 29 August 2017
This study seeks to account for the political tranquillity of the Venetian people in early modem Venice (1550-1700). According to the ideology of the aristocratic elite, this was primarily attributable to its unique system of justice. Gasparo Contarini, the classic exponent of the 'myth' of Venice, derived the republic’s famed political stability from its guiding principle that, justice should be equally administered to all. Many studies have sought to explode this myth of Venetian justice by comparing these high principles with their operation in practice. The study focuses on the operation of the justice system in a specific area which touched the lives of all Venetians: the regulation of the internal market. As in other European cities, the market had a corporate structure, being divided up among guilds - privileged interested groups which possessed a monopoly on a limited sector of the market. While unusually, Venetian guilds were denied any formal political participation, alternative channels of communication between guilds and government existed in the courts, where the laws regulating the market might become the object of negotiation. The study of the courts therefore illuminates the whole question of guild-state relations in Venice. The role of the government in market justice was a dual one: it prosecuted lawbreakers in the name of the public interest, but was also the adjudicator of civil disputes between the rival private interests of the guilds. This is reflected in the division of the thesis into two halves. The first half examines the relation between public and private in the administration of the public law, while the second half focuses upon the resolution of private disputes, both between the guilds and within them. The study begins with a historiographical introduction to the problematic of political stability, justice and the world of the guilds. The first chapter examines the structure of the government courts and the extent to which the system was in fact governed by private interests. The gap between the law of the court-room and the reality of the street is examined in chapter two. The unreliability of the police forced the government to rely upon a system of self-interested policing by the guilds, and this gave the guilds significant influence over the implementation of policy in practice. Chapter three shows how government efforts to implement its own agenda in the public interest were often compromised by this need to cooperate with the guilds. The fourth chapter turns aside from issues of public law and looks within the boundaries of the guilds, seeking to determine to what extent they were genuinely popular institutions. Government regulations to protect ordinary guildsmen from dominance by a minority were also motivated by the desire to prevent the emergence of a wealthy class of elite guildsmen, who might have demanded political participation. Chapter five examines the nature of the external boundaries between guilds - their definition, violation and formation. The increasing rigidity of these boundaries in the seventeenth century and the consequent intensification of disputes between guilds were related to the imposition of an inflexible system of taxation by the government. Chapter six goes on to examine the resolution of such disputes, in terms of costs and legal procedures, and the consequences of this for rich and poor. Government attempts to impose an efficient system of summary justice were resisted by 'parasitic' elements within the courts - in particular those poorer nobles who earned their living from civil litigation. Tensions at the heart of the ruling elite therefore ensured that the free play of wealth in the court system was allowed to continue. The implications of the study are summarised in the conclusion.

Defence date: 23 June 2000
Examining board: Prof. Avner Greif, Stanford University ; Prof. Ramon Marimon, EUI, Supervisor ; Prof. Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid ; Prof. Jaime Reis, EUI
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 5 December 2013
Examining Board: Professor Luca Molà, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Antonella Romano, EUI; Professor Filippo de Vivo, Birkbeck, University of London; Professor Deborah Howard, University of Cambridge
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis addresses the construction of ideas concerning the identities of geographical spaces, focusing on Venice in the period 1381-1509. It concentrates on the representations of two different roles held in this period by Venice: that of a city in a circumscribed urban setting, and that of the capital of an emerging state on the Italian mainland. Employing a corpus that consists mainly of geographical descriptions but that also includes cases of art and ceremonies, the dissertation closely analyses how fifteenth-century representations of Venice and the Venetian Terraferma were constructed, how they were transformed over time, and how these processes can be explained through the links with the various contexts in which the representations came into being. The thesis underlines, more than is currently the case in historiography, the multiplicity and transformability of simultaneously existing images of Venice. It analyses the large variety of factors to which contemporaries reacted when they created their geographical representations. Rather than merely following a centuries-old tradition of images of Venice (a tradition which in historiography has been called the ‘myth of Venice’), or rather than simply mirroring the institutionalised characteristics of the Venetian state, contemporaries took into account a multitude of contexts when constructing and transforming their representations. This is clearly shown by the very existence of different, sometimes even contradictory images of Venice and its mainland state in the fifteenth century. Taking into account the multiplicity of representations also explains that images of Venice in its role as city on the one hand, and as capital of a mainland state on the other hand, did not have to be in conflict, but that they could exist alongside each other, and that the processes by which they were created could impact upon one another.

