Small wonder, given their centuries of trade with China, that Venetians were the first Europeans to obtain world maps from their trading partner. Di Virga’s map of the Eastern Hemisphere was published in 1419, and Pizzigano’s map of the Caribbe an appeared in 1424. Today, you can see on the wall of the Doges’ Palace a world map published prior to 1428 that includes North America. As the roundels on the walls testify, this map was created from evidence brought back from China by Marco Polo and Niccolò da Conti. The inscription relating to da Conti says: “ORIENTALIS INDIAS HAC TABULA EXPRESSUS PEREGRATIONIBUS ET SCRIPTIS ILLUSTRAUNT EN NARATIS MERCANTORIAM AD JIUVIERE SAECOLO XV NICOLAUS DE COMITIBUS. EDITO ITENERARIO LUSITANE POST MODUM VERSO NOVAM LUCEM NAUTIS ALLATURO.” My translation: “Oriental India [viz China and the Indies in fifteenthcentury terminology] as drawn in this way is clearly a result of the foreign travels and illustrated writings not least the narratives of the merchant of the fifteenth century, Niccolò da Conti. Publication of this itinerary sheds new light on the [travels of] mariners.”
This map was probably completed before 1428 (inauguration of Doges’ Palace) but destroyed by fire in 1486; the original maps (of which a copy was given to Dom Pedro) were hung on the walls. According to Lorenzetti, the map was repainted by Ramusio in 1540 after the fire—the same Ramusio who had said that Fra Mauro’s world map was copied from one in the Camolodensian Monastery on the (current) Island of the Dead in the lagoon. Giovanni Forlani’s map shows Oregon and the Bering Straits before Bering or Vancouver. Zatta’s map shows Vancouver Island also before Cook or Vancouver and places on it “Colonia dei Chinesi” (Chinese Colony).
By 1418 Venice had become the richest state in Europe. The city’s mule caravans could tramp unmolested through Venetian territory to the Brenner Pass.10 As the seaport nearest the heart of Europe, Venice exploited her access to Lake Constance, which was the principal trading center for merchants from France, Germany, Austria, Poland, and Rus sia.
For more than 150 years before Zheng He appeared, Venetian bankers had been using a cashless giro system, crediting one merchant and debiting another.11 Italian bankers led by the Bardis and Peruzzis pioneered international banking the length and breadth of Europe. Almost every citizen of the Venetian Republic was involved in some aspect of trade12—shopkeepers in retail markets, porters and fish traders in wholesale markets, dockers to load and unload, shipwrights in the Arsenal, oarsmen in the galleys. There were few beggars and hardly any unemployment.
Essential to the Contis, the di Virgas, the Corrers (the family of Pope Eugenius IV’s mother), and the Contarinis were the great oared galleys that left the Rialto for Alexandria, Beirut, Cairo, Flanders, and London. The galley routes to Alexandria and the East resemble the spokes of a vast spider’s web.13 The Magistrates of the Waters issued detailed sailing orders with which merchants were required to comply. The following order, issued to a galley departing for Aigues-Mortes in Provence, underscores the importance of the silk trade.
The galley will load cloths and spices of Venice up to the 13th of January next; she is to leave Venice on the 15th of the same month. These terms may not be extended, suspended or broken under penalty of a fine of 500 ducats. No silken goods may be loaded or shipped on this galley, anywhere in the Gulf of Venice or outside it, apart from veils, taffetas and Saracen cloth. If the master of the galley loads or permits the loading of any silken goods, he will be suspended for a period of five years during which time he may not command any of the galleys of the state or private persons.14
The Magistrate of the Waters tightly controlled the movement of ships and where they were permitted to load and unload. Each type of good had its designated loading wharf—stone barges at the Incurabile, timber ships at the Misericordia and the Fondamente Nuove. Zheng He’s junks from Alexandria would have tied up at the Riva degli Schiavoni. Venetian merchants submitted to this discipline knowing that it benefited all. The dominant families appointed agents in Crete, Alexandria, Cairo, and every important harbor to facilitate their international trade.
Today, the area around Saint Mark’s Basilica still swarms with boats unloading passengers, vegetables, fruit, and wine. I have been to Venice innumerable times since first visiting as a young officer on the HMS Diamond fifty years ago. My most vivid memory was a sultry August evening twenty years ago, after Marcella and I had attended vespers at Saint Mark’s, the finest Byzantine building in the world, the epitome of medieval Christian art, and the symbol of Venice’s trade with Alexandria and the East.
For more than one thousand years this glorious cathedral has been the most important building in Venice. Here Crusades were blessed, including the one financed by the blind old doge Dandolo, who implored Saint Mark to deliver Byzantium to Venice. Here Venetians met to pray for deliverance in times of danger or to thank God in victory. Generation after generation of Venetian merchants have poured their wealth into the city’s fabulous cathedral.15
Built in the shape of a Greek cross, the cathedral overlooks the lagoon, allowing one to enjoy the view from either land or sea, in changing light as the day progresses. The finest artists have endowed the exterior and interior with masterpieces of marble and mosaics. The west façade is a blaze of green, purple, gold, and blue marble collected from across the Venetian empire.
Within, worshippers see the residue of wealth in the gold ceilings. The basilica is at its best by candlelight at vespers, from a pew beneath the central dome. From here Jesus appears to ascend to heaven, carried by four angels surrounded by the apostles and the Virgin. Every inch of the vast ceiling, walls, and floors is encased in mosaics. Trea sures lie sprawled before one. An altar of solid gold is studded with rubies and emeralds. Panels depict scenes from the lives of Christ and Saint Mark. Chinese silk and ceramics, Byzantine reliquaries, cut Persian glass, crystal goblets, and silver swords from Tartary fill the museum. All of this resulted from centuries of seaborne trade.
The wealth of fifteenth-century Venice is captured in the speech delivered by the dying doge Tommaso Mocenigo:
This city now stands out in the way of business to different parts of the world. Ten millions of ducats were earned yearly by ships and galleys and the profit is not less than two million ducats a year. In this city there are three thousand vessels of one, two hundred amafore with seventeen thousand seamen. There are three hundred large ships with eight thousand sailors. Every year there go to sea forty-five galleys with eleven thousand sailors and there are three thousand ship carpenters and three thousand caulkers. There are three thousand weavers of silk and sixteen thousand weavers of common cloth. Houses are estimated to be worth seven million five hundred thousand ducats. The rents are five hundred thousand ducats. There are one thousand noblemen whose income is from seven hundred to four thousand ducats.16
Venice prided herself on wealth but also on a republican government enshrined in a written constitution replete with complex checks and balances. Although the doge was head of state, he was constrained by various committees and councils. When Genoa was defeated in 1380, the Italian city-states of Verona, Vicenza, and Mantua willingly accepted the Pax Venetica. Their governing bodies were added to the Great Council. By 1418, Venice had outmaneuvered the Holy Roman Emperor and expanded her territories southward. Representatives of Istria, Friuli, and Dalmatia further swelled the Great Council. Gentile da Fabriano, Antonio Veneziano, and Jacobeló del Fiore were retained by the procurators of Saint Mark to adorn the walls of the Great Council Chamber with paintings of the glorious history of the Serenissima.