Commerce, Peace, and the Arts in Renaissance Venice

Ruzante and the Empire at Center Stage

Linda L. Carroll

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317163862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

With the Paduan playwright Angelo Beolco, aka Ruzante, as a focal point, this book sheds new light on his oeuvre and times - and on Venetian patrician interest in him - by embedding the Venetian aspects of his life within the monumental changes taking place in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venice, politically, economically, socially, and artistically. In a study of patronage in the broadest sense of the term, Linda Carroll draws on vast quantities of new archival information; and by reading the previously unpublished primary sources against each other, she uncovers remarkable and heretofore unsuspected coincidences and connections. She documents the well-known links between the increasingly fruitless trade to the north and the need for new investments in land (re)gained by Venice on the mainland, links between problems of governance and political networks. She unveils the significance and potential purposes of those who invited Ruzante to perform in what are interpreted as "rudely" metaphorical truth-telling plays for Venetians at the highest social and political levels. Focusing on a group of patrons of art works in S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, the first chapter establishes their numerous interrelated commercial and political interests and connects them to the content of the works and artists chosen to execute them. The second chapter demonstrates the economic interests and related political tensions that lay behind the presence of many high-ranking government officials at a scandalous 1525 Ruzante performance. It also draws on these and materials concerning previous generations of the Beolco family and Venetian patricians to provide an entirely new picture of Beolco's relationships with his Venetian supporters. The third chapter analyzes an important Venetian literary manuscript of the period in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University whose copyist had remained unknown and whose contents have been little studied. The identity of the copyist, a central figure in the worlds of theatrical and historical and, now, literary writing in early sixteenth century Venice, is clarified and the works in the manuscript connected to the cultural worlds of Venice, Padua and Rome.

1 Twelve Monuments, Five Altarpieces, Five Chapels, and a Fresco Frari Patronage and Renaissance Venetian Political Economy

DOI: 10.4324/9781315572826-1

Introduction

While the many important works of art present in the basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (fig. 1.1) have been studied individually and in small clusters, the web of links among the patrons of a sweeping arc of them awaits elucidation. The works in question were supported by and expressive of an equally encompassing network of commercial and political endeavors through which a group of Venetian patrician families attempted to achieve and maintain the strongest possible international position for themselves and the Republic during the multiple grave challenges of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In particular, the works warn of the dangers posed to Venice’s lucrative Mediterranean commerce and stato da mar by recent waves of Turkish aggression; they propose, as a response, the cultivation of relations with Venice’s mainland dominion, other Italian states including the papacy, and even the Holy Roman Empire. From its starting point in the right transept’s monument to Jacopo Marcello (fig. 1.2), the arc continues with the monument to Benedetto Pesaro over the sacristy entrance (fig. 1.3), the frescoes and Bellini sacra conversazione (fig. 1.4) of the sacristy’s Pesaro Chapel, the Bernardo Chapel with its Vivarini altarpiece (fig. 1.5), the funeral monuments of Doges Francesco Foscari (fig. 1.6) and Nicolò Tron (fig. 1.7) and the magnificent Titian Assunta at the high altar that they flank, the chapel of the Scuola dei Milanesi with its Vivarini-Basaiti altarpiece (fig. 1.8), the Corner Chapel with its Vivarini altarpiece (fig. 1.9), funeral plaques of the wife and son of Luca Zen and of Alvise Foscarini, the funeral monument of Bishop Giacomo Pesaro (fig. 1.10), Titian’s Madonna di Ca’ Pesaro (fig. 1.11), the no-longer-extant tombs of Raphael and Francesco Besalù (Bexalù), the now-transferred chapel of the Scuola dei Fiorentini, and, flanking the main entrance, the tombs of Alvise Pasqualigo (fig. 1.12), and Piero Bernardo.

Figure 1.1 Plan of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Naya-Böhm)

Figure 1.2 Funeral Monument of Jacopo Marcello, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Böhm)

Figure 1.3 Lorenzo Bregno and Baccio da Montelupo, Funeral Monument of Benedetto Pesaro, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Naya-Böhm)

Numerous primary sources documenting the extent and thrust of the network and the identity of its participants, many of which are preserved in family archives as yet little explored by scholars, will be presented here. They demonstrate the extent to which the families’ enormous wealth was generated by Venice’s lucrative traditional trade routes involving the eastern Mediterranean with its Asia connections, extending along the coasts of southern Italy, northern Africa, and Sicily, and continuing on to Spain, Portugal, England, and Flanders. This international trade faced increasing difficulties in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries with the aggressive expansion westward of the Ottoman Turks, Portuguese dominance in Asian trade, the Aragon-Habsburg-Valois wars for control of the Italian peninsula, and the increasing power of the papal state. As a result, the Frari families began re-directing their wealth-generating strategies to new opportunities. To substitute declining Asian commerce, they imported grain to feed Venice’s burgeoning population; fostered European commerce both south and north of the Alps including through increased contacts with Milan; and consolidated their control of the mainland state and exploitation of its agricultural and industrial potential.

