The notary, the sculptor, the friar and the doge: Giovanni Dolfin and his creditors in mid-fourteenth-century Venice

This essay publishes and contextualises three of the cases extant in the probate records of the Venetian Doge Giovanni Dolfin (1356-61). Read in conjunction with his will and the registers maintained by the procurators of San Marco, his principal executors, the three texts illuminate the personal side of the doge’s last months, from his expectations of notaries and his failing health, to his interest in books. The details emerge from claims against Dolfin’s estate by one of the doge’s notaries, Giovanni Ferrarese; by the sculptor of his tomb, Andrea da San Felice; and by the Dominican friars of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in whose church the tomb stood. Published in the appendix, the records of the three rulings ultimately issued by the Giudici del Procurator tell us about the workings of probate, the manuscripts Dolfin was having illuminated and bound when he died, the one extant executory action related to his tomb, and an intriguing disagreement over whether laying a floor was integral to building works. These superficially straightforward legal documents draw us into histories of art and architecture, books and reading, courts and offices, document-production, family and health.