S1404 Art and Architecture in Renaissance Venice
Pattanaro Alessandra, Savy Barbara
The aim of this course is to look at Venice as an early example of globalized art and architecture.
Since its origins, Venice has absorbed many influences from different cultures, who provided new approaches, suggestions and improvements to the originality of its art and architecture.
To perpetuate cultural heritage is important in a globalized world, and we hope to show the students a modern and useful way to appreciate the Venetian art and architecture. As researchers we dedicate our studies to the Renaissance era and are enthusiastic to help students understand the most strategic sites and monuments as architectural structures and visual arts whose functions and meanings were meant to be comprehensible by people of different cultures.
Over several centuries Venice had refined a portrait of itself that responded to historical circumstances, from the despoliation of Constantinopole in the Fourth Crusade (1204) to its final victory over its maritime rival Genoa (1380) and in the early sixteenth century its survival at the war with the League of Cambrai, and, again, its resistance to the papal interdict both in 1508 and in 1606.
The self-proclaimed RepubblicaSerenissima became a myth.
As Rosand has written the Venetian myth is based on "the fictions or half-truths that the Republic invented of and for itself - its origins and legitimacy, its divine favour and holy purpose - and those myths came to be figured in numerous corresponding icons". Some of these icons are: the city itself miraculously rising out of the lagoon, symbolic figure of the Republic, like its patron saint, the evangelist Saint Mark, and the winged lion, or the personification of Venice as Queen of the Adriatic. This personification (Venetia figurata) summarizes in a single figure the virtues of the Republic and the special qualities claimed for the State itself.
The roles of the figure of Venice include such models as: the Virgin Mary, the cardinal virtue of Justice, the pagan goddess Roma and the goddess of love, Venus.
Starting from St Mark's square as a study case, the Course focuses on history of Venetian art and architecture during the Renaissance era exploring relevant topics: religious and public buildings with their decorations; hosting structures and centers of international trade; services for assistance (“Scuole”, “ospedali”, orphanages and other 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 Jacopo Sansovino and Palladio among others.
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 on tuesdays and thursdays, plus day trips on fridays. The students will have the unique opportunity to gain first hand knowledge of works of architecture and art in their environmental historical and cultural context.
The idea is to approach the matter more in an active rather than abstract way. Since the students are here in Venice, they can have the great opportunity to be able to visit personally the sites. In fact we believe it is more useful and instructive to see buildings and works of art in "real life" rather than only in books.
Evalution
Reading