Figure 1.4 Giovanni Bellini, Frari Triptych: Madonna and Child with Saints Peter, Nicholas, Benedict and Mark, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Böhm)

The new financial strategy called for an adjustment to their preferences in international relations. Numerous defeats of the Venetian armada having demonstrated that the Ottoman Empire wielded a vastly greater naval force, Venice (largely) relinquished war with the Turkish Porte in favor of peace. The new preference for increased trade with and through other Italian states motivated a preference for cooperation with them. Emphasis on the mainland state as a source of revenue and materials resulted in greater involvement in its governance and defense, as well as an increasing amount of property owned there. All of the new strategies would be favored by good, or at least peaceful, relations with the major European powers: the papacy, France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. The conflicts between and among them, however, created difficulties in Venice’s achieving peaceful relations with all of them simultaneously.

Figure 1.5 Bartolomeo Vivarini, Bernardo Triptych, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, NY)

Figure 1.6 Funeral Monument of Doge Francesco Foscari, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Böhm)

Figure 1.7 Antonio Rizzo, Funeral Monument of Doge Nicolò Tron, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Böhm)

Figure 1.8 Alvise Vivarini and Marco Basaiti, St. Ambrose and Saints, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY)

Figure 1.9 Bartolomeo Vivarini, Triptych of St. Mark with Sts. John the Baptist, Jerome, Nicholas and Paul, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Alinari / Art Resource, NY)

Figure 1.10 Funeral Monument of Bishop Jacopo Pesaro. (Photo: Böhm)

Figure 1.11 Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), Ca' Pesaro Madonna, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, NY)

Figure 1.12 Giammaria Mosca (Padovano), Funeral Monument of Alvise Pasqualigo, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. (Photo: Böhm)

What was astutely described by Frederic Lane as a “double balancing act” now became a triple-quadruple one.¹ Some of the families favored developing a relatively cooperative relationship with the Aragonese and the Habsburgs, a stance that included opposition to the Turks. Others, instead, favored supporting the French, who united the advantages of hostility to the Aragonese and Habsburgs, threat-reducing distance from Venice, and friendly relations with the Turks with whom Venice still conducted important trade. Yet others adapted their preferences to changing circumstances. All were concerned with the ability to conduct trade with and through Milan. While the families participated in the warfare necessary to defend these endeavors, often in leadership roles, their principal interest was to maintain the peace that fostered favorable economic conditions.

A critical element was introduced into their calculations by the election of Charles of Spain as Holy Roman Emperor. The union of Habsburg and Spanish realms that it achieved gave him control of large parts of the litoral along the profitable western galley routes, which Charles augmented through alliance with the Portuguese and English kings, who controlled two of the routes’ terminus points. The latter, with the lucrative London market, was so important to certain Venetian families, including some Frari ones, that they were known as ‘da Londra’ (of London).²

Beyond their connections in commerce and the figurative arts, the Frari families had a theatrical one that further illuminates the political as well as artistic ramifications of their patronage. They figured among the patricians inviting Angelo Beolco (Il Ruzante) to perform in Venice between 1520 and 1526, and had benefitted financially from connections to his wealthy Milanese family of financiers established two generations earlier.

The following material will first follow the arc of the Frari works, indicating for each the interests of the patron family, and then detail the family’s connections with the Beolco family and with Angelo’s artistic, social, and political program.

The Works and their Patrons

Heroic in style, the first monument under consideration memorializes Jacopo Marcello as commander of the Venetian armada fighting the Turk, in which role he died in 1484 (fig. 1.2). The year was also one in which his family, of the San Tomà branch whose family palazzo was known as ‘dei Leoni’ (of the lions), was deeply involved in trade with northern Europe.³ The Marcello were heroic also in the defense of the mainland, to the governance of which they contributed many rettori (...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Note on the Author
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Mercury, Venus, and the Muses: Commerce, Peace, and the Arts in Renaissance Venice
• 1 Twelve Monuments, Five Altarpieces, Five Chapels, and a Fresco: Frari Patronage and Renaissance Venetian Political Economy
• 2 Bodleian Library Canonician Ital. 36: Stefano Magno and the Move from Commerce to Culture
• 3 Concordiae dedicatum: The Triumphanti, the Beolco, and the Politics of Prosperity in Renaissance Venice
• 4 1526: State Lotteries, the Final Ruzantine Performance, and a Machiavellian Coda
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index