Dr. Elizabeth Carroll Consavari
ARTH 08
Stanford University CSP
THE ART OF
RENAISSANCE VENICE
Syllabus and Course Outline
Course Description and Objectives
Course Requirements
Students attend lectures and complete the assigned readings from assigned texts and
supplemental as indicated. If taken for credit, students must complete a brief 10-page critical
research paper with a topic agreed upon with the instructor’s consent.
Required Course Texts
1 The weekly readings are divided by topic in the outline below.
Week 1
Introduction to the Art Of Renaissance Venice: The Republic, Clergy,
Confraternities, Patricians and Citizens. Features of Venezianità
Readings:
•Regis Debray, “Against Venice,’ (1995) 3-46
•“Praise of the City of Venice, 1493,” in David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds.
Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630. 2001, 4-20
•Davis and Marvin, Venice, the Tourist Maze: A Cultural Critique of the World’s Most
Touristed City, (2004), Chapter 1.
•Brown, Patricia Fortini. Art and Life in Renaissance Venice. London, 1997, Chapter 1,
“Venezianità: The Otherness of Venetian.”
•Matthew, Louisa, “Clergy and Confraternities,” chapter in Venice and the Veneto, ed.
Peter Humfrey (2008)
Further Reading:
Ames-Lewis, Frances. Drawings in Early Renaissance Italy. New Haven and London: 1981.
Chapter IV, “Model Books and Sketchbooks.”
Boccassini, D. “Fifteenth-century istoria: Texts, images, Contexts (Matteo Maria Boiardo
and Jacopo Bellini,” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999):1-14.
Dunkerton, J. “Antonello da Messina e la tecnica fiamminga,” in Ecce Homo: Antonello da
Messina. Exh. Cat. 26-32, Genova: 2000.
Hills, Paul, Venetian Color, New Haven: 1999.
Humfrey, Chapter 1, “Early Renaissance,” 37-81.
Humfrey, Peter. “The Bellini, Vivarini and the Beginning of the Renaissance Altarpiece in
Venice,” in Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi, eds. Italian Altarpieces 1250-1550:
Function and Design. Oxford: 1994.
Wright, Joanne. “Antonello da Messina: The Origins of His Style and Technique.” Art
History 3 (1980): 41-60.
Week 2
Early Trecento Italy: From Giotto to Paolo Veneziano, the Birth of the
Altarpiece, Formulation of light and color
Readings:
•Rosand, David. Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto.
Cambridge University Press, 1997, “Introduction.”
•Romanelli, Giandomenico ed.Venice: Art and Architecture, vols. I, Cologne: Konemann,
•1997, Sandro Sponza, “Painting in Fourteenth-Century Venice.”
Further Reading:
•Giotto e il suo tempo. Exhibition catalogue, Milan 2000.
•Basile, Giuseppe. Giotto: The Arena Chapel Frescoes, London: 1993.
•Jacobus, Laura. “Giotto’s Annunciation in the Arena Chapel, Padua.” The Art Bulletin 81:1
(March 1999): 93-107.
2 •Romanini, A. M. “Nuovi Dati su Giotto architetto della cappella Scrovegni, Altichiero e
Jacopo Avanzo,” Arte Documento 15 (2001): 85-89.
Week 3
The Early Venetian Renaissance: Explore Issues of Pilgrimage/Tourism in
Early Modern Venice: Venice Circa 1500, Multiculturalism and the Rise of
the Scuole
Readings:
•
•
•
de Maria, Blake, “Becoming Venice, Becoming Venetian,” in Becoming
Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice, (Yale University Press,
2010), 1-31.
Robert C. Davis and Garry R. Marvin, “Venice: The Tourist Maze,” Pilgrim’s
Rest, 11-29
Fred Wilson, “Speak of Me As I am,” essay by Paul Kaplan, “Local Color:
The Black African Presence in Venetian Art and History,” (2003), 8-19.
Week 4
East Meets West: The Influence of the East in Venetian Architecture and
Painting
Readings:
•
Howard, Deborah, Venice and the East: The Impact of Islamic World on Venetian
Architecture 1100 1500, (2001), Introduction and Chapter 2
Week 5
Titian and the Venetian Renaissance: The Beginnings of Modernity
Readings:
•
Frederick Ilchman, David Rosand, Linda Borean et al, Titian, Tintoretto,
Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice Ashgate: 2009, Introduction, and Rosand,
“Titian and Challenge of the The Altarpiece,” Painting in Sixteenth-Century
Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Week 6
Titian and Images Of Power: The Early Globalization of Portraiture
Readings:
•
Frederick Ilchman, David Rosand, Linda Borean et al, Titian, Tintoretto,
Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice Ashgate: 2009, Brown, “Where the
Money Flows…” and further selections.
Week 7
3 Artistic Exchange After the Sack of Rome: The “Roman Renaissance”
of Jacopo Sansovino and Andrea Palladio
Readings:
•
•
•
Tracy Cooper, Palladio’s Venice, New Haven, 2005, Introduction to Part II,
40-47; 105-125; 181-185
Charles Davis, “Jacopo Sansovino’s Loggetta in San Marco and Two
Problems in Iconography,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz,
29 (1985): 396-400
Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice. New Haven and London,
2002, 164-174.
Week 8
Jacopo Tintoretto: Tradition and Innovation in Late Sixteenth-Century
Venice
Readings:
• Frederick Ilchman, Tintoretto ed. Miguel Falomir, (Madrid: Museo Nacional
del Prado, 2007), selected chapter(s).
• Jill Dunkerton, “Tintoretto’s Painting Technique,” Tintoretto ed. Miguel
Falomir,(Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007), 139-58.
• Paul Hills, “ Tintoretto and the Venetian Gothic,” in ed. Miguel Falomir.
JacopoTintoretto: Proceedings of the International Symposium, (Madrid, Museo
Nacional del Prado, 2009), 13-18.
Week 9
Painting in Late Sixteenth-Century Venice: The Return of Classicism with
Paolo Veronese and Course Conclusion
Readings:
•
•
•
Rosand, D. Painting in Sixteenth Century Venice…, Chapter 4, ”Theater
and Structure in the Art of Paolo Veronese.”
Goodman-Soellner, Elise. “The Poetic Iconography of Veronese’s
Cycle of Love,” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 4 no. 7 (1983): 19-28.
Frank, Mary E. “The Power of Portraits: Reuniting the Family at
Villa Barbaro,” in Reflections on Renaissance Venice: A Celebration of
Patricia Fortini Brown. (2013): 163-175.
*Please note that the instructor reserves the right to adjust this schedule at discretion.
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