Word: venetian
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...village of Mogliano about ten miles inland from Venice. His father was a stonemason, his uncle an architect and civil engineer who worked on the huge sea walls that protect Venice's lagoon. It was an image of massiveness that was to inspire Piranesi. From the busy Venetian theaters, he learned the art of stage design, which in those times ran to imposing fixed backdrops where ornate buildings receded in dramatic chiaroscuro. At 20, Piranesi landed a job in Rome as a junior draftsman in the retinue of a Venetian ambassador. He yearned to do his own buildings...
...heart was in Rome, wandering its ruins. In 1745 he managed to get back there for good as agent for a Venetian printmaker. He married the daughter of Prince Corsini's gardener, who brought him a small dowry that proved enough to let him start his major work on Roman antiquities. In it he looked on Rome's neglected ruins with the eye of a romantic and the knowledge of an engineer...
...cited in his sermons. (Pius X is often remembered as the Pope who condemned Modernism, but that act was largely the work of his eminence grise Cardinal Merry del Val; Luciani, though, has revered Pius as the man who encouraged frequent reception of Communion and attendance at Mass.) The Venetian connection...
also binds in Luciani's love of music. He especially admires the works of a Venetian baroque master, a priest named Antonio Vivaldi...
...largely honorary title, derived from the Venetian churches' dependence on the Byzantine Empire during the centuries of barbarian invasion. In 1451, consolidating earlier patriarchal titles, it was bestowed by Pope Nicholas V. But the Pope himself remains the ultimate "Patriarch of the West...