Maria Georgopoulou, Venice's Mediterranean Colonies: Architecture and Urbanism. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xv, 383; 136 black-and-white figures. $80 (original) (raw)

A Venetian City View of Constantinople: Mapping the City

ed. Katrien Lichtert, Jan Dumolyn, Maximiliann P.J. Martens, in Portraits of the City: Representing Urban Space in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 159-72., 2014

The last three decades have witnessed a marked increase in cultural studies in which city views are treated not as mere mirrors of reality, but rather as exquisite works of art and multivalent texts for the historian. In the Early Modern period most city panoramas not only fulfilled aesthetic and artistic functions, but also served utilitarian and political ends. Creating a panorama was an occasion for the display of artistry, and the work was a form of decorative art to be exhibited either as a wall hanging or as a collector's item. Seventeenth-century panoramas were framed with fluted columns and sensuous Baroque and Rococo images: cherubs, fruit pendants, mythical females, muscular and heroic males, and wild horses. During the seventeenth century, city views were used as projecting screens for the formation of social states and processes, conveyors of symbolic messages and complex allegories. 1 This paper focuses on a particular case study, a vast seventeenth-century panorama of Constantinople (258 × 612 cm) designed by the Venetian Franciscan friar Niccolò Guidalotto da Mondavio ). 2 Guidalotto's panorama was first found in the Chigi archive in Rome and is currently displayed in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. 3 Guidalotto also prepared a long manuscript, now held in the Vatican Library, which details the panorama's meaning and the motivation behind its creation ). 4 The panorama, which depicts Constantinople

Nikias 2024. The Venetian public palace on Ithaca. Mediterranean Studies 32.2, 156-

Mediterranean Studies, 2024

The ruins of Venetian-period settlements on Ithaca have been overshadowed by interest in the ancient heritage of the island, particularly by the obsession to locate the palace of Odysseus. Despite the neglect of the early modern built heritage of Ithaca, its study sheds light on the economic and social forces that shaped the spatial and urban experience of Venetian rule. This article surveys a large series of unpublished documentary evidence for the evolution of an important example of Venetian-period public architecture on Ithaca, the “palace” built to serve the island’s governors. The public edifice in the island’s main township built sometime in the late sixteenth century decayed over the course of the seventeenth century and into the next, when it was abandoned by the governors, who took to residing on the bayside in a settlement expanding with the growth of trade. This article emphasizes the structural, political causes of the demise of the palace and places these in their colonial administrative context. It emphasizes the role of the palace as a material representation of the presence of colonial power on a small island at the periphery, which was ruled as a delegated jurisdiction by local elites and not directly by Venetians.

'Colonial encounters, local knowledge and the making of the cartographic archive in the Venetian Peloponnese', European Review of History / Revue européenne d'histoire 19.4 (2012), 491-514.

European Review of History / Revue européenne d'histoire, 2012

Current research on the cartography of the Venetian Empire rests on a state-centred perspective which reduces maps to mere technical tools in the service of maritime expansion and colonial government. In contrast, this paper argues that such an approach cannot sufficiently account for the multiple ethnocartographic transactions between Venetian authorities and local communities which defined Venetian map-making projects. Taking the seventeenth-century conquest of the Peloponnese as its focus, the paper proposes to rethink the Venetian cartographic archive as constituted through a set of socio-cultural and political practices involving both colonial surveyors and native inhabitants. By analysing the assemblage of cartographic knowledge in the context of the encounter between colonisers and colonised, the paper examines topographical surveys as the product of cross-cultural communication shaped through negotiation, competition and unequal dialogue. Ultimately, the paper aims to show the heuristic value of a dialogic approach to cartography for a better understanding of both the colonial society of the Venetian Peloponnese and the making of knowledge in Venice's overseas empire.

M. GEORGOPOULOU, Venice's Mediterranean Colonies. Architecture and Urbanism

Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 2003

Multi-proxy approach was used to reconstruct the environmental conditions of remote lakes in the High Tatra Mountains (Slovakia) over the past few centuries (approximately 500-1000 years). Short sediment cores (*30 cm) taken from three morphologically similar glacial lakes distributed along altitudinal gradient (subalpine to alpine conditions) were analysed for organic matter content (LOI), diatoms and chironomids. Both descriptive and correlative approaches were used for analysing stratigraphical data. Predictive canonical correspondence analysis and co-correspondence analysis were applied to directly relate physical and biological proxies to each other. The relationship between LOI and biotic proxies was inconsistent across groups and lakes. Concordant patterns in diatom and chironomid composition were found in two non-acidified lakes. Common trends in those assemblages indicated major past environmental events such as the Little Ice Age, air pollution and lake acidification. In contrast, no relationship between the composition of diatom and chironomid assemblages was found in the formerly acidified lake, suggesting different responses of assemblages to acidification. While chironomids showed shifts that are attributable to recovery, diatoms assemblage remained relatively stable throughout the uppermost layers of the sediment record. On the other hand, climatic-driven changes in assemblages detected in the deeper layers were more pronounced in diatoms than in chironomids.

“Stylistic anachronism”, “provincial delay” and eclecticism in the periphery of Venice: Thoughts on an urbanisation project in Venetian Crete

Life Outside the Canon - Hommage to Foteini Vlachou (1975-2017), Revista de História da Arte, 9, 2021, p. 34-47., 2021

The paper concentrates on the contradictions we are confronted with when trying to interpret the stylistic choices made by the Venetian Provveditore Generale of Crete, Francesco Morosini, for an urbanisation project he implemented during his service (1625‑1628) in the centre of the capital city of Venetian Crete, i.e. Candia, present-day Heraklion. The urbanisation project included a public loggia and an aqueduct and fountain. In this paper, it is argued that the deliberately “anachronistic” architectural style of the loggia can be interpreted through the commissioner’s connection to the Venetian politics of the time. The extravagant design and lavish decoration of the fountain, on the other hand, indicate that the Venetian official, being in the periphery, could be more eclectic and did not feel obliged to be consistent with the ideology that guided him to choose the more sober and static design for the loggia.