Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 95. (Budapest, 2001)

SZÉPE, HELENA KATALIN: Civic and artistic identity in illuminated Venetian documents

The book in the Moroni portrait is quite different from all of these. It is quartosized, closed, and bound in red-tooled leather with a prominent tassel and lead seal. Indeed, it looks a lot like the books that are often shown being presented to recipients of Venetian civic commissions in the miniatures inside such books, as in the dogale presented to Giovanni Soranzo, now in the Walters Art Museum (fig. 43). Another dogale in that collection is a rare example of such a book with the holla, or lead seal of the Doge, surviving intact (fig. 44).

4 The binding could range from simple red velvet, as in the latter Walters manuscript, which originally had silver gilt clasps and metal decoration, as well as the lead seal and tassel, to elaborate layered constructions of painted and tooled leather.

5 The book in the Moroni portrait is almost certainly meant to represent an official Venetian civic document - a dogal document, ducale, or dogale, and more specifically, one of the contracts of duty and conduct presented to individual patricians upon election to the highest offices of the Republic. The book may have been depicted as a sort of trophy - a symbol and record of the sitter's assumption to a powerful position in the Venetian government, a privilege available only to members of the Venetian patriciate. The Moroni sitter is not dressed in senatorial costume, but rather in the manner Vecellio described in his costume book as the dress of a Venetian 1 nobile per casa', or nobleman at home, as he is wearing the so-calledpretina vest and zimarra (in Venetian, zimara) robe. This informal mode may seem a bit strange in conjunction with a record of office, but there are examples of miniatures in dogali which show recipients in the same costume.

6 4 Commissione to Giovanni Soranzo as Podestà of Bergamo, May 5, 1567. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W. 493, f.l and Commissione to Paolo Contarini as Capitano of Crete, 1575, Walters, W. 484. The 'bolle' of the ducal office are discussed in Rosada, M.,Sigillum Sancti Marci. Bolle e sigilli di Venezia, in Ricci, S. ed., // sigillo nella storia e nella cultura, Venice 1985, 93-103. The illuminations of the manuscript are similar to those of Giorgio Colonna, but I believe he is a different artist, whose hand can also be found in a detached leaf in the Morgan Library, Commissione of Doge Pietro Loredan to Antonio Bragadin as Podestà of Brescia, 1567, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library M. 1082 and Commissione of Doge Girolamo Priuli to Nicolö Maripetro (1559-1567), London, British Library, Add. 20916. 12. Giovanni Soranzo became Podestà of Brescia in 1578 and eventually procurator of San Marco: Cicogna, E.A. Saggio di Bibliográfia Veneziana 1, Venice 1847,500, no. 3798. TheGiuramento of G. Soranzo asconsigliere of thesestiere of San Polo (May 15, 1569) is in New Haven, in the Yale Law Library, Law Dep. MSS JV55 n. 2. The illuminated opening leaf with an historiated initial of St. John the Baptist can be attributed to Giovanni Battista Clario da Udine. For his oeuvre, see Giordana Mariani Canova and Susy Marcon in Cattin, G. ed., Musica e liturgia a San Marco, Venice 1990, 185-186 and 259-272; Marcon, S.ed., / Hbri di San Marco. I manoscritti liturgici della basilica marciana, Venice 1995. 5 Anthony Hobson lists a number of sixteenth-century bindings of dogali in Renaissance Book Collecting, Cambridge 1999, with relevant bibliography. See especially Laura Nuvoloni, Commissioni Dogali. Venetian Bookbinding in the British Library, For the Love of Binding. Studies in Bookbinding History presented to Mirjam Foot, Pearson, D. ed., London 2000, 81-109. 6 Cesare Vecellio. Habiti antichi et moderni di tutto il mondo, Venice 1598, ff. 85v-86r.; Vitali, A., La moda a Venezia attraverso i secoli. Lessico ragionato, Venice 1992, 316, 434^435. The costume is the same as in a detached leaf from a Commissione to a member of the Tron family, San Marino, Huntington Library, EL9 H

13, 6. Described in Dutschke, C.W., Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, 1989, vol. 1, 25.