Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting
08–10 April 2010, Venice
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Isola San Giorgio Maggiore
Since the Renaissance, the identity of early modern Venetian painting is mostly defined by the terms of color and colorism. Instead of reinforcing the modernist idea that flat color is opposed to a perspectival representation of space based on disegno, this panel intends to explore the possibilities and limits of a coloristic or painterly construction of space and its supposed Venetian specificity.This session focuses not only on the historical development of techniques for the construction pictorial space, but also deals with the interactions between represented and real spaces. We welcome papers that discuss Venetian painting with reference to:
– the concept of a coloristic or painterly production of pictorial space
– the social, gendered, and bodily notions of space specific to Venetian art (sotto in sù viewing, civic land-marking, gestural painterly textures, large-scale narratives, illusionist façade painting, spatial immersion etc.)
– the development, function, and rhetoric of linear perspective in Venice and the Veneto (since Jacopo Bellini, in comparison with the Central-Italian paradigm)
– the compositional and technical problems in constructing pictorial spaces within large architectural settings and specifically Venetian urban contexts
– the inter-cultural exchanges between Venetian spatial constructions and Byzantine and Islamic concepts of space
– the interrelation between painting and theater in Venice and the Veneto
– the architectural and urban idealizations and utopias of Venice compared to real sites and environments
– the supposed importance of the lagoon´s climatic and geographic conditions for the construction and perception of space
– the representations of the topography and geography, the communication and transport networks of the Venetian Republic and its global trading empire
– the invention and visualization of inner and outer, mental and civic spaces
Scholars interested in a historical or theoretical reflection on the construction of pictorial space in early modern Venice are invited to submit a paper title, an abstract of 150 words, and a short CV by e-mail in English or Italian to the organizers before 01 May 2009. Speakers must be members of the Renaissance Society of America at the time of the conference.
Please, consult the RSA website for practical information:
Organizers:
Stefan Neuner (neuner@khist.uzh.ch)
Tristan Weddigen (tristan.weddigen@khist.uzh.ch)
Institute of Art History
University of Zurich
http://www.khist.unizh.ch