Andrea Gritti's First Election: Sanudo Diaries: April 3, 1502; 4:254

Early in April 1502, Andrea Gritti had been elected as a 'councillor for the sestiere of Santa Croce on the far side of the Grand Canal'.  A sestiere was then and remains today the same well-defined physical district in the city of Venice. Councillors were elected to advise the doge on aspects of the city. Sanudo describes it perfectly.

Sanudo Diaries: April 3, 1502; (4:254); "The new councillors from the far side of the Grand Canal were elected. Ser Andrea Gritti, recently returned from Constantinople, won by the scrutinio."

The scrutinio as our Editors define it was a "... vote in the Senate whereby a candidate was nominated from the floor to be voted on alongside those nominated in the Great Council by a group of committees - usually four - chosen by lot. The Senate candidate had the advantage of a block of votes and support of distinguished patricians."

It was Gritti's first elected post and came after returning to the city following imprisonment and intrigue in Constantinople during one of the intermittent wars with the Ottomans.

Sanudo Diaries: (con't); "It is the first elected office he has held in this Republic; nor was he on any earlier ballots, except that the other day in the Senate he was nominated to be a savio de Terraferma but lost, being short of votes. This ser Andrea Gritti will be a worthy citizen, because he has every good quality. First, he is handsome, generous, well-spoken, etc,; one could even say that "his worth is more pleasing because it appears in a handsome body.""

This, the Editors tells us [footnote 13, p 235], intentionally follows the Vergil line
'Gratior es pulchro veniens in corpore virtus'  in Aeneid 5:344.

The reference in Vergil describes Euryalus, the Trojan son of Opheltes, beloved of Nisus, Trojan son of Hyrtacus. For funeral games - occurring after funeral, sacrifices there were games, including a boat race - Nisus slipped and fell in a race and had just knocked aside a competitor so that his favcorite Euryalus could win first prize.

Sanudo Diaries: (con't); "He [Gritti] was elected in recognition of his merits, in that to warn his homeland, he wrote letters to Constantinople, giving information to our Signoria of the events and the actual preparation of a fleet the Turks were undertaking. His letters were found, so he was in danger of having his head cut off."

Editor's note: "Translation based on J.C. Davis 1974, 106."

And,
"Gritti's political rise ... was quite spectacular, it was not unique. J.C. Davis points out that of the thirty-six doges elected between 1300 and 1550, fourteen were known to be merchants, nine probably were not, and thirteen may or may not have been, although the likelihood is that they were and that it was so unremarkable a pursuit that it went unmentioned, whereas governmental honors were always mentioned. 1974, 98."

And from their bibliography:
Davis, James Cushman, 1974. Shipping and spying in the career of a Venetian doge, 1496-1502. Studi Veniziani 16:97-108.

A later picture of Andrea Gritti appears excerpted in this translation of Sanudo during the Feast of San Marco, when Gritti was doge.
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All above quotes from pp 234-5:  Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008