Commissione issued to Andrea Valier by Leonardo Loredan

Commissione issued to Andrea Valier by Leonardo Loredan

This manuscript is a commissione issued to Andrea Valier by Doge Leonardo Loredan in 1502. The text concerns Valier’s duties and rights as podestà or civil administrator of Piran, an Istrian town in present-day Slovenia that was under Venetian control from 1283 to the extinction of the republic in 1797. This exemplar belongs to a wider genre of Venetian administrative records that came to be transformed into luxurious showpiece copies. This folio features an elaborate architectural frontispiece in the all’antica style, a revival of ancient forms characteristic of humanist book production in Renaissance Italy. The illumination has recently been attributed to the First Pisani Master, so named on account of two Aldine editions with Pisani heraldry. During Loredan’s dogeship of Venice (1501–17), the city-state was wracked by conflict with France, the Papal States, and other Italian powers, and yet it also saw some of its most brilliant artistic achievements.

Author: Leonardo Loredan; Illuminator: First Pisani Master

1502

Manuscript on parchment, 28 fols.

Lehigh University, Codex 21 (acc. no. 23452)

Venice, Italy