Facing Crisis: Art as Politics in Fourteenth-Century Venice

Although Venice emerged as a leading Mediterranean power in the Trecento, the city faced a series of crises during a brief but cataclysmic period coinciding with Andrea Dandolo’s dogeship (1343–1354): earthquakes, disease, fierce military conflicts, and dramatic political and institutional tensions had the republic on edge. It was nevertheless precisely at this time that the government sponsored a series of ambitious and sumptuous artistic campaigns in the church of San Marco: a reliquary-chapel, a new baptistery, and a folding altarpiece that blended Byzantine and Italianate visual forms.
Far from being mere artistic commissions, these works were affirmative political interventions that interrogated the meaning of community, authority, and (shared) political leadership at a time when those notions were unsettled. Looking beyond established concepts of triumph and imperialism, this seminar situates the arts of San Marco and the artistic interactions between Byzantium and Venice into ongoing processes of state formation, and attests to the power of images to inform—and transform—political imaginations in troubled times. This seminar thus aims to offer new insights into how medieval communities across the Mediterranean understood and responded to uncertainty through the visual, and, in doing so, probes the value of “crisis” as a methodological framework.

Join at: imt.lu/aula1