F1603 Art and Architecture in Renaissance Venice

 The aim of this course is to look at Venice as an early example of globalized art and architecture. Since its origins, Venice hosted people of different nations and cultures, who provided new approaches suggestions and improvements to its art and architecture.

This was even clearer during the Early Modern age, when Venice was “at the centre of the world”. Its relation with the Middle East (Byzantium, Egypt, the Turks), but also with Northern Europe (Germany, the Flanders, the Low Countries), Central Italy (Florence, Rome) and other Italian cities (Padua, Ferrara, Milan) offered, throughout the centuries, extraordinary occasions for the creation of a unique language, open to a wide range of influences and inputs.

Starting from St Mark's square as a study case, the Course focuses on history of Venetian art and architecture during the Renaissance age, exploring relevant topics: religious and public buildings with their decorations; hosting structures and centers of international trade; services for assistance (“Scuole”, “ospedali”, and other charitable and social institutions). Playing an important role in the civic and religious ritual of Venice, they were the source of an important and characteristic type of patronage, by commissioning works of art from the major artists of the period, such as Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Tiziano, Tintoretto and Palladio among others. This course aims to provide students with a deep understanding of Renaissance Venice trough an interdisciplinary approach to its cultural complexity in relation to its wider historical and cultural context.

We will "enter the buildings" and focus on the way Venetian people used to communicate with their foreign guests (both political or religious leaders and intellectuals or merchants) through visual arts and architecture. In this perspective a correct approach will be offered to the interpretation of the works of art using a wide range of sources, historical and literary, trying also to compare Venice to the other European centers of power and business, such as Florence and Rome, but also Paris, Madrid or London. This will concern to analyze some key episodes and selected Renaissance works, as well as the most famous painters and architects in relations to their patrons: Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian (the painter to whom the highest international patronage and fame were granted), Giorgione, Tintoretto and Veronese in relation to the buildings which hosted their works (from Jacopo Sansovino to Andrea Palladio). If Carpaccio put in place a wonderful narrative painting and Titian has to be recognized as a starting point for European "state portraiture", Palladio created a new “systematic and communicable” way of designing buildings which influenced the development of architecture in Northern Europe, and later in North America.

The course will be articulated in classroom lectures and site visits, plus day trips aimed to improve the student’s historical and critical capacities, thanks to the direct analysis of the works. The students will have the unique opportunity to gain firsthand knowledge of works of architecture and art in their environmental historical and cultural context.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Throughout the midterm test, seminars and a final exam, the students will have to demonstrate the ability to analyze works of art and architectural by allocating it in the relevant historical and urban context. They would have a basic knowledge of the reading list of the course, as well as a detailed knowledge of the topics illustrated during the lectures. Students will acquire and use the specific language of art history and architecture to communicate and interact in class. They will be able to give a presentation according to the guidelines offered by the instructor and write short texts/essays about specific artworks or artists considering them from an interdisciplinary point of view.