Product Description

This book offers an engaging and original perspective on the private lives and material culture of patrician families in sixteenth-century Venice. Distinguished art historian Patricia Fortini Brown takes us behind the elegant facades of grand palaces built along the Venetian canals and examines the roles of both fine and applied arts in family life, as well as the public messages that these impressive homes conveyed. Illustrated with a wealth of varied and unusual images, the book provides a lively picture of the aristocratic lifestyle during a period of changing definitions of nobility. The author considers such wide-ranging themes as attitudes towards wealth and display, the articulation of family identity, and the visual culture of Venetian women - how they decorated their homes, dressed, undertook domestic tasks, entertained, and raised their children. Recapturing the interplay between the public and the private, she offers an account of Venetian households unequalled in vividness and detail.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209884 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Susan Grange, The Art Book, February 2006
'...extremely well presented and lavishly illustrated...this volume is an excellent tool, well researched and written'

Customer Reviews

Wonderful book
This large, beautifully illustrated and very detailed book, subtitled Art, Architecture and the Family, is a treasurehouse of information about the domestic lives of Venetian aristocrats, describing their material possessions and also the cultural changes which were happening at the time. The author also considers the lives of Venetian women and their role in both the home and society.