Defence date: 7 June 1996
Examining board: Prof. Franco Angiolini, Università degli Studi di Pisa (supervisor) ; Prof. Laurence Fontaine, European University Institute and CNRS, Paris ; Dr. Richard Mackenney, University of Edinburgh (external supervisor) ; Prof. Paolo Malanima, Università degli Studi di Pisa ; Prof. Daniel Roche, Institut d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, CNRS, Paris
First made available online on 10 September 2013.
The object of this study is to reinstate the market in second-hand clothes and furnishings within the hi story of Venice from c.1500 to c.1650. The discussion focuses on the Venetian guild of second-hand dealers, a number of 'alternative' exchanges of used goods, and a group of Jewish second-hand dealers who became established in Venice in the early sixteenth century. Particular attention is paid to the issues of guild exclusivism and the inelasticity of craft structures within the market for used goods. There are seven chapters. Chapter 1 explores the notion that the guild of second-hand dealers was traditional1y important in the market but did not have complete control, and Chapter 2 investigates various 'alternative' exchanges coexisting with the guild. In the next three chapters, these basic structures are examined in detail and their development is charted over the period as a whole. In Chapter 3, traders within the second-hand market are considered and the new group of Jewish competitors is introduced. The craft activities of the guild members and the Jewish dealers are analysed in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, a study is made of outlets for used goods and of their distribution within the city. The last two chapters assess the impact of two types of setbacks: outbreaks of plague, and a seventeenth-century recession in the used-goods market.

Defence date: 2 September 2005
Examining board: Prof. Gérard Delille (Supervisor) ; Prof. Anthony Molho, European University Institute ; Prof. Edward Muir, Northwestern University ; Prof. Silvana Seidel Menchi, Università di Pisa
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Examining board: Prof. Franco Cardini; Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Università di Firenze ; Prof. Diego Curto, European University Institute ; Prof. Allen J. Grieco, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies ; Prof. Anthony Molho, European University Institute (Supervisor)
Defence date: 15 May 2005
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

This dissertation examines the contributions of apothecary craftsmen and their medicinal retailing practices to emerging cultures of scientific investigation and experimental practice in the Italian port city of Venice between 1565 and 1730. During this important period in Europe’s history, efforts to ground traditional philosophical investigations of nature in a new material culture of empirical and experimental practice elicited significant debate in scholarly communities. Leading the way in advancing the authority of “experience” were Europe’s medical practitioners divided between university-trained physicians and guild-regulated apothecaries and surgeons. In Italy, humanist praise for the practical arts and new techniques of analyzing inherited texts influenced sixteenth-century university physicians to redefine the medical discipline in terms of its practical aims to intervene in nature and achieve useful effects. This led to an important revival in northern Italian universities at Ferrara and Padua of the classical Greek writings on the empirical disciplines of anatomy and pharmacy. In the sixteenth century the university at Padua, under the patronage of the Republic of Venice, was the site of Europe’s first public botanical garden, anatomical theater and clinical demonstrations. The university also hosted important experimental practitioners such as Andreas Vesalius, Galileo Galilei and William Harvey, and remained a leading center of medical investigation attracting an international faculty of students and professors until the eighteenth century. At the same time, the study of Aristotelian natural philosophy in original Greek texts was largely emancipated from the faculty of theology at Padua, nurturing innovative discourses on experimental method by figures such as Giacomo Zabarella and the anatomist Fabricius Aquapendente.

