12 – Venezianità: The Art of Being Venetian in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
On campus
Course 12 – Summer School on campus
Monday 30 June – Friday 4 July 2025
Dr Antonia Gatward-Cevizli
£645
Course description
Venice is unique in many ways, not least in its geographic position enclosed in a lagoon in the Adriatic. The city state was, however, far from isolated in cultural and economic terms. Its trading networks extended across the Mediterranean and beyond and northwards over the Alps. In its maritime empire it neighboured the Ottomans and the terraferma – Venetian territories on the mainland – extended almost as far west as Milan. This unique position brought Venetians into contact with different art forms, styles and techniques that informed the city’s own artistic production.
This course examines Venetian Renaissance painting, sculpture, decorative arts and architecture underpinned by an exploration of Venezianità: the things that set Venice apart and gave the city its unique identity. They include the continued legacy of the city’s Byzantine past in the devotional paintings of Giovanni Bellini and in the way in which Venice embraced the new classicising style later than other cities and did so in its own native idiom. The host of turbaned figures in paintings by Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini are a reminder of Venice’s contact with the Islamic world. Trade routes with the North gave Venetians access to Flemish paintings and saw them adopt the medium of oil painting with greater alacrity than their Florentine counterparts. In the sixteenth century the Venetians adopted a unique approach to painting itself that prioritised colore – colour and its physical application – over the importance given to disegno in Florentine art.
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Lecturer's biography
Dr Antonia Gatward-Cevizli completed her PhD at the University of Warwick, specialising in cultural exchange between Italy and the Ottomans in the fifteenth century. Her MA focused on the Art and Architecture of Venice. During her studies she lived in Siena and Venice. She has taught Art History at Sabancı University, Istanbul and was a Course Leader at Sotheby’s Institute of Art for many years. She currently lectures for various institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Arts Society and The Courtauld Summer School. Her publications have focused on cultural and diplomatic exchange between Italy and the Ottomans.