Art and Architecture in Renaissance Venice: course description
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Eva Renzulli, Venice International University. Mondays and Wednesdays 11.10-12.40
This is an introductory course to Venetian Art and Architecture which provides a survey from the 15th to the first half of the 16th century. Art, architecture, culture, history and politics will be considered exploring their interaction.
After having examined what historians call “the Myth” of Venice, and considered the institutions that gave shape to it, the course will concentrate on the various forms that such “Myth” took during the 15th and 16th centuries in art, in architecture and, on a larger scale, in urban strategies.
The course will begin by focusing on several sectors of the town. An analysis of its two major centers: the political and religious one, Piazza San Marco, (the Ducal palace, the ducal Ducal Chapel, the Procuratie, the Library, the Mint and the Loggetta) and the economic one, the Rialto (the bridge, the “insula”), will be followed by an examination of minor catalyzing centers around which Venetian and foreign communities assembled such as: Scuole Grandi and Piccole with their narrative cycles (Carpaccio and Bellini), the German Fondaco and the Ghetto, manifestations of that mythical harmony between classes and of hospitality towards foreigners.
An analysis of private and public buildings and their patrons, secular and sacred, will be the starting point to develop various themes such as magnificence, ritual uses of public space, architecture and art, self representation of the State, and of the governing élite in its private palaces and chapels. This approach will be carried out trying at the same time to highlight how the peculiarity of Venice, and its complex heritage - since it considered itself a second Constantinople and a second Rome- influenced the way in which the “new language” of the Renaissance was introduced into town and evolved from the 15th to the 16th century, concentrating on concepts such as renovation and innovation, and tradition and interpretation of models. Classes will be integrated by seminars on site.
Readings from the course pack are required for each session.
The aim of the course is to encourage the student’s awareness of the meanings of built space, and to provide the student with an intellectual vocabulary for the critical discussion of art and architecture. 
