The merchants of Venice: A study in sixteenth-century cittadino patronage (Italy)

This dissertation focuses on the private art patronage of the cittadino merchant in Renaissance Venice. The patrons who form the core of this study were not Venetian by birth. Rather, they immigrated to the lagoon city with the hopes of becoming cittadini, that is, citizens of Venice. Situated between the patriciate and the popular orders, cittadini occupied an ambiguous position in Venice's three-part social hierarchy. They were denied the honor of nobility and participation in the political process, and yet a number of them possessed fortunes greater than their patrician contemporaries. While conspicuous display was strongly discouraged in the society as a whole, with sumptuary laws applying to patrician and cittadino alike, a number of wealthy cittadini sought to circumvent the limits of their class through the visual arts.; The dissertation is divided into three sections. The first section examines Venetian citizenship in the sixteenth century and the attraction of this social designation for textile merchants from throughout Europe. Chapter Two examines the individual and joint mercantile activities of consortium of immigrant merchant families, including the d'Anna, Cuccina, dal Basso, di Mutti, and Cornovì dalla Vecchia. These textile entrepreneurs undertook a wide variety public activities, ranging from their dominant role in the management of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco to their interest in the import of pigments from the Americas.; Sections Two and Three of the dissertation focus on the individual artistic patronage of the d'Anna and Cuccina families, respectively. Both families were ardent patrons of the arts as evidenced by their association with painters such as Titian and Paolo Veronese, their purchase of Grand Canal palazzi and their acquisition of jus patronatus over burial tombs at San Salvador and San Francesco della Vigna. In addition to examining the events surrounding a given artistic commission, the study also considers the patrons' status as immigrants, their social identity as naturalized cittadini, and their interaction as a defined group of outsiders operating within the framework of Venetian society.