Ferdinanda Ongania and the Golden Basilica: A documentation programme in 19th-Century Venice

Abstract

Abstract The remarkable Ferdinanda Ongania, publisher, bookseller, cultore appassionato, and purveyor of the beauties of Venetian art, was born in Venice, 18th July, 1842 and died in St Moritz on 21st August 1911. When still very young he began working in a bookshop established in Venice in the spring of 1846 by the elder of the Munster brothers. He soon became its director and, in 1871, though not yet thirty, he succeeded the brothers as proprietor. In Venice, which up until the previous decade had belonged to Austria, the bookshop (located under the Procuratie of the Royal Palace toward the Ascensione, no. 72-73, in front of the Basilica of San Marco) had become a traditional landmark for foreign scholars. It held a special importance for young Venetian intellectuals, who met there to read clandestinely Berchet's and Aleardi's patriotic lyrics. In the euphoric, chaotic and rather uncertain climate of the liberation (1866), there was a new rise of interest in Venice. Beginning in the 1870s, Ongania's ent...