the venetian intellectual world 595
works; musical works,73 Jewish books,74 and travel literature.75 The last
genre flourished especially in Venice, whose merchants had long trav-
eled the exotic realms of north africa, the levant, and east asia, which
Marco Polo had memorialized in the early years of the Trecento^ and
which ambrosio Bembo, who set out in 1671, vividly described.76 it was
unsurprisingly a Venetian from solid cittadino ranks who produced the
first massive compilation of travel literature: Giovanni Battista ramusio’s
Navigationi et viaggi [Navigations and Voyages; 1550–59], which would
have many imitators, including the perhaps better-known compilation of
the englishman hakluyt.77
This profusion of books was supplied by savvy publishers who sup-
ported a large population of authors known as the poligrafi, “writers of
73 For which see Jane a. Bernstein, Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto
Press, 1539–1572 (new York, 1998); and Bernstein, Print Culture and Music in Sixteenth-
Century Venice (new York, 2001); also Martha Feldman, City Culture and the Madrigal at
Venice (Berkeley, 1995); and some discussion in Fenlon, Ceremonial City.
74 including those of leone da Modena and Sara copio Sullam, residents of Venice’s
own ghetto; for whom see Modena’s The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian
Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah, ed. and trans. Mark r. cohen (Princeton, 1988); and
Sullam’s Sarra Copia Sullam: Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Early Seventeenth-Century
Venice, ed. and trans. donald harrán (chicago, 2010). For the cultural life of the ghetto, see
also the essays in robert c. davis and Benjamin c. i. ravid, eds., The Jews of Early Modern
Venice (Baltimore, 2001), esp. robert Bonfil, “cultural Profile,” in robert c. davis and
Benjamin c. i. ravid, eds., The Jews of Early Modern Venice pp. 169–88; david B. ruderman,
“Medicine and Scientific Thought: The World of Tobias cohn,” pp. 189–208; and david
harrán, “Jewish Musical culture: leon Modena,” in robert c. davis and Benjamin c. i.
ravid, eds., The Jews of Early Modern Venice, pp. 209–21.
75 For Venetian travel literature in general, see Giuliano lucchetta, “Viaggiatori e
racconti di viaggio nel cinquecento,” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 3 (1980): Dal primo
Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 2, pp. 433–89; lucchetta, “Viaggiatori, geografi
e racconti di viaggio dell’età Barocca,” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 4 (1984): Dalla
Controriforma alla fine della Repubblica. Il Seicento, part 2, pp. 201–50; also elizabeth
horodowich, “armchair Travelers and the Venetian discovery of the new World,” Sixteenth
Century Journal 36.4 (2005), 1039–62. For the related issue of Venetian cultural relations
with the ottomans, see eric dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and
Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore, 2006); Paolo Preto, Venezia e i
turchi (Florence, 1975); and Preto, “i turchi e la cultura venezsiana del Seicento,” in Storia
della cultura veneta, vol. 4 (1984): Dalla Controriforma alla fine della Repubblica. Il Seicento,
part 2, pp. 313–41. also related to the proliferation of travel literature is the construction
of global maps, such as the great mappamondo by the camaldolese monk Moro lapi: for
which Piero Falchetta, Fra Mauro’s World Map: With a Commentary and Translations of the
Inscriptions (Turnhout/Venice, 2006).
76 ambrosio Bembo, The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo, ed. anthony Welch,
trans. clara Bargellini (Berkeley, 2007).
77 a convenient selection in richard hakluyt, Hakluyt’s Voyages, ed. richard david
(Boston, 1981).