San Marco, Byzantium and the Myths of Venice (review)

"This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty — this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism." So wrote the German writer, social critic, and 1929 Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann, whose visit to the city provided the inspiration for his novella Death in Venice. Such descriptions correctly apply to the city that at once can be called both "La Dominante" and "La Serenissima" and play into what historians refer to as "the myth of Venice."

The so-called myth refers to the view by Venetians during the Middle Ages that they were exceptional or unique — politically, religiously, culturally, socially, and even artistically — from the rest of Italy. Both a city and a nation, Venice had a form of government that combined specific features of a monarchy, an aristocracy, and a republic, with the doge appointed as the head of state by a complex series of committees designed to prevent any one faction from becoming too powerful. Artistically and religiously, Venice, as opposed to the other Italian city-states, purposefully resurrected and reconstructed the declining Byzantine Empire within its churches and important public spaces.

The myth of Venice may be traced back to at least 1204 when the blind, though cunning, Doge Enrico Dandolo redirected the Fourth Crusade from the Holy Land to have it attack and occupy Constantinople. A rising Mediterranean power, Venice began to assume the mantle of direct successor to the ancient republic of Rome and the "second Rome" that was Constantinople. If its canals and famous lagoon at the top of the Adriatic Sea equated to Constantinople's Bosporus and Sea of Marmara, the church of San Marco was surely built as a new Hagia Sophia in this "new" Rome. San Marco's adornment both internally and externally, therefore, demanded nothing less than the acquisition of some of the Byzantine Empire's most prized symbols of power as part of a larger plan to confirm Venice's growing political importance.

San Marco, Byzantium and the Myths of Venice is a collection of essays based on a colloquium held in 2007 and cosponsored by the Byzantine Program at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. The theme that binds the chapters together is how the church of San Marco and its adjoining piazza and piazzetta came to be, over time, the touchstone that developed, expanded, and manipulated the myth of Venice during the Middle Ages.

In a tightly written introduction, the editors lay out some key themes that bind Venetian history to its art history. Most important, it explains how San Marco came to be laid out and decorated so as to make the strongest impression on Venice's citizenry, religious pilgrims, foreign dignitaries, and even criminals in order to demonstrate Venice's political power, the authority of the doge, and the divine support of God for Venice's growing stature through his chosen vessel, St. Mark the Evangelist, whose relics are maintained in the church. Naturally, one of the key debates the individual chapters address is whether there was a grand design in building, expanding, and decorating San Marco. Other themes brought out in individual chapters include various debates pertaining to the meanings of specific adornments within and around San Marco; the inevitable tension that developed over Venice's "emulation of Byzantium" and the competition that developed with other Italian city-states, especially Genoa; and the development of certain myths as they pertained to specific treasures, relics, plunder, and spolia, reused building materials or decorative structures such as columns, arches, and statues to create new and even more impressive buildings and monuments.

All of the chapters in this attractive collection quickly capture one's attention, not only because of the content but also because of the presentation...