A Crown without a King: A Short History of the Doges of Venice
Guest Lectures
•
1h 9m
The Venetian Republic lasted more than a thousand years—longer than any other republic in history. One of the great secrets of its success was the institution of the Doge, a figure with all the trappings of a king but few of the actual powers. This lecture looks at the special role played by “Messer lo Doge” in Venetian politics, history and culture, with emphasis on his powers and limitations, and on those moments when the safeguards on this office were tested almost to destruction by ambitious politicians.
Ross King is the award-winning author of numerous books on Italian and French art and history, including Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling. His biography Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power has been called a ‘convincing portrait of one of the most misunderstood thinkers of all time’. His most recent book, published in April 2021, is The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance.
Up Next in Guest Lectures
-
Creating Opportunities: Women Artists...
By the mid 1500s in Italy, although it was still unusual for a woman to become an artist, two women gained fame for their skill in portrait painting: Sofonsiba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana. Anguissola’s talent led her to work at the Spanish court of King Philip II in Madrid, while Fontana’s ski...
-
Deaths & Diseases of the Most Excelle...
What do we really know about the diseases that afflicted Michelangelo or Leonardo? What was the actual cause of Caravaggio’s death? Did Raphael really die from too much sex? Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects gave us the first and not...
-
Pasta Fazool: The Disparity Between t...
With film, music, and humor, this webinar will examine representations of the Italian language in the American media and how they affect Americans’ perceptions of the language and culture. In contrast to these portrayals of Italian as truncated, fragmented, and unrefined, we will consider how gra...