The Venetian Landscape as Result of Economic Strategies (1400–1700)

• In Event: Architecture, Economy, and Power in a Renaissance Landscape (Veneto, Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries)

Abstract

Since the end of the 15th century the European population began to grow. It’s well known that this growth caused an increase of the supply of cereals and agrarian goods in general and therefore a rush of land aquisition. In the Venetian region cives and nobles having money preferred to invest in lands and reduce their contribution to the commerce. According to Braudel, land became a business and a business in particular for rich people. The rush towards the land became more and more capitalistic and this fact provoked a change in the territory. The reclamation of barren lands through the construction of channels, the creation of big private properties, the process of deforestation, and the extension of cereal and rise cultivation were the result of a capitalistic approach towards agriculture. This change is well represented by the emergence of the Venetian villa, in particular the Palladian villa, as centre of local economic organization.

Author

• Paola Lanaro, Ca' Foscari di Venezia