“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"
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