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After a period of crisis between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, the war years of Candia clearly marked a considerable economic and
productive revival in the
Arsenale .
Laws and measures revealed a new
interest in authority indicative of an attempt to rationalise and centralise
operations. In 1641, for example, there was a project to produce an organised
set of the laws of the Arsenale, which had been thrown together confusedly over
several centuries. There was also an attempt underway to enforce the political
dictates of
Doge Nicolò da Ponte, making it obligatory for the
Doge and his
Collegio to pay a quarterly visit to the shipyards. This
diligence and attention do not, however, seem to have been carried over to the
technical side at a European level. No innovations seem to have appeared until
1670, and instead there was a decided tendency to rely on late
sixteenth-century tradition.
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