748 deborah howard
sight could often dissolve into random untidiness, squalor, or mischief
at closer range. Despite the deconsecration and/or destruction of many
churches after the fall of the Republic in 1797, this comprehensive body
of images has allowed lost or altered buildings to be integrated into our
narrative of the city’s architectural history.17
Archives and AntiquariansIn addition to the rich body of visual and textual description from the
early modern period, the city possesses unrivaled archival resources.
Despite the ravages of two fires in the Doge’s Palace in 1574 and 1577, a
large proportion of the Republic’s written records now fills the shelves
of the Archivio di Stato, housed in the former Franciscan friary of Santa
Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.18 These codices, ledgers, and files reveal that
state bodies often engaged in lively debate over architectural issues.19
Meanwhile, the institutional patronage of the confraternities and guilds
(the scuole grandi e piccole) is often meticulously recorded, despite some
frustrating lacunae. Just as the elected magistracies of the Republican
government were constantly re-elected, so too the boards of the scuole
rotated annually, leading to bizarre discontinuities in building policy.20
Although relatively few family archives have been preserved, profuse
information on private individuals survives in the notarial records, in
the form of testaments and records of legal disputes.21 These sources are
amplified by further caches of documents left by those who entrusted
their affairs to the Procurators of St Mark’s on the death of the head of
17 Alvise Zorzi, Venezia scomparsa, 2 vols (Milan, 1977).
18 Andrea da Mosto, Archivio di Stato di Venezia: indice generale, 2 vols (Rome, 1937–
40). See also http://www.archiviodistatovenezia.it/.
19 Deborah Howard, “Architectural Politics in Renaissance Venice,” Proceedings of the
British Academy 154 (2008), 29–68. These debates are discussed at greater length in eadem,
Venice Disputed: Marc’Antonio Barbaro and Venetian Architecture 1550–1600 (New Haven/
London, 2011).
20 These discontinuities are narrated in works on the individual scuole grandi, such
as Philip L. Sohm, The Scuola Grande di San Marco, 1437–1550: The Architecture of a
Venetian Lay Confraternity (New York, 1982); Fabbri, ed., La Scuola Grande; and Gianmario
Guidarelli, “Una giogia ligata in piombo”: la fabbrica della Scuola Grande di San Rocco in
Venezia, 1517–1560 (Venice, 2003).
21 On the possible reasons for the paucity of family records in Venice, see James S.
Grubb, “Memory and Identity: Why Venetians Didn’t Keep ricordanze,” Renaissance
Studies 8 (1994), 375–87. Some of the few surviving examples have been published as
Family Memoirs from Venice, 15th–17th Centuries, ed. James S. Grubb (Rome, 2009).