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Venice Versus Florence

Praise of one’s own city, a form of written work that noble blood. We are one-third Roman, one-third Frank-
developed in ancient Rome, was revived and expanded in ish, and one-third Fiesolan [three different groups that
Renaissance Italy. In the first selection below, written in 1493, were all viewed as honorable]. . . . We have round about
the Venetian patrician Marin Sanudo (1466–1536) praises Ven- us thirty thousand estates, owned by noblemen and
ice in a work of praise, which was a common genre at the merchants, citizens and craftsmen, yielding us yearly
time, and in the second selection the Florentine merchant bread and meat, wine and oil, vegetables and cheese,
and historian Benedetto Dei (DAY-ee) (1418–1492) praises his hay and wood, to the value of nine hundred thousand
own city in a letter to an acquaintance from Venice. ducats in cash, as you Venetians, Genoese, and Rhodi-
ans who come to buy them know well enough. We have
Marin Sanudo on Venice, 1493 two trades greater than any four of yours in Venice put

u The city of Venice is a free city, a common home to all together — the trades of wool and silk. . . .
men, and it has never been subjugated by anyone, as have all Our beautiful Florence contains within the city in
this sample.
other cities. . . . Moreover it was founded not by shepherds as this present year two hundred seventy shops belonging
Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Rome was, but by rich and powerful people, such as have ever to the wool merchants’ guild. . . . It contains also eighty-
Worth Publishers.
been since that time, with their faith in Christ, an obstacle to three rich and splendid warehouses of the silk merchants’
barbarians and attackers. . . . For it takes pride of place before guild, and furnishes gold and silver stuffs, velvet, bro-
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.
all others, if I may say so, in prudence, fortitude, magnificence, cade, damask, taffeta, and satin to Rome, Naples, Cata-
benignity and clemency; everyone throughout the world testi- lonia, and the whole of Spain, especially Seville, and to
Uncorrected proofs have been used in
fies to this. . . . It is, then, a very big and beautiful city, excelling Turkey and Barbary. . . . The number of banks amounts
over all others, with houses and piazze [public squares] founded to thirty-three; the shops of the cabinetmakers, whose
upon salt water, and it has a Grand Canal. . . . On either side business is carving and inlaid work, to eighty-four; and
are houses of patricians and others; they are very beautiful, the workshops of the stonecutters and marble workers in
by Bedford, Freeman &
costing from 20,000 ducats downwards. . . . The Venetians, the city and its immediate neighborhood, to fifty-four.
just as they were merchants in the beginning, continue to trade There are forty-four goldsmiths’ and jewelers’ shops,
every year; they send galleys to Flanders, the Barbary Coast, thirty goldbeaters, silver wire-drawers, and a wax- figure
Beirut, Alexandria, the Greek Lands, and Auiges-Mortes [a city maker. . . . Sixty-six is the number of the apothecaries’
in southern France]. . . . Here, on the Canal, there are embank- and grocer shops; seventy that of the butchers, besides
ments where on one side there are barges for timber, and on eight large shops in which are sold fowls of all kinds, as
the other side wine; they are rented as though they were shops. well as game and also the native wine called Trebbiano,
There is a very large butchery, which is full every day of good from San Giovanni in the upper Arno Valley; it would
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meat, and there is another one at St. Mark’s. The Fishmarket awaken the dead in its praise.
overlooks the Grand Canal; here are the most beautiful fish,
Distributed
high in price and of good quality. . . . And in the city nothing
grows, yet whatever you want can be found in abundance. And QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
this is because of the great turnover in merchandise; everything 1. What qualities do the two men choose to highlight in

comes here, especially things to eat, from every city and every praising their hometowns?
part of the world, and money is made very quickly. This is 2. How do these praises of Florence and Venice represent

because everyone is well-off for money. new values that emerged in the Renaissance?
Benedetto Dei on Florence, 1472 Sources: David Chambers, Brian Pullan, and Jennifer Fletcher, eds., Venice: A
Documentary History, 145–163 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), pp. 4–5 , 11, 13;
u Florence is more beautiful and five hundred forty Gertrude R. B. Richards, ed., Florentine Merchants in the Age of the Medici (Cam-
years older than your Venice. We spring from triply bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932).

In the fifteenth century five powers dominated the the states of northern Europe were moving toward cen-
Italian peninsula: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal tralization and consolidation, the world of Italian poli-
States, and the kingdom of Naples ( Map 2.1 ). The tics resembled a jungle where the powerful dominated
major Italian powers controlled the smaller city-states, the weak. Venice, with its enormous trade empire,
such as Siena, Mantua, Ferrara, and Modena, and com- was a republic in name, but an oligarchy of merchant-
peted furiously among themselves for territory. While aristocrats actually ran the city. Milan was also called a

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