Chapter III. The Venetian Sense of Place and Space

An understanding of how Venetians perceived and felt about their city's spatial construction is important to the central portion of this dissertation, which is focused on the extension of those perceptions into visual practices that then produced certain structures on Venetian canvases. This chapter attempts to supply those perceptions. Unfortunately, the Venetians of the late Quattrocento and the Cinquecento did not specifically state what they felt their spatial environment to be. Perceptions of space must therefore be teased out of other types of evidence such as maps, travellers' tales, documentation of ritual, and changes and improvements to the Venetian fabric. These understandings may then be used to arrive at a description of how the Venetians saw and practiced their space.