Venice and the East
Foreign affairs
Dec 19th 2006 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
Two shows in Paris—one about Venice (see below) and the other on portraits (see article )—received mixed reviews. They will improve when they start travelling
IMPORTS were once the lifeblood of Venice; even its patron saint came from abroad. In 828AD Venetian merchants stole the relics of Saint Mark from a Coptic church in Alexandria and brought them home in triumph, claiming they had rescued the saint from the infidels.
The theft was symbolic as well as physical. Venice wanted to set itself up as a new Alexandria: a centre of trade and learning in the Mediterranean that could link the Christian West with the Muslim East. The maritime city depended on Eastern trade for its wealth. “Pragmatism is probably the term that best defines Venice's relations with the Muslim Middle East,” says Stefano Carboni, a native Venetian who is the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's department of Islamic art and who this autumn organised a travelling show with the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8447370