Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family

By Patricia Fortini Brown

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 fa ades 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 hundreds 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 toward 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 private, she offers an account of Venetian households unequalled in vividness and detail.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300102364
• ISBN13: 9780300102369
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 4.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 9.0" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

Private lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecgture, and family

A very well documented book with a deep knowledge of the social conditions of Venice in the Renaissance period it covers. I found it a little bit dense sometimes. The illustrations are good. Hector Cardenas

Must-have for lovers of Renaisance Venice

Another great book about Renaissance Venice by Patricia Fortini Brown. Filled with many large colored pictures and black + white drawings, this book is a must for recreationists + others obsessed with 16th century Venice. Lots of information on the small details of daily life: art, architecture, music, furnishings, clothing, utensils, games of chance and fortune-telling. This author is one of the bests on the subject of daily life in Renaissance Venice.