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published in Venice in 1893.25 Paoletti was the first scholar to attempt
to disentangle the identities of the numerous Lombard, Dalmatian, and
Venetian stonemasons active in early Renaissance Venice, using pay-
ments, contracts, and other documentary sources as evidence. One of the
earliest books on the subject to be illustrated with photographs, Paoletti’s
analysis remains a starting point for any serious research in the field, now
amplified by more recent scholarship.26
Print CultureIn parallel with the fascination with topographical images, Venice
developed a lively tradition of verbal descriptions of the townscape. While
Jacopo de’ Barbari, Gentile Bellini, and Carpaccio were depicting the city
visually, the manuscript descriptions of Venice by Marin Sanudo (Marino
Sanuto) and Marc’Antonio Sabellico launched the genre that was to lead to
the first full guidebook, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare by Francesco
Sansovino, published in 1581.27 As one of the foremost centers of printing
and publishing in Europe, Venice benefited from the relative cheapness
of the printed text to diffuse standardized versions of the iconography
of civic buildings to the wider public.28 For example, in 1541 Pietro
Contarini’s poem L’argoa volgar explained the meaning of the bronze
standard bases in front of St Mark’s.29 Similarly, Francesco Sansovino’s
short dialogue between a Venetian and an outsider, first published under
a pseudonym in 1556, discussed the significance of the sculptures on the
new Loggetta at the foot of the Campanile of St Mark’s designed by his
father, the architect and sculptor Jacopo Sansovino.30 These standardized
25 Pietro Paoletti, L’architettura e la scultura del Rinascimento in Venezia, 3 vols (Venice,
1893).
26 See especially Susan M. Connell, The Employment of Sculptors and Stonemasons
in Venice in the Fifteenth Century (New York/London, 1988); and Goy, The Building of
Renaissance Venice.
27 Sanudo, De origine; Marc’Antonio Sabellico, Del Sito di Venezia Citta (1502), ed.
G. Meneghetti (Venice, 1957); Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare
(Venice, 1581).
28 Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity
(Toronto, 2005).
29 On Pietro Contarini, see Bruce Boucher, The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, 2 vols
(New Haven/London, 1991), 1:82–83; and Chambers and Pullan, Venice, pp. 398–99.
30 Boucher, The Sculpture, 1:73–88; David Rosand, The Myths of Venice: The Figuration of
a State (Chapel Hill, 2001), pp. 128–37.