Original subtitles

Good morning.

I can't imagine anything more pleasant than introducing you to Venetian art and Venice.

On the other hand, it's a complex matter.

Venetian art is inseparable from the city that inspired it to a degree that is unparalleled

elsewhere.

One must comprehend the improbable physical location of the city and how it came to be

built there.

The barbarian invasions of the Goths and the Huns in the 5th century drove inhabitants

of northern Italy to seek refuge on small islands in the vast Adriatic lagoon.

On the map, you see Venice's position at the head of the Adriatic, which I will remind

you was later, frequently called the Gulf of Venice, representing its significance.

In the mid-6th century, the Lombard invasion caused a larger number of refugees to join

those who had fled to these islands in the first place, and they fell under the protection of

the Eastern Emperor in Constantinople.

Thus established on more than a hundred islands in the vast Adriatic lagoon as a refuge from

barbarian invasions during the 5th and 6th centuries.

These settlers thrived to some degree, but they were under the control of the Eastern

Emperor, and in the late 8th century, they rebelled against the Eastern Empire.

The rebellion was prompted by the iconoclastic edict, a famous edict of Emperor Leo III, and

they, the residents of the lagoon, sided instead with the Pope in Rome.

The first doge, which is the Venetian form of duke, the first doge was elected soon after,

near the end of the 8th century, thus initiating the thousand-year history of the Venetian Republic.

Venice received the relics, that is to say, the supposed remains of the body of St. Mark,

in the year 829.

And with those relics came a Christian prestige, a prestige in the Christian world, second only

to Rome, where the body of St. Peter rested.

By the 11th century, Venice had become one of the greatest maritime trading powers in Europe.

Although its mainland holdings in Dalmatia, on the other side of the Adriatic, and in Greece,

and on the nearby terra firma of the Italian peninsula were in constant dispute, Venice

was one of the few states in Europe that was essentially free from conquest.

The city, as we still know it, remained independent and admired for its independence for a millennium,

until that independence was ended in the name of liberty by Napoleon Bonaparte.

As a center of trade, uniting the eastern and western Mediterranean, and northern and southern Europe,

Venice became one of the wealthiest cities in the world.

This map, showing extensive maritime trade routes, indicates the scope of its activity.

Here is Venice, at the head of its great gulf, as it were, and, of course, there were lines that had nothing to do with sea routes.

There were land routes from the north, along rivers, and across the mountains, and into Venice,

and in this area, fewer mountains to interrupt the flow of trade from the north.

But it was the sea trade that went down the gulf, went along the Dalmatian coast, on down, around, over to Greece,

up through the Straits of Bosphorus at Constantinople, and on to the east there,

down to, down below the area of modern Turkey, down into the Holy Land, down into northern Egypt,

across the whole top of the African continent, and, of course, along the southern coast of modern France, and along Spain,

and then out through the Straits of Gibraltar, and following on up to England, and Scandinavia, and so forth.

This was a vast trade route, and it had extraordinary possessions, and extraordinary trade strength.

Despite all of this extensive empire, in terms of trading, it was the security of the Venetian stronghold on its lagoon

that guaranteed its independence.

It made it difficult to attack, and helped its independence for those many centuries.

I show you an aerial view here, which, frankly, only hints at it.

So much land has been, so much water has been filled in by land, and nonetheless, you begin to get some idea

in this aerial view of waterways and the lagoon near Venice.

Some faint idea of the extraordinary, extraordinary territory that had to be dealt with.

You can only really grasp this by flying over it, or boating through it, sailing through it.

But when its extent and the challenge it presented to the early settlers can be fully appreciated.

The perspective map of Venice, which I show you now, dating about 1517, so very reflective of the period that we are studying,

shows, gives you an idea of the result of the building of the city.

The building of the city was the engineering work of centuries.

It didn't happen in a hundred years or two hundred.

It involved driving thousands of huge pilings into the bottom of the lagoon and building the city on that foundation.

It's practically beyond comprehension.

In the process, more than 100 separate islands were connected to make a contiguous whole,

while the countless small canals that had been formed as a result were spanned with hundreds of bridges.

The Grand Canal, the famous Grand Canal, is a broad serpentine waterway, start here at the top left of this map,

a broad serpentine waterway dividing the city unequally, that gives Venice its distinctive appearance on a map.

Originally, this waterway, the Grand Canal, was bridged only at one spot,

approximately the midpoint by the famous Rialto Bridge, which marked the commercial heart of this famous trading city.

The civic and religious center is at the mouth of the Grand Canal, down here,

where it opens into the Basin of St. Marks, as it is known, the Basin of St. Marks, the Baccino di San Marco.

And there, just as the Grand Canal emerges into the Basin of St. Marks,

one finds the Ducal Palace, here, the Basilica of St. Marks, just behind it at this point.

Here, the Campanile, and there, the great Piazza of San Marco, behind that.

This is the center which we will spend a good deal of time looking at.

Let me show you a view, and the view will be from an island, the island of San Giorgio,

San Giorgio where a great, famous church is built, looking back toward this area by the Ducal Palace.

