Venice: Lion City

by Garry Wills (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.25

  The definitive book on Venice from medieval times to the Renaissance, seen through the eyes of the Venetians. At the dawn of the second millennium, Venice began to establish control of the upper Adriatic, gaining power and influence. As a great naval power, and an egalitarian society with no inherited aristocracy, it established itself as the capital of trade, wealth and art for the two high centuries of the Renaissance. In LION CITY, Garry Wills, a twice-yearly visitor to Venice, gives us a definitive guide to the cultural and sociological history of this fascinating city. Successfully interweaving armchair travel and definitive history, he begins his tour in the years of the Renaissance when Venice was a new idea, a commercial, non-hereditary state and views the city through the eyes of the Venetians; the ruling classes, bourgeoisie, workers, Jews and clerics. Venice became City of the Lion, both a sea and land empire; a republic and a centre of art and learning, independent of Papal authority and creator of some of the world's masters and masterpieces - Michaelangelo, Bellini and Titian. To understand the true spirit of this formidable city, Wills addresses the 'myth of Venice', that historical romance the city told about itself to prove to the world that it was set apart from ordinary states. This myth is articulated in Venice's art, and through this art, the author explores the heart of the city's identity. A fitting tribute to the unique social design and artistic culture of this fascinating power, Venice:Lion City is an enchanting insight into the Renaissance roots of today's floating city.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.25

  Garry Wills's Venice: Lion City is a tour de force -- a rich, colorful, and provocative history of the world's most fascinating city in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it was at the peak of its glory. This was not the city of decadence, carnival, and nostalgia familiar to us from later centuries. It was a ruthless imperial city, with a shrewd commercial base, like ancient Athens, which it resembles in its combination of art and sea empire. The structure of Venetian society was based on its distinctive practice of religion: Venice elected its priests, defied the authority of papal Rome, and organized its liturgy around a lay leader (the doge). Venice: Lion City presents a new way of relating the history of the city through its art and, in turn, illuminates the art through the city's history. In their culture, their governing structures, and their social life, the Venetians themselves speak to us with extraordinary immediacy, whether at work, warfare, prayer, or acting out their victories, celebrations, and petitions in the colorful festivals that punctuated the year. Venice: Lion City is illustrated with more than 130 works of art, 30 in full color. Garry Wills gives us a unique view of Venice's rulers, merchants, clerics, and laborers, its Jews, and its women as they created a city that is the greatest art museum in the world, a city that continues to lure an endless stream of visitors. Like Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches, on the Dutch culture in the Golden Age, Venice: Lion City will take its place as a classic work of history and criticism.