“La Serenissima” is an entertaining ode to Venice
But Jonathan Keates’s adoring tribute is blind to the city’s faults
La Serenissima. By Jonathan Keates. Head of Zeus; 496 pages; £40
Among the many beautiful illustrations in this book is a reproduction of Bonifacio Veronese’s “Parable of Dives and Lazarus” (pictured), which hangs in the Accademia gallery in Venice. The woman playing a lute is thought to be Gaspara Stampa, among the saddest figures in literary history. Abandoned by her paramour, who went off to war and seems never even to have written to her again, she captured the pleasure and pain of love in what Jonathan Keates calls “one of the most potently expressive of all the great Renaissance sonnet sequences”. It was published after her death in 1554 at the age of 31.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "In the doge house"
Culture December 3rd 2022
- Two new books explore the upside of big data and AI
- “La Serenissima” is an entertaining ode to Venice
- Ukraine’s Modernist art has defied censorship and missiles
- “Animal Life” is the latest book from a thought-provoking novelist
- The translator of the future is a human-machine hybrid
- The dream and nightmares of council estates
From the December 3rd 2022 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from Culture
Is this the greatest ever Premier League season?
The race between Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool masks issues at the bottom of the table
Romantasy brings dragons and eroticism together. At last
Novels starring hot fairies are selling millions of copies
Who’s afraid of Judith Butler, the “godmother of queer theory”?
A new book highlights Judith Butler’s fierceness and blind spots