Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
I in the Mid-Sixteenth Century Venetian writers, artists, scholars, and musicians came increasingly to play out their cultural ideals within informal academies. These academies made no bylaws or statutes, nor did they keep the sorts of membership lists, minutes, and systematic records that were to become commonplace by the end of the century. In essence they were regular gatherings, chiefly in private homes, for discussion, debate, and performance. The diffuse demography of the republican city-state made it well-suited to the dynamic processes of artistic and intellectual interchange that such gatherings provided.
Versions of this essay were presented at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, New York, 1988, at The University of Chicago, 1990, and at Duke University, 1991. I am grateful to the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for Research in Venice, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the University of Southern California Faculty Research and Innovative Fund for helping to support this work.