Course description
The course introduces the students to the world of Art and Architecture through the approach and methods of a historian. The course guides the students in the acquaintance of major topics and protagonists of Venetian Renaissance. It examines the evolution and development of Venetian Art and Architecture from the late XV century to the beginning of the XVII century, focusing on a selection of issues, episodes and artists. A great emphasis will be given to the rediscovery, use and interpretation of classical models of Roman and Greek tradition in all the fields of Renaissance culture, examining the peculiar approach of Venetian culture to antiquity between Rome and Byzantium. Attention will be paid to the relationship with Northern European Renaissance, the advent of new techniques of representation, the manifold languages through which Venetian Renaissance expressed itself in art and architecture.
Venice, with its outstanding monuments and its connections with all the great cultural centres in Europe and down along the whole Mediterranean Sea, will offer a special opportunity to examine artworks and monuments in their original settings.

Course objectives
Objectives of the course are to learn methods to analyze Renaissance works of art in their form, meaning and visual symbolism; to relate artworks to their historical background; to understand the master’s artistic views and intentions; to be able to recognize the major social and historical forces which conditioned Renaissance Art in Italy and in Venice through the analysis of Italian intellectual, social, economic and political history; to build a “language of observation”: a proper visual vocabulary to adequately describe artworks; to improve the critical approach to reading, talking and writing on Art and Art history. The course will provide skills and “tricks” needed to interpret Renaissance works of art and architecture, as well as appreciate them aesthetically.

The lectures are supported by slide show presentations combined with seminars (for which students are assigned weekly reading tasks), site visits and research challenges.
Students will be encouraged to take part in discussions in the topics proposed and in producing both individual and group research work.

Evaluation
40% attendance and participation to lessons and visits, participation in class discussions.
60% individual oral discussion, oral presentations in class or during a visit, research paper.

General Readings
For a historical background: Lane Frederic, Venice. A Maritime Republic, Baltimore, London, John Hopkins University Press, 1973.
For an overview of Italian Renaissance: Frederick Hartt, A history of Italian Renaissance art: painting, sculpture and architecture, New Jersey: Prentice Hall; New York: Abrams, 2003.
On arts of Renaissance Venice in general: Huse Norbert, Wolters Wolfgang: The art of Renaissance Venice: architecture, sculpture, and painting, 1460-1590, translated by Edmund Jephcott, Chicago London: The University of Chicago press, c1990.
On history of Venetian architecture from the origins: Concina Ennio: A history of Venetian architecture, translated by Judith Landry, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
On architecture of Renaissance Venice: Goy Richard J.: Building Renaissance Venice: Patrons, Architects and Builders, C. 1430-1500, New Haven and London, 2006.
On Painting of Renaissance Venice: Humfrey Peter: Painting in Renaissance Venice, New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995
On Venice architecture analyzed through its historical and building elements: Foscari, Giulia: Elements of Venice, Zürich: Lars Müller, 2014

A list of reading assignments and suggestions will be given for each lesson week by week.

Syllabus
Venice and the Myth of the Origins
The image of Venice in 1500. Jacopo de Barbari's View.
Renaissance. Birth, meanings and fortune of an ideal.
Antiquarianism in Venice, between Byzantium Rome and Athens.
Plans and domes. Religious buildings at the end of the 15th century and the beginnings of the 16th.
Scuole grandi: art and architecture of Renaissance charity.
Building a new Venice. From Jacopo Sansovino to Andrea Palladio.
From house to palace. Private buildings between magnificence and austerity.
Altapieces, teleri and quadri. New techniques, new visions.
Inventing the landscape. From Bellini and Carpaccio to Giorgione.

Iconology methods and Renaissance Painting. Warburg, Panofsky and Sebastiano del Piombo.
Titian from the Venus of Dresden to the Ariadne of the Andrians
Portraying the Renaissance Man, depicting myth and history.

On-site lessons will comprise the church of San Zaccaria, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Palazzo Grimani, Church of San Giovanni and Paolo, San Giorgio Island, Padova.

Extra-Curricular Activity:
Andrea Palladio. Towards a universal classicism. Visit to Villa Emo and Villa Barbaro (on a Friday).