16 eric r. dursteler
and evidence a rather traditionalist restatement of venice’s past,
untouched by the major transformations that the historical profession was
undergoing, particularly in neighboring france. More successful was Gino
Luzzatto’s essential work, Storia economica di Venezia dall’XI al XVI secolo,
which was supposed to appear in the series but was instead published
separately in 1961. Roberto Cessi’s contribution to the series, Venezia nel
Duecento: tra orient e occidente, was finally published posthumously in
1985 but by then was quite dated.43
Another multi-authored collection, the Storia della civiltà veneziana,
had its beginnings in an annual series of lectures devoted to particular
centuries of venetian history that were presented at the fondazione Gior-
gio Cini from 1955 to 1965. This institution, located on the island of San
Giorgio Maggiore, had been founded in 1951 by Count vittorio Cini in
memory of his son and quickly became the hub of post-war venetian his-
toriography. The lectures were first published separately in nine volumes
(1955–65) before being repackaged in three volumes in 1979. Organized
chronologically, the collection provides a broad, somewhat scattered
overview, which is not surprising since the lectures were not constructed
with an eye toward a systematic or comprehensive overview of venetian
history. Still, the pieces are written by some of the chief historians of the
day—Kristeller, Braudel, Luzzatto, Chabod—and many provide useful
examinations informed by the most recent scholarship.44
The Cini was also a key player in the first comprehensive effort at a col-
laborative history of venice, the “great editorial undertaking” of the Storia
della cultura veneta.45 In ten volumes published over a decade from 1976
to 1986, an impressive team comprising the most important scholars in
the field surveyed topics from venice’s origins up to World War I. The
project was funded by the Istituto federale delle casse di risparmio delle
venezie in commemoration of its fiftieth anniversary, and this undoubt-
edly influenced its philosophical, perhaps better, ideological, foundations.
The series’ general editors—Gianfranco folena, Manlio Pastore Stocchi,
and Girolamo Arnaldi—envisioned an approach that traced not the tra-
ditional political narrative of venetian expansion and domination of the
43 Alberto Tenenti, “Une histoire monumentale de venise,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences
Sociales 15 (1960), 1026; Wladimiro Dorigo, “Leggendo il primo volume della nuova ‘Storia
di venezia,’ ” Studi veneziani 33 (1997), 15.
44 See vittore Branca, ed., Storia della civiltà veneziana, 3 vols (florence, 1979).
45 Sergio Bertelli, “Appunti sulla storiografia italiana per l’età moderna (1985–1995),”
Archivio storico italiano 156 (1998), 105.