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of archaeological remains in the colonies for reuse in Venice has a long
history, justified in a letter of Aretino to Sansovino in 1550:
I am certain that Rome, more than any other city, would be happy to see
that [Pola] had been stripped of the miraculous artifice of its [antique]
marbles, with the intention of adorning Venice, her cherished and sacred
daughter.98The Republic took pride in its supposed foundation by refugees from
the last vestiges of the Roman Empire, a narrative reiterated over the
centuries in chronicles and histories.99 In architectural terms, republican
ideals found their expression in the writings of the ancients. For example,
Suetonius’s remark that the first emperor, Augustus, found Rome a city
of sun-dried brick and left it a city of marble, bequeathed to humanist
readers the view that precious marbles held imperial associations whereas
brick denoted republican austerity.100 Dedicated to Augustus, Vitruvius’s
treatise described an era before the construction of most of the surviving
monuments of imperial Rome. As a result, Renaissance architects such
as Serlio and Palladio, in their studies of the archaeological remains of
ancient Rome, found a mismatch between the writings of Vitruvius and
the evidence of the imperial remains themselves.
As the “Myth of Venice” became codified in print in the 16th century,
its architectural expression had to confront the divergence of imperial
and republican ideals.101 In Piazza San Marco, the huge program of urban
renewal initiated by Jacopo Sansovino under Doge Gritti adopted a shame-
lessly imperial idiom, based on the classicism of ancient and modern
Rome and underpinned by architectural theory (Fig. 20.5).102 Even within
the private realm, the grandiose imperial language of Sansovino’s Palazzo
Corner and Sanmicheli’s Palazzo Grimani alluded to their role as public
ceremonial scenery adorning the banks of the Grand Canal, as well as to
the power, wealth, and Roman leanings of the two families. Imperial pre-
tension could, however, be deemed inappropriate. It has been suggested
(^) 98 Aretino, Lettere sull’arte, 2:321–22.
(^) 99 Brown, Venice and Antiquity, pp. 11–45.
100 Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, “Life of Augustus,” in The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert
Graves (Harmondsworth, 1957), pp. 51–108, ch. 28 on p. 66.
101 On the iconography of the “Myth of Venice,” see especially Rosand, The Myths of
Venice.
102 See especially Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, pp. 8–47; Manfredo Tafuri, ed., “Renovatio
Urbis”: Venezia nell’età di Andrea Gritti, 1523–1538 (Rome, 1984); Manuela Morresi, Piazza
San Marco: Istitutioni, poteri e architettura a Venezia nel primo Cinquecento (Milan, 1999);
Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino, pp. 182–227.