572 margaret l. king
prodigy, warrior, jurist, thinker.2 This event uniquely marks the beginning
of the renaissance in Venice. even as, in the last decades of the Trecento
and the beginning of Quattrocento, Venice clinched its supremacy on the
seas and embarked on its domination over the cities of the terraferma, it
would embrace the cultural world of the italian and european West from
which it had long remained detached. The marriage of Venetian traditions
to italian humanism embodied in the encounter between dandolo and
Petrarch would generate that future.
By the time Petrarch arrived in Venice on his 1351 mission, dandolo had
already completed one history of Venice, the Chronica brevis, and begun
another, his Chronica per extensum descripta.3 These were unique in their
clarity, which derived from the professional latin prose and juridical
training of the author. in other regards, however, they belonged to the
Venetian chronachistic tradition4 which reached back to the 11th-century
2 For Petrarch in Venice, see especially Paul oskar Kristeller, “il Petrarca, 1 ’umanesimo
e la scolastica a Venezia,” in Vittore Branca, ed., Storia della civiltà veneziana, 3 vols
(Florence, 1979), 2:79–92; Giorgio Padoan, ed., Petrarca, Venezia e Il Veneto (Florence, 1976);
and, for further exploration of his relationship to the chancery circle, Girolamo arnaldi,
“la cancelleria ducale fra culto della ‘legalitas’ e nuova cultura umanistica,” in Gino
Benzoni and antonio Menniti ippolito, Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della
Serenissima, 14 vols (rome, 1992–2002), vol. 3 (1997): La formazione dello stato patrizio, ed.
Girolamo arnaldi, Giorgio cracco, and alberto Tenenti, pp. 865–87; and nicholas Mann,
“Petrarca e la cancelleria veneziana,” in Girolamo arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi, eds.,
Storia della cultura veneta, 6 vols (Vicenza, 1976–85), vol. 2 (1976): Il Trecento, pp. 517–35.
For Petrarch generally, see Thomas Goddard Bergin, Petrarch (new York, 1970); Morris
Bishop, Petrarch and His World (Bloomington, 1963); Kenelm Foster, Petrarch: Poet and
Humanist (edinburgh, 1984); nicholas Mann, Petrarch (oxford, 1984); charles e. Trinkaus,
The Poet as Philosopher: Petrarch and the Formation of Renaissance Consciousness (new
haven, 1979); and ernest h. Wilkins, Life of Petrarch (chicago, 1961). For dandolo as a
cultural and political symbol, see debra Pincus, “hard Times and ducal radiance: andrea
dandolo and the construction of the ruler in Fourteenth-century Venice,” in John J.
Martin and dennis romano, eds., Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an
Italian City-State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore, 2000), pp. 89–136. For the 14th-century Venetian
cultural setting, see Vittore Branca and Giorgio Padoan, eds., Boccaccio, Venezia, e il Veneto
(Florence, 1979), especially agostino Pertusi, “Venezia, la cultura greca e il Boccaccio,”
pp. 63–80; also angelo Monteverdi, “lingua e letteratura a Venezia nel secolo di Marco
Polo,” in Branca, ed., Storia della civiltà veneziana, 1:355–62; and alfredo Stussi, “la lingua,”
in Storia di Venezia, vol. 3: La formazione dello stato patrizio, ed. arnaldi, cracco, and
Tenenti, pp. 911–32.
3 andrea dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, 46–1280 dopo Christo, ed. ester
Pastorello, in l. a. Muratori, ed., Rerum Italicarum scriptores; vol. 12, part. 1, rev. and
expanded, ed. Giosué carducci, 7 vols (Bologna, 1938–58), for which see arnaldi, “andrea
dandolo doge-cronista,” in agostino Pertusi, ed., La storiografia veneziana fino al secolo xvi:
aspetti e problem (Florence, 1970), pp. 127–268.
4 For the origins of Venetian historiography, see the essays in Pertusi, ed., La storiografia
veneziana fino al secolo xvi; a useful roundup in christiane neerfeld, Historia per forma di
diaria: la cronachistica veneziana contemporanea a cavallo tra il Quattro e il Cinquecento