The Jewish Ghetto and the Visual Imagination of Early Modern Venice

This book explores how the Jewish ghetto engaged the sensory imagination of Venice in complex and contradictory ways to shape urban space and reshape Christian-Jewish relations.

Dana E. Katz (Author)

9781107165144, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 August 2017

202 pages, 40 b/w illus.
23.9 x 16.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.48 kg

'Katz's insistence on the verticality of the ghetto reminds us to evaluate the full significance of the three-dimensionality of the early modern built environment, which may be mentally flattened by factors such as our familiarity with early modern cartography. More broadly, this study highlights the importance, complexity and porosity of enclosure in the urban context. Above all, it prompts us to reflect on how architecture can frame and direct sensory experience, and how sensory experience shaped social relations.' Alexandra Bamji, Renaissance Studies

Dana E. Katz examines the Jewish ghetto of Venice as a paradox of urban space. In 1516, the Senate established the ghetto on the periphery of the city and legislated nocturnal curfews to reduce the Jews' visibility in Venice. Katz argues that it was precisely this practice of marginalization that put the ghetto on display for Christian and Jewish eyes. According to her research, early modern Venetians grounded their conceptions of the ghetto in discourses of sight. Katz's unique approach demonstrates how Venice's Jewish ghetto engaged the sensory imagination of its inhabitants in complex and contradictory ways that both shaped urban space and reshaped Christian-Jewish relations.

Introduction
1. Margins as laboratories of urban planning
2. Enclosures as topographies of vision
3. Windows as sites of visual disturbance
4. Walls as boundaries of the night
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD], History [HB], Landscape art & architecture [AMV], Architecture [AM]