Cradles in the Portego

Nicholas Penny

  • The New Palaces of Medieval Venice by Juergen Schulz
    Pennsylvania State, 368 pp, £61.50, July 2004, ISBN 0 271 02351 1
  • Private Lives in Renaissance Venice by Patricia Fortini Brown
    Yale, 312 pp, £35.00, October 2004, ISBN 0 300 10236 4

The inexhaustible appeal of the palaces that line the Grand Canal in Venice owes much to their variety, of materials, textures, colour and relief, as well as period and style. But we cannot miss the common denominators: the ornamental richness that is conditional on freedom from defensive needs, the quantity of windows (with locally made glass) and their concentration in the centre of the façade, expressing, externally, the long hall, or portego, which is the defining feature of the plan of these buildings. Many have speculated that Venetian palaces are descended from Byzantine or late antique building types that were forgotten, ignored or unknown elsewhere in Europe; there are similar myths about the origins of the Venetians themselves.

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[*] Venice, Fragile City 1797-1997 (Yale, 550 pp., £29.95, November 2002, 0 300 08386 6).

Vol. 28 No. 1 · 5 January 2006 » Nicholas Penny » Cradles in the Portego (print version)
Pages 20-22 | 3524 words