Potentially Interminable Set-piece

Mauro Codussi: Procuratie Vecchie, Venice

The distance of approximately 600 feet had been set in 1172 when Doge Sebastiano Ziani doubled the original size of Piazza San Marco by ordering the removal of a church further way from the basilica to enhance the latter's importance. Between them on the north stretches the regular rhythm of the Procuratie Vecchie, the headquarters of the shrine of St. Mark's numerous officials. The ritual life of the city, as perceived in the renaissance has the function of expressing not merely the prevailing civic order, but by implication also the divine, and that identity could be celebrated both by temporary human action through processions or by permanent architectural and urban ensembles.