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GLOBALIZATION PROGRAM
Wednesday, 9 September 2015
at 4pm, Aula Magna
Opening Remarks
Amb. Umberto Vattani
President
Prof. Agar Brugiavini
Dean
Honored Guest
Professor Deborah Howard
Professor Emerita of Architectural History and Director of Research,
Faculty of Architecture and History of Art, University of Cambridge
Lectio Magistralis
Order and Orders in Piazza San Marco
The sixteenth-century redevelopment of Piazza San Marco in Venice was one of the most ambitious schemes of urban renewal in the whole of Renaissance Europe. As the setting for public ceremonial, the city’s political centre needed improvement to dignify its processional life and enhance the reputation of the state – or rather, to underpin what is now known by historians as the ‘Myth of Venice’.
This lecture will show how the ill-assorted functions of the late medieval Piazza came to seem inappropriate as the ruling nobility sought to convey a sense of public order and harmony in the aftermath of the Cambrai wars. Under the impetus of Doge Andrea Gritti, Jacopo Sansovino initiated a huge programme of rebuilding in the mid-1530s. Using the classical orders of architecture, he re-articulated the public buildings in the Piazzetta to explain their hierarchy of status and function. Furthermore, his understanding of perspective allowed him to create scenographic effects that enhanced the theatrical qualities of the space. In parallel, Sebastiano Serlio began to publish the first volumes of his treatise to explain the language of the orders of architecture to the Venetian public.
The architectural regeneration thus not only brought order to the Piazza but also demonstrated the power of the classical orders to convey meaning and authority.
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 Deborah Howard is Professor Emerita of Architectural History and Director of Research in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art in the University of Cambridge, where she is a Fellow of St John's College. A graduate of Cambridge and of the Courtauld Institute of Art, she taught at University College London, Edinburgh University and the Courtauld Institute.
She was Head of Department of History of Art in Cambridge from 2002 to 2009.
She is one of the leaders of a four-year interdisciplinary research project entitled Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home 1400-1600, funded by an ERC Synergy Grant (2013-17).
Her principal research interests are the art and architecture of Venice and the Veneto; music and architecture in the Renaissance; and the relationship between Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Continue reading Prof. Howard's short biography
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