576 margaret l. king
married to the mission of its patriciate to advance the city’s interests in
every way possible: by diplomacy, by legislation, by military means, and
by the communication of their values in the highly esteemed language
and themes of humanism.
a first generation of Venetian humanists (born between 1370 and 1399)
introduced an ideal of classical learning and adapted humanist genres
for Venetian purposes. in the vanguard was Zaccaria Trevisan, who had
observed firsthand during his magistracy in crete a contemporary Greek-
speaking culture and had grown conscious of the value of the Greek clas-
sics for present-day Venetian leaders.^ not only did Trevisan himself lead
the way but he also actively encouraged younger patricians to follow his
example. conspicuous among these was Francesco Barbaro, a youth at
the time of his first intellectual encounters with Trevisan documented
in his famous book De re uxoria [On Marriage, 1415], But Barbaro would
mature to become a statesman of first rank, a military hero, and eventu-
ally a Procurator of San Marco, the highest official magistracy short of the
dogeship.11 in the course of this busy political career, Barbaro composed
works in the humanist genres of oration, letter, and treatise, as well as
translations from the Greek, imprinting the intellectual culture of Venice
and Venice at the Beginning of the Quattrocento: Studies in Criticism and Chronology (new
York, 1968); Virginia cox, “rhetoric and humanism in Quattrocento Venice,” Renaissance
Quarterly 56.3 (2003), 652–94; Felix Gilbert, “humanism in Venice,” in Sergio Bertelli,
nicolai rubinstein, and craig hugh Smyth, eds., Florence and Venice: Comparisons and
Relations: Acts of Two Conferences at Villa I Tatti in 1976–1977 (Florence, 1979), pp. 13–26,
repr. in robert Black, ed., Renaissance Thought: A Reader (london, 2001), pp. 265–74; Bruno
nardi, Saggi sulla cultura veneta del Quattro e Cinquecento (Padua, 1971); luciano Gargan,
“il preumanesimo a Vicenza, Treviso, Venezia,” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 2 (1976):
Il Trecento, pp. 142–70; and Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice & Antiquity: The Venetian Sense
of the Past (new haven, 1996). For the generational analysis of Venetian humanism offered
here, see the list of the 92 humanists identified, organized by social class, occupation, and
generation, in King, Venetian Humanism, Table 7, pp. 298–99.
11 King, Venetian Humanism, pp. 323–25 and passim; also Margaret King, “caldiera and
the Barbaros on Marriage and the Family: humanist reflections of Venetian realities,”
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1976), pp. 19–50, repr. in King, Humanism,
Venice, and Women: Essays on the Italian Renaissance, facsimile repr. no. 5 (aldershot/
Burlington Vt., 2005). Francesco Barbaro, Epistolario, ed. claudio Griggio, 2 vols (Florence,
1991, 1999), online at http://digital.casalini.it/8822247892, is a critical edition of the letters;
Francesco Barbaro Francisci Barbari de re uxoria liber, in partes duas, ed. attilio Gnesotto,
nuova ed. (Padua, 1915), is a critical edition of that important work, for which a partial
translation exists in Francesco Barbaro, “on Wifely duties,” in Benjamin G. Kohl and
ronald G. Witt, eds., The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society
(Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 189–228. See also, for the Barbaro clan, which produced a series of
patrician intellectuals, Michela Marangoni and Manlio Pastore Stocchi, eds., Una famiglia
veneziana nella storia: i Barbaro: atti del convegno di studi in occasione del quinto centenario
della morte dell’umanista Ermolao, Venezia, 4–6 novembre 1993 (Venice, 1996).