Dunamis
Contending Representations III: Questioning Republicanism in Early Modern Genoa
Several studies have been devoted to the flowering of the republic of Genoa during the so-called ‘siglo de los Genoveses’ when Genoa became the hub of European trade and an important center of artistic and literary production. Yet little attention has been granted to the political and cultural crisis that followed starting in 1559 and culminating in 1684 when the French bombed Genoa. Addressing this chronological gap the volume explores how the image of the Genoese Republic was shaped exploited or contested in the long seventeenth century. How did Genoese politicians and men of letters represent their homeland? How was Genoa represented in Spain or in the Low Countries? How was its political system conceived by Italian and foreign political writers and how did the prevailing absolutist model influence such ideas? In order to answer these questions the volume gathers contributions from art historians literary scholars political and cultural historians thus adopting a comparative multidisciplinary approach.
Contending Representations II: Entangled Republican Spaces in Early Modern Venice
This bookaddresses the issue of political celebration in early modern Venice. Dealing with processional orders and iconographic programs historiographical narratives and urbanistic canons stylistic features and diplomatic accounts the interdisciplinary contributions gathered in these pages aim to question the performative effectiveness and the social consistency of the so called ‘myth’ of Venice: a system of symbols beliefs and meanings offering a self-portrait of the ruling elite the Venetian patriciate. In order to do so the volume calls for a spatial turn in Venetian studies blurring the boundaries between institutionalized and unofficial ceremonial spaces and considering their ongoing interaction in representing the rule of the Serenissima. The twelve chapters move from Ducal Palace to the Venetian streets and from the city of Venice to its dominions thus widening considerably the range of social and political actors and audiences involved in the analysis. Such multifocal perspective allows us to challenge the very idea of a single ‘myth’ of Venice.
Contending Representations I: The Dutch Republic and the Lure of Monarchy
This volume is the first book-length study to thematise the representation of power in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Bringing together scholars from different backgrounds the volume aims to stimulate a cross-disciplinary dialogue about representations in art literature ritual and other media. Within the Dutch Republic different state actors - the city the provincial states the States General the stadtholders and individual power-holders - vied for the supremacy of power. A vital aspect of this persistent struggle was its representative dimension. In making representative claims about their place in the balance of power these institutions all faced the challenge of developing a republican language that was both distinctive enough and universally understood. In the cultural repertoires available to political figures artists and intellectuals republican models contended with monarchical ones. In visual and literary depictions public ritual and diplomatic encounters alike the temptation to stand up to the grandeur of powerful European monarchies by borrowing from their representative traditions was not always easy to resist.