The Staples of Venice

What do the Rialto Bridge, the church San Giovanni e Paolo, and the Grande Scuola Tedesca in the Ghetto have in common? What holds up angels and balconies? What can you find on a Tintoretto “Annunciation” as well as on a Canaletto veduta of the church San Giacometto? What shows up in nineteenth-century daguerreotypes and twentieth-century postcards? What can be disguised as a six-petaled rose or a twelve-petaled chrysanthemum? Here you can find this out and more...

Werner Sollors is Cabot Professor of English, Emeritus, at Harvard University, where he taught for more than three decades, and coeditor, with Greil Marcus, of A New Literary History of America. He received his doctorate from the Freie Universität Berlin and held positions there, at Columbia University, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia and at NYU Abu Dhabi. He lives in Venice.