venetian architecture 771
the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.94 The efforts of the Cen-
tro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura in Vicenza, founded in 1958 to
promote the study of Palladio, have not only stimulated academic research
and debate through conferences, seminars, exhibitions, and publications,
but also have encouraged the restoration of long-neglected buildings.
Following in the footsteps of Elena Bassi, other authors have produced
monographs on architects of the 17th and 18th centuries, but although
Scamozzi, Longhena, Gaspari, and Sardi now profit from new scholarly
research, the situation in the case of individual Settecento architects is more
patchy.95 The interdisciplinary perspective of the pioneering new series,
Storia dell’architettura nel Veneto, promoted by the Palladio center in Vicenza,
offers a hybrid of thematic, typological and monographic approaches,
launched by the first stimulating volume on Il Seicento in 2008.96
Republic and EmpireAs the longest-lived republic in the history of Europe, Venice was proud
of its constitution based on that of ancient Rome. On the one hand,
Republican values, codified in chronicles and printed texts on political
history and theory, molded the city’s townscape in ways that need careful
analysis. On the other, Venice was also an empire, proud of its terraferma
possessions and of its network of overseas colonies. The material legacy
of antiquity on the terraferma and in the colonies—whether extant
monuments, decorative fragments, capitals, precious marble columns,
sculptures, or inscriptions—nourished a rich tradition of antiquarian study
and collecting from the medieval period onwards.97 Venetian despoliation
94 Giangiorgio Zorzi, Disegni delle antichità di Andrea Palladio (Venice, 1959); idem, Le
opere pubbliche e i palazzi privati di Andrea Palladio (Venice, 1964); idem, Le chiese e i ponti di
Andrea Palladio (Vicenza, 1966); idem, Le ville e i teatri di Andrea Palladio (Vicenza, 1969).
95 Bassi, Architettura. On Scamozzi, see especially Franco Barbieri and Guido
Beltramini, eds., Vincenzo Scamozzi. 1548–1616, exh. cat. (Venice, 2003). On Longhena, see
in particular, Andrew Hopkins, Santa Maria della Salute: Architecture and Ceremony in
Baroque Venice (Cambridge, 2002; published in English by Yale University Press); Martina
Frank, Baldassare Longhena (Venice, 2004); and Andrew Hopkins, Baldassare Longhena
(1597–1682) (Milan, 2006). A useful short study is Paola Piffaretti, Giuseppe Sardi architetto
ticinese nella Venezia del Seicento (Bellinzona, 1996). For the 18th century, Antonio Massari,
Giorgio Massari architetto veneziano del Settecento (Vicenza, 1971) offers general coverage.
A recent update is provided by Martina Frank, ed., Da Longhena a Selva: Un’idea di Venezia
a dieci anni dalla scomparsa di Elena Bassi (Bologna, 2011).
96 De Amicis, ed., Il Seicento.
97 The fundamental study of this topic is Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity
(New Haven/London, 1996).