ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces the concept of polytopos to the study of early modern 15th- and 16th-century Venetian painting. Polytopos, defined as a many place, contains multiplicities of the Other regardless of place or time within its borders, served as a defining paradigm and strategy of civic identity in xenophobic yet multi-ethnic Venice. Three case studies of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini’s St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria (1504–7) from the Scuola Grande di San Marco cycle, Carpaccio’s Arrival of the English Ambassadors (1499) from the St. Ursula confraternity cycle, and an anonymous Circle of Titian Saint Jerome in Penitence (16th century) establish distinct modes of polytopos. Polytopos relies on a paradox: borders can be surpassed only if their limits have been previously acknowledged. Difference is maintained within unity. In all different modalities, polytopos demonstrates how an empire justified and visualized its expansion through pictorial integration of the city into foreign histories and places.