Codega — plate 7
The Arti che vanno per via nella città di Venezia (1753, 1770, 1785, etc.), by Gaetano Zompini (1700–1778), contains sixty engravings of common, mostly poor people, peddling their trades on the streets of Venice in the mid-1700s.
Text
De notte, ora ai teatri, ora al Redutto Son quel che col feral serve de lume; E pur che i paga mi so andar per tutto.
Translation
At night, now at the theatre, now at the Ridotto
I'm the one with a lantern to make light;
And as long as they pay, I know all the streets
Notes
While in the 1700s there were some street lights (see plate 41 — Impizza Ferali), generally the city was very dark at night, and crime was a real problem. Wealthy people therefore employed a lantern bearer to walk in front of them, called a codega or, sometimes, a feralante, to illuminate the way.
Common reasons for wealthy persons to venture out after dark were the theatres, of which there were several around Venice, and gambling.
The Republic of Venice had laws and regulations for gambling, but one place where it was allowed, was in the Palazzo Dandolo a San Moisé, usually called the Ridotto. Gambling at the Ridotto was banned in 1774, but it remained as a venue for masked balls during the carnival.
See Boerio (1829), entries CÒDEGA and REDOTO; and Mutinelli (1851), entries CODEGA and RIDOTTO.
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Bibliography
Boerio, Giuseppe. Dizionario del dialetto veneziano. Venezia : coi tipi di Andrea Santini e figlio, 1829.
Martineau, Jane and Royal Academy of Arts (eds.). La gloria di Venezia: l’arte nel diciottesimo secolo ; Royal Academy of Arts, Londra, 1994, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1995. Milano: Electa, 1994.
Mutinelli, Fabio. Lessico veneto che contiene l'antica fraseologia volgare e forense … / compilato per agevolare la lettura della storia dell'antica Repubblica veneta e lo studio de'documenti a lei relativi. Venezia : co' tipi di Giambatista Andreola, 1851.
Zompini, Gaetano. Le arti che vanno per via nella città di Venezia inventate ed incise da Gaetano Zompini, Aggiuntavi una memoria di detto autore. Venezia, 1785.
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