Immortalized in later centuries in works by Lord Byron, Giuseppe Verdi, Eugene Delacroix, and others, Francesco Foscari reigned as the powerful doge of Venice during tumultuous years from 1423 to 1457. The stuff of legends, his life was marked by political conflict, vengeful enemies, family heartbreak, and, at the end, the forced relinquishment of the ducal throne. Yet Foscari left behind no personal papers, and until now, no complete biography of him has been written.
This book, a thorough and fascinating biography, fills that longstanding gap, illuminating not only the life of the man but also the history and culture of fifteenth-century Venice. Dennis Romano reconstructs Foscari's life through careful reading of extant governmental records and chronicle sources. He also uses architectural monuments built by Foscari and his heirs as critical interpretive keys for unlocking the personality and policies of the doge. Romano analyzes how art and power intersected in Renaissance Italy and how the doge came to represent and even embody the state. With this biography, Romano clears away longstanding myths, fills in previously unknown details about Foscari's triumphs and ordeals, and allows to emerge the first intimate portrait of this singular doge.
Reviews in History - Review by Dr Jon Law
Political biography has a relatively minor part in medieval and renaissance Venetian historiography when compared to other European states – such as England – or Italy’s other major republic in the period, Florence. The explanation may be in part due to the enduring and influential ‘myth of Venice’, an aspect of which stressed the corporate discipline of the Venetian nobility, and its loyalty to the state, qualities that transcended individual, family or factional interest. However under scrutiny this aspect of the myth does not hold up given, for example, the prominence of tomb monuments in Venetian churches, attention seeking palace building along the Grand Canal, the widespread placing of coats of arms and inscriptions on public and private buildings, the prominence of portraiture in Venetian art. If it were possible to identify more of these portraits and had not the fall of the Republic in 1797 led to the slighting or destruction of many noble coats of arms, the image of a faceless or selfless Venetian nobility would appear even less convincing.
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HNet: Review by Alison Smith
This is a remarkable book. Dennis Romano's biography of Francesco Foscari not only gives us an elegant and persuasive account of the doge's public and private life but also provides us with a compelling account of some of the most important decades in the history of the Venetian Republic and the development of the Renaissance state system. Foscari's reign, one of the longest of any Venetian doge, lasted from 1423 to 1457. During this time, Venice consolidated its control over the mainland territory it had conquered at the very beginning of the fifteenth century in an effort to contain the expansionist threat of the Visconti in Milan. Called on to lead one of the wealthiest and most powerful European states, Foscari grappled with urgent fiscal, diplomatic, and military challenges caused by nearly constant warfare and shifting alliances with Italian states. He was a man of great intelligence and personal ambition as well as a consummate politician with particular skill as an administrator. Notwithstanding the length and achievements of his reign, Foscari was deposed by the Venetian Senate just before he died and just after his son Jacopo was tortured and exiled from Venice. Foscari has been regarded as a tragic figure ever since, the subject of plays, an opera, and innumerable morality tales. His story has been used to promote both the myth of Venice (beginning with Bernardo Giustinian's famous funeral oration) and the anti-myth (which highlights oppression and lack of freedom in an increasingly authoritarian early modern Venice). In the final chapter of the book, Romano examines the way in which George Byron, Giuseppe Verdi, and Eugène Delacroix, among others, handled the Foscari story, and grapples with the interpretive problems faced by the biographer of this enigmatic and extremely important figure.
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