Venetian Views on Venice and the Terraferma as a State

In the course of the long fifteenth century Venice went from being a city with various possessions overseas but with only limited territory on the Italian peninsula, to being also the capital of one of Italy’s great regional states. How did geographical descriptions represent the city of Venice in its capacity as capital of a state, and the mainland territories in that of part of the Venetian state? This chapter focuses on geographical descriptions written by people from the Venetian milieu. I use this term loosely. Renaissance Venice was characterised by continuous movement, exchange, and interaction of people, objects, and ideas. A selection of texts written by authors from Venice will therefore always depend to a certain extent on artificial delineation. Nevertheless, it is useful here to see what type of geographical narratives would have circulated within the city of Venice and would have appealed to a predominantly Venetian audience. This chapter therefore includes authors like Giorgio Dolfin, a Venetian patrician living in Venice, but also people like Jacopo d’Albizzotto Guidi and Francesco degli Allegri, neither of whom were originally from Venice, but who were living there and writing primarily for a Venetian audience. By concentrating on a series of themes — justification for territorial expansion, perception of the links between Venice and the Terraferma, and the impact of political affiliation on geographical representations — this chapter analyses in detail the construction and development of Venetian narratives about Venice and the Terraferma as a state, during the period in which this state was being created.