venetian architecture 74 9
the family. An exceptional case of a surviving private archive relating to
a building project is that of Marino Contarini, the patron of the famous
Gothic palace known as the Ca’ d’Oro, begun in 1421.22 In almost obses-
sive detail, Contarini documented the whole process of construction of
his house and chronicled his employment of bricklayers, masons, carpen-
ters, glassworkers, and blacksmiths, offering us an intimate glimpse into
the day-to-day life of a 15th-century building site.
The documentation of the city’s religious architecture is similarly
patchy. Because the Venetian Republic insisted on retaining jurisdic-
tion over the parishes and nunneries in its long-standing rivalry with the
papacy, the patriarchal archives help to fill some lacunae. In particular,
apostolic visitations and patriarchal inspections of parish churches yield
invaluable information on the state of the buildings, their liturgical func-
tions and their decoration during the Counter Reformation.23 After the
fall of the Republic, the devotional life of the city was transformed by a
large-scale reorganization of the parish boundaries and changes to the
functions of the churches, but, despite the closure of numerous monas-
teries, friaries, and convents after 1797, many of the suppressed orders’
records were preserved.
The study of Venetian architecture is also indebted to the efforts of
dedicated antiquarians. As an avid collector of documents in the decades
following the fall of the Republic, Emmanuele Cicogna published his multi-
volume book Delle iscrizioni veneziane between 1824 and 1853.24 Adopting
epigraphy as the focus of the research, the work is a profuse anthology of
information on individual buildings, patrons, and artists. Cicogna’s rich
personal collection of documents is preserved for posterity in the Biblio-
teca Correr in Venice.
The serious exploitation of the Venetian archives for research in
architectural history began in the late 19th century with Pietro Paoletti’s
magisterial work L’architettura e la scultura del Rinascimento in Venezia,
22 Richard J. Goy, The House of Gold: Building a Palace in Medieval Venice (Cambridge,
1992).
23 See, for example, Silvio Tramontin, “La visita apostolica del 1581 a Venezia,” Studi
veneziani 9 (1967), 453–533.
24 Emanuele Cicogna, Iscrizioni veneziane, 6 vols (Venice, 1824–53). Giuseppe Tassini
collated local oral tradition with historical data to inform his lively compendium Delle
curiosità veneziane, first published in 1863, which ran into numerous editions, including
modern reprints.