The unique intellectual climate at Padua has thus attracted significant scholarly attention in the history and philosophy of early modern science. However, the university’s important relationships with the thriving world of artisan guilds and their commercial practices in the nearby city of Venice have not received due attention in historical scholarship. To address this issue, this dissertation focuses upon a unique group of guild-trained medical practitioners in Venice – apothecaries – to trace the circulations of materials, skills, and expertise between Padua and the Venetian marketplace. Drawing on the methods of urban history, medical anthropology, literary studies and intellectual history, I conceptualize Venice as an important “contact zone,” or space of dialogue between scholarly and artisanal modes of investigating and representing nature between the latter sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. In particular, I focus upon emerging apothecary strategies for retailing nature to public audiences through their medicinal creations, printed books, licensing petitions, and their pharmacy shops. Through these practices, apothecaries not only marketed commercial remedies during a period of growing interest in pharmaceutical matters, but also fashioned their own expertise as learned medical practitioners linking both theory and practice; head and hand; natural philosophy and practiced skill. In 1565 Venice’s apothecaries made their first effort to define their trade as a liberal profession in establishing a College of Apothecaries that lasted until 1804. Already by the turn of the eighteenth century, however, Venice’s apothecaries had adopted the moniker as “Public Professors” and engaged in dialogue with leading professors at Padua for plans to institute a new school of “experimental medical chemistry” with the prior of the apothecary college proposed as its first public demonstrator. Looking to a wide variety of statements on the urban pharmacy in Venice in published medical books, pharmacopeias, trade manuals, literary works, civic rituals and archival licensing and regulatory decrees, I trace the evolution of the public apothecary trade in Venice, paying particular attention to the pharmacy’s early modern materialization as a site of cultural and intellectual exchanges between the artisan workshop and the university world inhabited by scholars.

My readings of these sources lead to three important conclusions regarding the significance of apothecary retailing to the scientific culture of early modern Italy. First, the urban terrain of artisan practice in a merchant republic must be placed alongside the traditionally studied princely courts and universities as a fertile ground for dialogue between artisans and scholars in the study of nature. Second, apothecary investments in processing and retailing nature during this period made significant contributions to the material culture of early modern science in both mediating a growing pharmacopeia of exotic materials imported from around the globe, and in fashioning workshop models for the first university chemical laboratories instituted at Padua in the eighteenth century. And third, apothecary marketing strategies expressing their own medical expertise over nature’s materials articulated a fusion of textual learning and manual skill that offered some of the earliest profiles of the experimental practitioner that was eventually adopted in the public discourse of the experimental New Sciences by the latter seventeenth century.

Dissertation

Defence date: 06/09/2010
Examining Board: Prof. Brigitte Marin (Université Aix-Marseille I - M.M.S.H.) Prof. Anthony Molho (EUI) - supervisor Prof. Antonella Romano (EUI) Prof. Francesca Trivellato (Yale University)
The point of departure for this dissertation is a historical, epistemological and methodological discussion of the notion of “community”. Based on a comparative approach to the three cases of the Greeks in Venice, Livorno and Marseilles from the age of the “Greek Enlightenment” (c. 1770) up until the birth of an independent Neohellenic state (1830), this study aims to challenge the conventional image of early modern foreign communities as homogeneous and inclusive groups, by rendering the complex, diverse, and often contradictory trajectories of groups and individuals that formed what we know as “the Greek Diaspora”. Paying special attention to issues such as the administrative control of the migrants, the collective uses of urban space, and the sharing of socio-cultural practices, it reconstructs the multi-layered background that supported the expression of communal identities among the Greeks in Venice, Livorno and Marseilles. By recasting the three cases under scrutiny within the wider context of the many connections and relations that existed among them, the dissertation stresses the ways in which the entanglement of mercantile, migratory and family networks came to “shape” the Greek Diaspora as a space both physical and socio-symbolical. Conversely, and in a micro-historical perspective, it also analyses the role played by the “communal institutions” (namely the Greek-Orthodox churches and brotherhoods) in shaping collective identities and governing plural and heterogeneous social groups, as well as the many types of reaction and resistance to this progressive “institutionalisation” of community life. Lastly, a case-study on the ambiguous involvement of the Greeks in Venice, Livorno and Marseilles in the Greek war of independence (1821-1830), sheds light on the complex issue of the “patriotism of the expatriates”, and argues for an essential distinction between the making of communal identity, and that of national (or even “proto-national”) consciousness.
Ce travail se présente comme une enquête sur la « communauté », entendue à la fois comme construction socioculturelle et comme catégorie d’analyse. L’armature théorique et méthodologique de l’étude repose sur l’articulation dialectique entre ces deux grilles de lectures. D’une part, une analyse historique et contextualisée d’un « fait communautaire » entendu à la fois comme groupe social, comme corps juridico-politique, comme ensemble de pratiques sociales et culturelles, et comme construction politique et symbolique. D’autre part, une discussion critique des outils et méthodes de la recherche autour de la question de la communauté, qui apparaît comme indissociable d’une réflexion plus large – et transdisciplinaire – sur la nature du lien social. L’observatoire choisi est celui des colonies grecques de Venise, Livourne et Marseille, depuis les années 1770 (marquées par l’émergence d’une « bourgeoisie commerciale grecque » particulièrement active dans le contexte de la diaspora), jusqu’à l’indépendance de l’Etat néohellénique en 1830. Reprenant une périodisation classique de l’historiographie grecque moderne, ce découpage chronologique propose d’en discuter de l’intérieur la pertinence et la cohérence. Il s’agit ainsi de saisir les continuités du phénomène communautaire grec par-delà les ruptures politiques classiques de l’histoire grecque moderne (par exemple en incluant dans la période étudiée la guerre d’indépendance grecque et l’émergence consécutive d’un Etat-nation hellénique), et ce pour mieux débusquer et interroger les impensés des constructions historiographiques non seulement antérieures, mais aussi actuelles, des objets étudiés (ainsi de la diaspora grecque comme « laboratoire » de l’indépendance hellénique à venir). Le régime de la comparaison constitue ici une proposition méthodologique face à l’alternative classique entre l’étude d’une diaspora dans son ensemble, et celle d’une communauté en particulier. La multiplication des points d’observation sur le phénomène diasporique permet en effet de contourner l’obstacle d’une irréductibilité des approches macro et micro, tout en saisissant une partie des flux et des mouvements qui structurent l’espace diasporique et lie les communautés les unes aux autres. Elle permet aussi de poser au centre du questionnement le problème des frontières des groupes étudiés, en pointant la labilité des catégories comme des définitions, et donc de révoquer les modèles logiques abstraits et totalisants, pour interroger les relations et les identités sous un angle praxéologique.

