Art: Backwater Relief

Venice in the 18th Century was supposed to be Europe's No. I good-time town. Actually it was a dirty, provincial, poverty-stricken backwater whose magnificent buildings, heirlooms of a great past, looked down once a year on a second-rate carnival. The rest of the year Venetian amusements were penny-pinching, snuff-taking, gambling and adultery for the 40 ruling families. Venice's maritime power and the Mediterranean's role as the world's central sea had been ended by the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope route to the Orient. A declining 17th Century Venice could not defend...

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