The Genius of Venice

Dial Parrott's view of Venice is a heroic one. He portrays the medieval Venetian Republic as a consistent vanguard state, centuries ahead of the rest of Europe--economically, politically, and without doubt, architecturally. Venice experienced an architectural and artistic proto-Renaissance as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is when she first created Piazza San Marco, using as her model a splendid late classical square in Constantinople, the old imperial capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The book presents the Piazza as one of the supreme examples of Western communal art, the same architectural ethos that built the great medieval cathedrals of France and Germany. The work of architects and artists of great genius and skill, the Piazza ensemble is, above all, a communal artistic effort, a carefully crafted assemblage, merging changes in style and taste over 800 years. The Genius of Venice reveals the Piazza's magnificent edifices as the "living books of history" (John Ruskin) they were always meant to be.