The painting is by Canaletto, was made in the 18th century, in the mid-18th century,

and it's a view, including the Ducal Palace, to the right, and then the Piazzetta,

which is the small little piazza, here, between the Ducal Palace and the famous library of St. Marks,

a Renaissance building, which we will touch on later.

This little Piazzetta goes down to the front of San Marco, which you see here, the Basilica,

and the great piazza spreads off to the left, behind these buildings on the waterfront.

The other building on the waterfront here is the mint, the Venetian mint.

And the tower, of course, behind it is the bell tower, the freestanding bell tower of the Campanile,

the bell tower or Campanile.

And behind them, behind this as well, you can see at least one of the domes,

the principal dome of the Basilica of St. Mark.

I'll show you another Canaletto.

Canaletto is invaluable for the study of Venice,

because these paintings were made for tourists who wanted to take home good proof of what they had seen

and where they had been.

And this is a superb painting from about 1740 of St. Mark's Square now.

The view we saw before over the building to the right.

We're looking toward the Basilica of St. Mark's,

and you're looking at the many-domed Basilica.

This Basilica, one of the greatest of late Byzantine churches,

is fronted by the enormous Piazza San Marco,

which is one of the most imposing public squares in Europe.

The Piazza San Marco did not have the huge regularized form it has now

until the 19th century, when some buildings, including a church, were demolished

and the Piazza completed at the west end, where we are standing in this picture.

But it was always the civic center of Venice, even before it achieved this final dimension.

I'm going to move in on it.

Before I do, just look to the right,

and you catch the left-hand side of the facade of the Doge's Palace here.

So it adjoins, on the other side of the bell tower, it adjoins the Basilica.

Moving in closer, the Basilica began its existence as a chapel for the Doge's Palace,

and the first structure of the Basilica was consecrated in 832.

It was built to receive the supposed body of St. Mark,

brought from Alexandria to Venice in 829.

That early structure was burned in 976 during a popular revolt,

but it was promptly rebuilt.

And then a third church was built.

Fires, of course, were the bane of architecture,

and this continued for an awfully long time,

and so you just kept rebuilding.

And here we have the third and surviving church,

which was begun in 1063,

greatly augmented in terms of its decoration by the plunder

brought back from the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade,

and subsequently because they continued to bring back spoil and booty from the east.

The square in front of San Marco focuses on the church,

which is astonishing in its incrustation of marble slabs, of columns.

Look at the multiplication of columns which are used on the front of it.

Capitals, sculpture, here and on the inside, of course,

much of it brought back from Constantinople,

and above it, mosaics.

These are, generally speaking, later,

but there were mosaics there from the 12th century,

and the mosaic decorations above the doors,

and again high up on the facade of the church.

Chief among the treasures brought back from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade

were the famous bronze horses,

and that's outside and inside the enamel plaques

that were mounted on the golden altarpiece, the palo d'oro.

But the church itself was a marvel of Byzantine architecture

and craftsmanship with glowing mosaic decorations of very great beauty.

You can just see here the four horses,

one, two, three, four,

not see them very clearly here mounted on the facade.

Let me show you a better view of them at an angle.

What you're looking at are, unfortunately,

replicas of the bronze horses on the facade of San Marco.

For over seven centuries,

the facade of the basilica was adorned with the famous gilded bronze horses,

four magnificent Greek sculptures,

which had probably come from the Hippodrome in Constantinople,

very appropriate horses from a racetrack,

and they have been dated anywhere from the 3rd century B.C.

to the 3rd century A.D.

That's a lot of variation in possibilities of creation.

They were in place on this facade by 1250.

When they first came to Venice,

they were mounted down in the arsenal,

and then they were moved here.

And they were here from 1250,

removed only once historically by Napoleon,

who vaingloriously took them with him to Paris,

from whence they returned after Waterloo.

I now show you the originals,

which are inside now,

no longer on the facade,

because, of course,

of the acid rain and other pollution that assails Venice.

They have had to be permanently removed from the facade

and replaced by copies.

But let me show you two views of these extraordinary horses.

And they've been restored, of course,

and the gilding,

which is for long simply covered up

by the elements

and by the changing of the surface,

the gilding has been rediscovered inside.

I show you the same horses from the other side.

They are magnificent,

and, of course,

they were extremely influential

on the development of sculpture,

equestrian monuments,

during the Renaissance and later.

Here, let me show you the interior of the church.

It always takes your breath away,

even on a bad day,

even when the water floor is covered with water

on high water days.

It's an extraordinary experience.

The interior of San Marco

is clothed in sumptuous golden mosaics,

which together with the volumes of the five domes

and the other vaulted spaces

create an effect of nearly unrivaled splendor.

The mosaics are from many centuries,

but the most significant

are from the 12th and the 13th centuries.

But you can understand

that they've had to be repaired many times,

and repair often meant changes.

And so they are by no means a unified creation,

but the effect of splendor is unified.

Let me show you one of the smaller domes.

It's actually in the atrium

at the front of the church,

across the front of the church.

Where more of the oldest mosaics have survived.

