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The mid-fourteenth-century renovation of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice included one of the most eclectic programs of exterior sculpture in late medieval Italy [Fig. 1]. On the building's spectacular façade overlooking the Piazzetta San Marco to the west and Bay of San Marco to the south, life-sized figures depicting Old Testament narratives, archangels, saints, virtues, and Venice itself greeted visitors to the city center.1 In the capitals supporting the superimposed ground-floor arcade and secondfloor loggia, finer grained scenes as diverse as the Seven Liberal Arts and fantastical birds captivated passers-by. As many commentators have remarked, this encyclopedic mixture of subject matter amounted to an all-encompassing statement of Venetian political self-imagery central to the 'myth of Venice' then coalescing in local cultural discourse.2 Through a combination of highly referential associations, Venice was portrayed as an everlasting beacon of justice in the turbulent waters of God's creation.
But this representation of Venice on the exterior of the governmental palace and residence of the doge may not have been limited to the iconography of figural sculpture. A case can be made that it also included the architecture of the façade, designed in tandem with the sculpture as part of the comprehensive rebuilding of the monument approved on 28 December 1340.3 As will be argued, the divine permanence of Venetian justice was reflected in the formal harmony of the exterior's architectural and sculptural design, which was achieved through the government's unusual yet documented attempt to preserve that design for nearly a century after its inception. Although the records indicating this course of action date to the early fifteenth century, strong circumstantial evidence suggests that it was set in motion by the patricians who commissioned the structure in 1340. Few of these officials would have been more sympathetic to the project than Andrea Dandolo, who oversaw the reconstruction of the palace first as a Procurator of San Marco (1328-1343) and then as doge (1343-1354). Studies have shown that in his writings and artistic commissions for the interior of San Marco Dandolo communicated the belief that the doge ensured the constancy of the Venetian state through his unwavering commitment to justice.4 This article will propose that Dandolo intended the formal harmony and preservation of the new Palazzo Ducale to convey the...