Renaissance Venice Tour

VENICE

Renaissance

Even though Venice was in eternal war with: Milan, the Papal States, France and the Ottoman Empire; it was during the XV and XVI centuries that the Serenissima reached its golden era thanks to its artisans (particularly those who worked in the glass, textile and printing industries) — which ended up financing palaces and churches that you can visit today and feel like Francesco Bárbaro for a day.

Time period: 1450s-1500s

Movie/book: Tintoretto-a revel in Venice(2020)/Prince by Machiavelli

Soundtrack: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s music

Fashion: beige outfit, linen tunic plus a cape

Budget: 138€ (38 for museums + 50€ for food + 50€ for shopping)

Frans Hogenberg: Venetia (part of the Atlas The Civitates Orbis Terrarum); Cologne, 1572

This walking tour would take you through: Dorsoduro-San Polo where churches, museums and schools got created to enlighten the citizens; and San Marco, where beautification projects took place to “modernize” the city to the new renaissance style. The area is characterized by: buildings that look like Greek temples, bridges and souvenirs shops. Although Venice wasn’t as big in territory as before it was even richer thanks to: its new growing neighbor the Ottoman Empire; plus the industrialization of the lagoon, which made it famous for its crafts like books, paintings, and mirrors. The florentine artist Giotto moved art forward from the symbolic gothic era to the realistic renaissance style in 1305 when he painted the frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (a city north of Venice, part of the Veneto). The term renaissance means rebirth, in reference to the rebirth of the humanistic Greco-Roman ideas — basically society became more focus on: this life than the afterlife, self development rather than the clan, and the use of alcohol instead of psychedelics at church. In art it was the beginning of the use of perspective, chiaroscuro (shadows) and Greco-Roman motifs in buildings — but it was a century latter when Giovanni Bellini and his brother Gentile created “the Venetian school of painting” (more of a style that emerge after they did the Scuola di San Marco in 1470) known for: its use of light, oil paint, and a unique color palette. Pigments like ultramarine blue and sinopia red were only available in the port of Venice during the renaissance because they came from Pakistan and Turkey respectively; and having these colors in a painting was a status symbol just like logos today. Tiziano, Veronese and Tintoretto were the most influential artists of the late 16th century Venetian Renaissance style, whose paintings adorned the public buildings and palaces of the city (now those paintings are in museums around the world). They inspired and respected each other but were in constant competition for around 30 years. Many Christian Greek Orthodox monks migrated to the Venetian territories after the fall of the Byzantine empire in 1453; and they brought their ancient books and wisdom (Greek mythology, its philosophy plus the Grecoroman orders) — and thanks to Venetian intellectuals many Ancient Greek/Roman manuscripts were translated in different languages. The city got transformed into a floating library with the largest book production in Europe, it had 75 printing houses by the 1500s. This period of prosperity saw its culmination when the Habsburgs created a new system of international trade routes across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; along a second outbreak of the Black Death in 1575-1577 that killed a third of the population and the industriousness of the lagoon. The tour suggest visiting a church, a school and a palace in the morning; then check out 3 urban projects built to “modernize” the city: the Ponte Rialto, the clock tower and the beacon of the city during the afternoon; and to end the day the San Giorgio Maggiore church, its campanile and dinner. If you want another renaissance day I would recommend visiting the villas created by Palladio for the Venetian black nobility in the countryside of the Veneto for a day.