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RE: VMs: RE: St Mark's Basilica in Venice...?
Hi Mark,
At 06:20 06/11/2003 +0100, Mark Hippenstiel wrote:
Well well, admittedly I'm not too deeply involved with the possible
interpretations of the vms' depictions, so bear with me if I show some
scepticism. This sounds too far away from 'reality' if there's such a
thing in the vms ;-)
On the contrary, I'd say it's just about as close to reality as the VMs
gets. :-)
You are constructing a self-referencing line of reasoning here if I'm
not mistaken. The mere existance of similarities between the onion
shaped domes of San Marcos' and the drawing we're talking about does not
make your claim of references to Murano glass any more probable. You
could well have a look at Russian, Indian or even far-east architecture
to find a lot of domes, even onion shaped ones.
Careful - I'm arguing that the *visual composition* was probably derived
from a particular view of a particular building, and that elements of the
composition were probably derived from contemporary glassware... both of
which came from only a single place (Venice).
I would suggest that someone should do a little research to find out
which medieval cities offered such attributes: onion topped towers which
could be viewed from above and nearby. There shouldn't have been too
many of them. Unfortunately, I lack the means of accomplishing such an
investigation.. Anyway it might turn out out that Venice is one of them
(quite obviously) and that other evidences indicate it's the best
choice, but you never know.
AFAIK, Venice's ongoing devotion to all things Eastern marked it out as
something quite special within Europe. My guess is that you'd have to look
to elsewhere in the Venetian maritime empire, or Istanbul & beyond for
similar Greek-cross shaped domes.
Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
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