Venice Disputed: Marc’Antonio Barbaro and Venetian Architecture (review)

Deborah Howard’s book is an intervention into the political and architectural legacy of a man whose influence in early modern Venetian society has been largely mythologized. Howard acknowledges Barbaro’s involvement in Venetian public life and his fervor for architectural perfection and magnificence, but also underlines a number of movements Barbaro made away from public life and the ardor of his service to the embassy. Howard’s book is characterized by lengthy, careful explorations of the Venetian political process as well as painstaking descriptions of the construction projects that Howard argues defined Barbaro’s public and private lives. Howard’s exacting attention to the minutiae of architecture and politics mirrors the approach she observes in Barbaro throughout her study. As a result, the reader is compelled to experience the slow and often contentious process of attempting to work with the Venetian Senate—an experience that is not always pleasant, but certainly productive. Howard frequently questions previous conclusions about Barbaro’s political influence and legacy, but does not always answer the questions she poses, most often citing lack of evidence. While this is a more responsible approach than offering conclusions based on inadequate or disputed evidence, it leaves the reader with little resolution at its conclusion. However, Howard’s point is this: Barbaro’s history should be conflicted. Barbaro himself was conflicted, as Howard’s careful parsing of his legacy proves.

The introduction to Venice Disputed places the reader immediately in Barbaro’s world, surrounded by a description of the star-shaped fortified town of Palmanova. Since Howard also ends the book with a discussion of this structure, her study has a formal completion that her content does not quite grant its readers. Howard makes clear how she sees public buildings communicating “ideologies of rulership” through “decorative programmes,” scope, size, shape, and “architectural language” (2). She makes the surprising point that Barbaro was involved in all of the major building projects in Venice in the second half of the sixteenth century, although the Senate frequently rejected Barbaro’s suggestions and his influence clearly waned toward the end of his career. In the remaining pages of the introduction, Howard works to show that Barbaro’s persona and family life are entangled with mythologies. His portraits have incomplete or disputed origins and Howard attributes a number of biographical mischaracterizations to French historian Charles Yriarte (7). Howard distinguishes her project from Yriarte’s by rejecting the impulse toward consistency in characterizing Barbaro’s career. She argues that “[p]ublic and private life and religion may interfere with one another in inconvenient ways; and even family loyalties modulate over time”(11).

Laying a foundation for her claim that private life might have interfered with Barbaro’s politics, Howard first describes the intricate and confusing network of affiliations that informed Barbaro’s character and impacted his career. She begins with a description of Barbaro’s house, an impressive Gothic ancestral home into which he was born in 1518. Additionally, by interweaving details about military engagements during that time and all of the stages of his life that follow, Howard forges a link between Barbaro and what Howard proceeds to identify as his two loves: military strategy and architecture (14). Descriptions of his family life in this chapter revolve less around his personal relationships than his bond with this house called Maser that becomes an integral part of his narrative from this point forward. Drawing a clear distinction between Barbaro’s persona and that of his brother, Daniele, Howard observes that Marc’Antonio has chosen the “vita attiva,” while Daniele, the patriarch elect of Aquileia, finds himself living the “vita contemplativa” (22) Howard argues later in the chapter that these roles inform the architecture of Maser and confuse the issue of authorship with regard to its design (32). Ultimately, the function of this chapter is to account for the brothers’ knowledge of “the communicative power of buildings,” a purpose that continues to inform even the most functional of architectural projects in Marc...