S0603 Venice. Art, Society and Architecture

Venice as a door towards the Orient, Venice as the place of meeting between the pope and the emperor Federico Barbarossa, Venice as the city of \'buongoverno\': these are only some of the images that have been related to the Italian city during the history. This is also the image that Venice has created for itself, as the perfect place where social conflicts don\'t exist and where peace reigns absolutely.\r\n

How was this ideal of harmony translated into architecture? How did it mould the Venetian society? How did the various arts integrate each other?
The course will try to show the different ways through which architecture showed such ideas. Many examples will be analyzed, trying to understand the way into which differences recomposed into an ideal unity and the various arts melted among them, giving the city the richness that we can still perceive.

\r\nHospitals and music, nobility and theater, prostitution and economy, foreign communities and religion: everything is still recognizable in the \'body\' of Venice. Lessons, visits, documents and paintings form a \'consonant\' wealth which will still make alive the myth of Venice as city of harmony.