Andrea Cornaro’s World

Abstract Chapter 1, “Andrea Cornaro’s World,” introduces the reader to the culture of late sixteenth-century Crete through the will of a leading Veneto-Cretan aristocrat. Engaging more fully with the unique context of the island may help to approach Cretan painting in a manner that is open to its particular dynamism and less fettered by presumptive and nostalgic categories. The chapter discusses Cornaro’s funerary rites, his possessions, and his intellectual network. The island’s complex colonial society, with its Venetian and Greek aspects, is described. Particular attention is paid to the intellectual climate of elite society. Responses to the threat of invasion by the Ottoman Turks are also discussed.