Books in Brief: The Imperial Age of Venice 1380-1580

The Imperial Age of Venice 1380-1580, by D. S. Chambers (Harcourt, 216 pp., $6.95). If most of us prefer to remember Venice as the eighteenth-century city of Casanova and picture her through the eyes of period artists like Canaletto and Guardi, we are still beholden to the traders, artists and artisans of earlier centuries who made the shimmering twilight era possible. Though the Venetian Republic survived until the French Revolution, its period of greatest thrust and vitality occurred between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, described in this latest volume of Harcourt’s “History of European Civilization Library.” The Imperial Age of Venice is quite up to the standards of this admirable series. Although a small volume, it is beautifully and profusely illustrated with color and black-and-white plates, and very nicely bound. Followers of the current state of the American printing industry will not be surprised to learn that it was manufactured in England. Dr. Chambers takes the reader on a learned tour of Venice’s golden age, considering the various influences—Asian, Byzantine and Western—that combined to form the city-state’s distinctive economy, political system and culture. The Chambers style is fluent though scholarly, and most phases of Venetian life are touched on.

AB

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Aram Bakshian Jr.

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The Imperial Age of Venice 1380-1580, by D. S. Chambers (Harcourt, 216 pp., $6.95). If most of us prefer to remember Venice as the eighteenth-century city of Casanova and picture her through the eyes of period artists like Canaletto and Guardi, we are still beholden to the traders, artists and artisans of earlier centuries who made the shimmering twilight era possible. Though the Venetian Republic survived until the French Revolution, its period of greatest thrust and vitality occurred between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, described in this latest volume of Harcourt’s “History of European Civilization Library.” The Imperial Age of Venice is quite up to the standards of this admirable series. Although a small volume, it is beautifully and profusely illustrated with color and black-and-white plates, and very nicely bound. Followers of the current state of the American printing industry will not be surprised to learn that it was manufactured in England. Dr. Chambers takes the reader on a learned tour of Venice’s golden age, considering the various influences—Asian, Byzantine and Western—that combined to form the city-state’s distinctive economy, political system and culture. The Chambers style is fluent though scholarly, and most phases of Venetian life are touched on.