Venice & the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100–1500

. Deborah Howard is reader in architectural history at the University of Cambridge and fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, England. She is chairman of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (1997-2000). Her books include Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice, published by Yale University Press

Precious spices and textiles, imported from distant trading posts in the eastern Mediterranean, stocked Venetian markets in the Middle Ages; but Venice’s merchants imported more than material goods from the East—they acquired also a wealth of visual ideas and information from Muslim culture. She considers the complexities of importing Muslim ideas to an unambiguously Christian city, itself the point of embarkation for pilgrims to the Holy Land.. Howard explores a range of building types that reflec

Venice - the Hong Kong of its time G. Kennedy Venice is nothing like the rest of Italy everyone can see this instead of looking below the surface most people just describe it as "magical" . Having been there numerous times, it has clear influences from the Islamic world. I also have not seen much that is truely Gothic in the rest of Italy for that matter Milano Cathedral being the only real example I've seen.This is a very good book, and anyone who believes that Gothic (with its pointed arches, etc) is not derived from Islamic architecture needs to do some travelling (outside of Europe), and stop believing in magic.Tourists heading to Venice should read this book - and "A Histo. "Five Stars" according to Richard J. King. Awesome!. "The Many Veils of Venice" according to Wayne Dawson. Deborah Howard is steeped in the enigma of Venetian architecture and gives a fabulous interpretation of its development through trading relationships with the Islamic world from 1100-1500 AD.By emphasising the mental `Transmission and Propagation' of Islamic imagery as much as any materialistic one through trade, Howard shows just how elastic the `process of cultural diffusion' was and restores the importance of the oral tradition in the `reformulation' of that imagery into another space and time.Her focus on the Middle East draws our attention away from Constantinople, bringing out the importance of Alexandria as one of the main sourc

"A brilliant study reopens modern eyes to Venice much as John Ruskin did for the Victorians. With superb illustrations." -- The New York Times Book Review