From Civic History to Myth

In 1177, Pope Alexander III and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa are said to have reconciled in Venice, thanks to the mediation of Doge Sebastiano Ziani. Whether civic legend or historical truth, this episode – the “Peace of Venice” – quickly became one of the city’s defining stories, woven into rituals, monuments, literature, and historiography.

This book explores how this legend was retold, reimagined, and celebrated during the fourteenth century, when Venice faced new challenges at home and abroad. Chroniclers, poets, illuminators, and painters all reshaped the legend, creating a network of texts and images that reflected the city’s political ambitions. From Bonincontro dei Bovi’s Latin chronicle to its first volgarizzamento (Venezia, ASVe, Miscellanea codici I, s. v., 216), from San Nicolò’s lost fresco cycles to the richest illuminated manuscript (Venezia, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, 1497), from Castellano da Bassano’s Poema to the Doge’s Palace, the “Peace of Venice” reveals the multilayered portrait of the Serenissima – its artists, notaries, patrons, political figures, and diplomatic stakes.

Bringing together literature, art history, and philology, this study traces how history gives rise to myth, and how myth, in turn, reinforces and reshapes history, evolving in step with the changing needs of the present.

Foreword by Lorenzo Tomasin

Introduction

Chapter I
Exploring the Birth of a Civic Legend
Civic time and space: moving backward from the Calle to the codex
Contextualizing one “version of the story”
A monographic approach to historiography in Bonincontro dei Bovi
Constructing a historical reality through “material” sources
From the Legenda to the chronicle (and back) – between 1300 and 1330

Chapter II
The Epic Shift
Versifying historiography
Evidence of the stylistic transformation of the legend
Enacting the epic: in search of material proofs

Chapter III
The Past Visualized in the Correr Manuscript
The decoration of the manuscript
Critical issues
The narrative program
From saints to doges: internal coherence

Chapter IV
Micro and Macro: Miniatures and Mural Paintings
The Sala del Maggior Consiglio
Reconstruction of the original cycle
The Doge’s Palace: a triumphal image of Venice
Annunciation and Coronation of the Virgin
The dogal portraits
The “Peace of Venice”
In search of tradition
Terraferma horizons
Illusion of real presence
The Annunciation as state propaganda
The dogal portraits: history and future
Venetian horizons and mainland horizons: the mechanism of appropriation

Chapter V
The First Vernacular Versions of the Legend
Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Miscellanea codici I, Storia Veneta, 216
Interrelations among the Hystoria and the vernacular versions of the legend
Linguistic note
Editorial principles
The legend of the "Peace of Venice" according to the LegPacA version
Critical notes
Glossary

Conclusions

Bibliography
Index of names
Index of places
Copyrights