VENETIAN ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY – 1 FROM THE ORIGINS OF VENICE TO THE BIENNALE

The course is addressed to students coming from all study areas.The course is designed for international students and therefore represents an opportunity for native Italian students to experience 'internationalisation at home'.

Thanks to the combination of different teaching and learning techniques (frontal lectures; group discussion; guided tours) students will learn:
- to describe and compare works of Architecture, Painting and Sculpture and archaeological sites;
- to set them in their historical context and within the development of the History of European Art and Archaeology.

The course is conceived to introduce Venetian art to students who do not necessarily have a background in any field of Humanities, including Art. Students enrolled on a degree course in Classics, Arts or Humanities, especially MA students, are kindly asked to get in touch with the instructor.

The course will focus on the development and the spread of the arts in Venice from the origins of the city to the fall of the Serenissima. Starting from the analysis of the peculiar geo-morphological conditions of the city of Venice, the course will consider major works of Venetian art, ranging from architecture to sculpture and painting, in their historical and cultural context, from the high Middle Ages to the 19th century, also in connection with the artistic production of other important artistic centres of the Veneto region such as Treviso, Verona, Vicenza and Padua. The analysis of single masterpieces will represent a first glimpse at the historical context and will provide students with the opportunity to delve deeper into exploring their features, style and the techniques employed to produce them. Finally, the course will include a (virtual) visit to one museum (to be defined), which will provide the students a chance to experience some of the most beautiful and significant examples of Venetian works of art through the ages.

Recommended Reading List:

G. ORTALLI, G. SCARABELLO, A short history of Venice, Venezia, Pacini editore 1999 (available on Moodle).

Further reading:

ARCHAEOLOGY (ORIGINS OF VENICE)
Albert J. Ammerman, Venice before the Grand Canal, “Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome”, 48.2003(2004), pp. 141-156 [Ammerman 2003]

MEDIEVAL AND BYZANTINE ART
Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Venice and Torcello: history and oblivion, “Renaissance Studies”, Vol. 8, No. 4, Venice and the Veneto (DECEMBER 1994), pp. 416-427 [Crouzet Pavan 1994]
Armin F. Bergmeier, THE PRODUCTION OF EX NOVO SPOLIA AND THE CREATION OF HISTORY IN THIRTEENTHCENTURY VENICE, “Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz”, 62. Bd., H. 2/3 (2020), pp. 127-157 [Bergmeier 2020]
Maria Georgopoulou, Late Medieval Crete and Venice: An Appropriation of Byzantine Heritage, “The Art Bulletin”, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 479-49 [Georgopoulou 1995]
Stefania Gerevini, Art as Politics in the Baptistery and Chapel of Sant’Isidoro at San Marco, Venice, “Dumbarton Oaks Papers”, 2020, Vol. 74 (2020), pp. 243-268 [Gerevini 2020]

RENAISSANCE ART
Hans Belting, St. Jerome in Venice: Giovanni Bellini and the Dream of Solitary Life, “I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance”, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 5-33 [Belting 2014]
Richard Mackenney, Public and private in Renaissance Venice, “Renaissance Studies”, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1998), pp. 109-130 [Mackenney 1998]
Louisa C. Matthew, The Painter's Presence: Signatures in Venetian Renaissance Pictures, “The Art Bulletin”, Vol. 80, No. 4, Dec. 1998, pp. 616-648 [Matthew 1998]
Claudia Kryza-Gersch, Confusing Signatures on Bronzes: Sculptor and Caster in Renaissance Venice, “Artibus et Historiae”, Vol. 38, No. 76, Studies in Renaissance Art and Culture in Honour of Debra Pincus (2017), pp. 95-112 [Kryza-Gersch 2017]

VENETIAN ART (17TH-19TH CENTURY)
Catherine Whistler, Life Drawing in Venice from Titian to Tiepolo, Master Drawings, Vol. 42, No. 4, Venetian Drawings (Winter, 2004), pp. 370-396 [Whistler 2004]
Rolf Bagemihl, Pietro Longhi and Venetian Life, “Metropolitan Museum Journal”, 1988, Vol. 23 (1988), pp. 233-247 [Bagemihl 1988]
Katharine Baetjer, "Canaletti Painting": On Turner, Canaletto, and Venice, “Metropolitan Museum Journal”, 2007, Vol. 42, 2007, pp. 163-172, 16-17 [Baetjer 2007]
ART CRITICS
David Mannings, Reynolds in Venice, “The Burlington Magazine”, Vol. 148, No. 1244, Art in Venice and the Veneto (Nov., 2006), pp. 754-763 [Mannings 2006]

THE MYTH OF VENICE IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY
James H. Johnson , The Myth of Venice in Nineteenth-Century Opera, “The Journal of Interdisciplinary History”, Winter, 2006, Vol. 36, No. 3, Opera and Society: Part I (Winter, 2006), pp. 533-554 [Johnson 2006]
Des O'Rawe, Venice in Film: the Postcard and the Palimpsest, “Literature/Film Quarterly”, 2005, Vol. 33, No. 3 (2005), pp. 224-232 [O’Rawe 2005]
Myriam Pilutti Namer, Spolia and Memory in Nineteenth-Century Venice, in F. Sabaté (ed), Memory in the Middle Ages: Approaches from Southwestern Europe, LLeida 2020, pp. 302-312 [Pilutti Namer 2020]

CLIMATE CHANGE
Fabio Trincardi et alii, The 1966 Flooding of Venice: WHAT TIME TAUGHT US FOR THE FUTURE, “Oceanography”, Vol. 29, No. 4, Special Issue on Ocean-Ice Interaction (DECEMBER 2016), pp. 178-186 [Trincardi et alii 2016]

Written test. Individual presentations on subjects previously discussed with the lecturer are welcome.
Attendance to classes is highly recommended.

Frontal lectures, guided tours (if possible).

The distinctive feature of the course is the international composition of the class, generally including a variety of provenances both in geography and education. For this reason too, attendance to classes is highly recommended. Please note that students who cannot attend classes are required to prepare some additional readings to be agreed with the instructor.

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development