Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/387

 VENICE

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VENICE

Sansovino), the Redentore (Palladio's masterpiece; picturea by Tintoretto, Girolamo Campagna, and others). On the island of S. Lazzaro there has been since 1716 an establishment of the Armenian Mechi- tarists, famous for their Oriental publications. The cathedral (seventh and tenth centuries) of Torcello is worthy of mention, with its mosaics of the twelfth century. Torcello was at one time a city of impor- tance. The seminary, the work of Longhena (1670), contains a museum of sculpture and a picture gallery; its faculty confers degrees in philosophy, theology, and canon law.

NoN-RELiGiois Buildings. — The Palace of the Doges is said to date from the ninth century; its actual form, a singularly graceful tj^ie of Gothic, dates from the fifteenth and fourteenth. Chief among the artists who WTOught upon it are Pierpaolo Mas- segne, the three Buon, Ant. Rizzo, Pietro Lombardo,

antique statues, warlike trophies, portraits and busts, medals, coins, specimens of Venetian industries, cos- tumes etc. One portion of this exhibition is housed in the Correr Palace. Among the most important bridges are the Rialto and the Bridge of Sighs. The finest private palaces are along the Grand Canal. Of the public monuments we shall note only the eciues- trian statue of the Condottierc Bartolomnieo CoUconi, modelled by Verrocchio and cast by Al. Leopardi.

The principal industries are ship-building, silk- spinning, galloons and laces, glass (Murano), objects of art. The sea baths of the Lido are the most elegant in Italy. Besides the seminary, there are two lyceum- gj'mnasia, a national boarding-school, a technical institute, a normal school for girls, a fine-arts insti- tute, a nautical institute, technical and commercial schools, a school of marine engineering, etc.; also a municipal and a military hospital, special hospital for

THK BUCENTAUR IN THE .VrsENAL MuSECM, VENICE

and Scarpagnino. The Giants' Staircase takes its name from the colossal statues of Mars and Neptune by Sansovino. The halls contain paintings by Tin- toretto, Paolo Veronese, Palma Giovane, Titian, Tiepolo, Andrea Vicentino, Gabriele Caliari. The doge's private apartments now house the Archseo- logical Nluseum. The Marciana Library (Library of St. Mark) is in the old Mint, while the Libreria Vecchia, the work of Sansovino and the most mag- nificent non-religious edifice in Italy, is now the Royal Palace. The Academy of the Fine Arts, in the guild of S. Maria della Caritft, contains pictures almost exclusively of the Venetian School. In the Middle Ages the arsenal gave employment to 16,000 labour- ers, where there arc now 3000; the annexed museum of nautical objects and arms contains the model of the Bucentaur, the ship on which the doge annu- ally, on the feast of the Ascension, celebrated the nuptials of the sea, casting a ring into it. The .Vrt Exposition Palace, founded in ISO.i, is used for the international art exposition which takes place every other year. The International Gallery of Modern Art W'as opened in 190.5 in the Pesaro Palace. Since 1880 there ha.s been established in the Fondaco de' Turchi the Civic Museum, containing pictures.

phthisis, two lunatic asylums, two orphanages, two observatories, six theatres. The exports in 1905 amounted to 2,576,000,000 tons (loimelaLe).

History. — The beginnings of Venice go back to the flight of the inhabitants of the Venetian state to the islands of the lagoon between Chioggia and Grado, when, in 452, Attila devastated Northern Italy. Nevertheless it is certain that these islands had al- ready been inhabited in Roman times. The fugitives from" the mainland in the fifth century greatly aug- mented the population. About .520 Cassiodorus represents the inhabitants of the islands as governed by tribunes, inhabiting pile-structures, occupied with fishing and in the navigation of distant, seas; salt was their medium of exchange. The Lombard invasion resulted in a further increase of this lagoon popula- tion; it remained under the rule of Byzantium, which had the sagacity to allow a great measure of autonomy to the tribunes. The latter probably resided in the cities. In 697 a doge {dux) was elected for the whole lagoon, to put an end to the conflicts between various tribunes and provide a more efficacious de- fence against the Lombards and the Slavs. The first doge was .Vnafestus Paulucius, a noble of Hera- clea, then the capital of the state. The military