Built upon Waters: The Sea in Venetian art from Tintoretto to Canaletto
In partnership with Fondazione Cini onlus
Dr Camilla Pietrabissa
Wednesday 12 – Sunday 16 March 2025
£805
Please note that this is an extended version of a tour which first ran in May 2024.
Course description
Venice was built on the marshy waters of the Adriatic lagoon and grew to become a maritime empire on the Mediterranean Sea. This study tour explores Venetian visual culture as a response to this aquatic environment in the early modern period. This was a crucial period of history: after the Battle of Agnadello of 1509, the city-state’s power declined steadily until the definitive loss of independence in 1797. This dynamic prompted successive governments to promote campaigns of urban renovation and to support artistic production in the city and the surrounding lagoon, turning Venice into an alluring capital of culture. The course will consider the unique mix of architecture, sculpture, and painting that reflect the sensibility of writers, and artists and architects like Andrea Palladio, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Canaletto to the city’s fundamental connection with the element of water.
Led by an art historian resident in Venice, the tour will begin with lectures in the spectacular setting of the Fondazione Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, followed by a vaporetto tour around the different viewing points of San Marco bay: Punta della Dogana, the Giudecca Island and the Piazzetta near the Molo. This area of the Southern part of the lagoon, conceived as a water-oriented scenography, will be the main focus on the first three days, followed by a series of visits to museums and islands in the Northern lagoon. Museum visits will include the lesser-known Naval Historical Museum, with its collection of objects and vessels from the naval industry, the Gallerie dell’Accademia, filled with masterpieces of Venetian painting, and the most important churches whose monuments demonstrate the city’s lasting connection with maritime culture.
Our study tours include the lecturer’s expert tuition in museums, galleries, and churches; travel by coach between sites (where relevant), and ample pre-course reading on the VLE. Most tours also include sessions in a classroom on site, or the provision of a pre-recorded lecture to help deepen the learning experience. Travel to and from the main destination and accommodation are not included, and participants are free to make their own arrangements.
All Study Tours include a good deal of walking and require a reasonable degree of physical fitness and mobility.
How to book
We have a limited number of places available on this study tour. If you would like to book, please email short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk, with ‘Book Venice 2025’ in the subject line. You can book up to two places (if available), so if you would like to book a second place, please let us know in your email, and include the name of the second person. We will then send you a link to make your booking. Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Lecturer's biography
Dr Camilla Pietrabissa is Adjunct Lecturer in Art History at the University of Venice. She holds a PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and worked as an assistant curator of prints and drawings at the Musée du Louvre and The Courtauld Gallery. She focuses on the visual culture of eighteenth-century Italy and France at the intersection between urban studies and the theory of media especially paintings and drawings. She received fellowships in Paris, Turin, Munich and Los Angeles. Her current research projects explore the early modern representation of ports, the aquatic visual culture of the Venice lagoon, and the historiography of landscape painting. She is a regular reviewer for The Burlington Magazine.