I list here the books which made the writing of my own easier and more pleasurable. I have not listed those consulted for general background information. I am also grateful for material or observations provided by Michael Vickers, Lydia Fetto, Tony Harvey and Terry Harris, and for the help given with the translation of the Zanella poem by Ferdinando Giugliano.
Anyone researching the horses of St Mark’s is deeply indebted to the catalogue to the 1979 exhibition of the horses, The Horses of San Marco, by a variety of authors, all translated for the English edition by John and Valerie Wilton-Ely (London, Thames & Hudson, 1979). It contains a large number of essays which have been quarried for this book, and most translations of impressions of the horses come from this source. Specific studies of the horses include Vittorio Galliazzi, I Cavalli di San Marco (Treviso, Editrice Canova, 1981), although Galliazzi’s dating of the horses is challenged by recent research on copper casting. Michael Jacoff, The Horses of San Marco and the Quadriga of the Lord (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992), sets out the case for a religious rationale for the placing of the horses on St Mark’s.
On ancient Roman circuses I have used John Humphrey, Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Races (London, Batsford, 1987); and on Byzantium, Cyril Mango, The Oxford History of Byzantium (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002). For the Byzantine circus, two books by Alan Cameron, Porphyrius the Charioteer (Oxford, OUP, 1973) and Circus Factions (Oxford, OUP, 1976), proved especially helpful. On the Fourth Crusade, I consulted Donald Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Books on Venice overwhelm. For recent historical surveys, see John Martin and Dennis Romano, Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000; essays on aspects of Venetian history and historiography) and Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baltimore and London, JHUP, 2002), the second indeed a triumphant overview of the city’s history. On architecture, Richard Goy, Venice: The City and its Architecture (London, Phaidon, 1997), and Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice, 2nd edn (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2002), are both excellent. On Venetian ritual, Edwin Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton and London, PUP, 1981), is the standard introduction to ceremonial life in the Piazza. I have also drawn on Debra Pincus, The Tombs of the Doges of Venice (Cambridge, CUP, 2000). Quotations from Goethe’s Italian Journey (1786–8) are taken from the Penguin Classics edition translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer.
For background to the reception of ancient art in general, see Roberto Weiss, Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, OUP, 1973), Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique (New Haven and London, YUP, 1981), and Francis Haskell, History and its Images (New Haven and London, YUP, 1993). Specifically on Venice, Patricia Fortini-Brown, Venice and Antiquity (New Haven and London, YUP, 1996) proved essential.
On the Renaissance in general, John Hale, The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance (London, HarperCollins, 1993), is a fine overview. On Venice in particular, see Patricia Fortini-Brown, The Renaissance in Venice (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997). Excellent on the painting is Bruce Cole, Titian and Venetian Painting 1450–1590 (Oxford, Westview, 1999).
On Canova, a good starting point is C. Johns, Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France (Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1998). On Napoleon’s Paris, Marie Louise Biver, Paris de Napoléon (Paris, Plon, 1963), has full details of the building of the Arc du Carrousel for those who can read French.
For Venice over the past two hundred years, Margaret Plant, Venice: Fragile City, 1797–1997 (New Haven and London, YUP, 2002), is outstanding – like other Yale publications, not least for the quality of its illustrations. See also John Pemble, Venice Rediscovered (Oxford, OUP, 1996), and Tony Tanner, Venice Desired (Oxford, OUP, 1992), which deal with the responses to the city of outsiders and writers.