Enrico Dandolo Bust

Enrico Dandolo's career forces a difficult question on any gallery of celebrated figures: what does a city choose to honor? Elected doge of Venice in 1192, he helped secure Venetian power in the eastern Mediterranean through the Fourth Crusade and the destruction it brought to other Christian communities.

The crusaders depended on Venetian ships and could not meet the agreed transport costs. Their expedition turned first against Zara, a Christian city on the Adriatic, and then became entangled in Byzantine struggles for the throne. In 1204 crusader and Venetian forces captured and sacked Constantinople. Venice gained trading advantages and territories from the partition that followed.

Dandolo was already elderly and blind during the campaign. The circumstances of his loss of sight are uncertain, despite the later story that a Byzantine emperor had him blinded. He died in Constantinople in 1205.

Venetian tradition celebrated the doge's resolve and the expansion of the republic. A broader view must also include the looting, violence, and damage to relations between Latin and Byzantine Christians. His place among Italian commemorative portraits reflects the history of national and civic memory, rather than a moral verdict shared by everyone affected by his actions.