Defence date: 23 January 2017
Examining Board: Professor Luca Mola, EUI; Professor Ann Thomson, EUI; Professor Anna Bellavitis, University of Rouen; Dr. Felicity Heal, University of Oxford
The Ties that Bind: Marriage, Family, and Fortune offers a fresh perspective on the European family through a parallel study on a group of English and Venetian families during the latter part of the seventeenth century. The families in this study were all connected to the legal profession, and shared a similar socio-professional status. However, their worlds were remarkably distinct, England and Venice were governed by different norms and laws, they represented different sides of the confessional divide, as well as the North-western European divide. These differences had an impact on their experiences of family life. This study will focus on three major themes, marriage strategies, inheritance and family affiliation, and family relationships and hierarchies. Through these three issues, this study will examine in parallel how the different geographical, cultural and legal settings of England and Venice impacted experiences of marriage and family life. Building on a wide range of sources including, testaments, court cases, citizenship reports, family archives, and correspondence, this thesis will examine the English and Venetian families through a series of case studies. In so doing it will provide a broader range of experiences within the family between two rather distinct groups.
Chapter 7 ‘The Moretti family: marital status and domestic authority' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'The Moretti family: late marriage, bachelorhood and domestic authority in Seventeenth-Century Venice' (2015) in the journal ‘Gender & History’

Marguerite “Peggy” Guggenheim is best known for her legacy of collecting modern art in both Europe and the United States, but scholars have overlooked her importance as a patron of modern architecture, specifically the exhibition spaces that showcased her art collection. This thesis fills the gap of literature by tracing the architectural history of the collection. Guggenheim represented a catalyst for bridging the role of art and architecture by promoting modern art through three different spatial approaches: creating collaborative and didactic gallery workspaces at Galerie Guggenheim Jeune in London (1938-1939), establishing architectural spaces that employed unique display techniques at Art of This Century in New York (1942-1948), and instituting a final home-museum at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice (1949-present). Through the use of primary sources, such as Guggenheim’s autobiography, archival sources including familial correspondences, original black and white photographs, newspaper articles, and architectural drawings, I resituate Guggenheim as not only an art patron and collector, but also a benefactor of modern architectural spaces.
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