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Sumptuary Laws and their Flouting.
Mixed media on board, size 42 x 37 cms
By kind permission of Mr and Mrs Alec Sharples

  
  'One of the most intractable problems with which the historian of Venice has to contend with is that which stems from the instinctive horror, amounting at times to a phobia, shown by the Republic to the faintest suggestion of the cult of personality.'
John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice, published by Penguin.

'Every Venetian nobleman was in effect an unpaid servant of the State. His life was circumscribed by strict rules -even ordaining, for example, what he might wear, so that impoverished aristocrats were sometimes to be seen begging for alms in tattered crimson silk.'

'As early as 1299 the Republic introduced laws restricting ostentation, and later the famous sumptuary laws were decreed, strictly governing what people might wear, with a special magistracy to enforce them. They were never a success. …When the Republic prohibited long gowns, the Venetian women caught up their trains in intricate and delicious folds, fastened with sumptuous clasps. …the evasions of the law were so universal, so ingenious and so brazen that the magistracy gave up, and turned its disapproving eyes elsewhere.'

Jan Morris, Venice, published by Faber and Faber.

 
  

 

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