This is the dome with the creation of the world,

and it's in a small cupola in the atrium.

And it shows the scenes displayed in circular bands,

one above the other,

but all scenes from Genesis,

from creation on.

The scenes that we saw on the Sistine ceiling

are seen to some degree here

in these much more naive and earlier mosaics.

At first, when you look at mosaics of this sort,

the scenes are difficult to distinguish.

But after a while, it's like stained glass

in northern Gothic churches.

Once you have some practice looking at them,

you can make out the scenes really quite easily,

without binoculars.

It is a practice, however,

which wasn't necessary to contemporaries,

because they knew the iconography of the stories.

They knew how Adam and Eve looked in a particular scene,

and that scene didn't vary much,

and so they could recognize it quite easily.

The same thing is true in stained glass, as well.

Let me show you one of the scenes there.

It's a scene from The Flood,

and it is Noah who opens a window,

as I recall, the only window.

Didn't the ark have only one window and one door?

I'm still trying to figure out how they loaded and unloaded it.

But in any event, there's the one window.

He opens it out.

He sends a raven and a dove out.

He's already sent the raven out.

The dove he still has in his hands,

just releasing it.

The dove, which hasn't taken flight,

will find that the floodwaters haven't receded

and come back and be sent out another time.

The raven has alit upon a floating corpse,

which it appears to be eating as carrion.

To me, that single drowned body floating near the ark

is as eloquent as the host of bodies

in a mosaic which is just beside it.

Just this one has tremendous impact.

In the choir of the church,

we have under a canopy a famous golden altar,

the pala d'oro means golden altar.

It is here.

It is actually a retabla,

that is to say a large rectangular surface

mounted above the back of the altar table.

It is encrusted with gold

into which are set myriad gems and enamel plaques

and small medallions.

All of these or most of them are plunder from Constantinople.

The original pala was in fact made in Constantinople,

the original one, for St. Mark's in the early 12th century.

They ordered it and had it sent over.

Then after the plunder of Constantinople,

they enlarged it with the things that they took.

So there's a certain historical irony here, I think.

In another lecture, we'll have more to say

about the significance of the relics of St. Mark,

the evangelist for the Republic of Venice,

but his presence is everywhere

and the specifics will have to wait for a while.

Let me show you, on the exterior,

the Piazzetta of San Marco at dawn

with this marvelous column standing quite near the water

and on the top of the column, a stone lion,

the symbol of St. Mark, standing guard on the capital.

The ducal palace, the Palazzo Ducale,

the Doge's palace, you may say all of those,

this palace was built in the European Gothic style

and it stands beside the Byzantine Basilica of San Marco,

which you can just glimpse to its left.

And these two buildings together,

therefore, aptly represent Venice's place

between those two worlds, between East and West.

The Doge's palace,

one of the greatest Gothic buildings in Italy,

rebuilt a number of times,

but in the Gothic style,

dominates the waterfront.

For Venice, it has an unusually open situation

in that you can see two sides at once.

That doesn't happen very often in that crowded city,

but here, of course, with a piazza in front of it

and the water beside it,

you can easily see the whole

or a large portion of the block of the building.

The Doge's palace was also the city hall,

the seat of the highest magistrates of the Republic,

and the site of the council chambers

of the various governing councils.

Earlier structures preceded the existing palace,

beginning in 814.

Fire destroyed that one and a second palace.

A 12th-century palace was enlarged in the mid-14th century

and then torn down in 1424

to be replaced by an extension

that exactly replicated the 14th-century portion.

And then, in 1483,

a devastating fire required extensive rebuilding.

And fires in 1574 and even worse in 1577

gutted major parts of the interior,

destroying many paintings as well.

Each time, the palace was rebuilt in the Gothic style,

thus the complete stylistic unity

that we see in this enormous palace today

that was, by the way,

the largest civic structure in Italy

during the Renaissance.

Gracefully proportioned,

the three-story structure is as open and airy

as the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence

is closed and massive.

But the Palazzo Vecchio represented defense,

and Venice on the water had water as its defense

and so could express its power in a different way.

An open arcade at the bottom

is surmounted by an open loggia above that

with smaller arches.

So you have large arches here

and what I guess is two arches to every one below

in the loggia above.

And above that,

a large expanse of wall,

which is mitigated by pink and white stone.

It's hard to...

Every photograph shows the colors slightly different,

but they're essentially pale pink and white stone

set in a large lozenge pattern,

which gives a great deal of activity

and flickering of light and so forth

and color to the upper facade.

The elevation is odd

because it reverses the expected sequence

of heavy supporting light.

Instead, we go from a light ground story

to slightly heavier to very heavy on the top.

And yet, it succeeds.

And the palace seems,

no matter where you see it,

it seems to float above the piazza

and to float above the water so near to it.

On the side,

as you see on this long side facing the piazzetta,

there is a balconied window.

Let me show it to you.

A balconied window

with the Lion of Saint Mark.

Again, it's a sculpture group,

and it shows the doge,

at that time,

doge Andrea Gritti,

kneeling before the Lion of Saint Mark.

And so, this constant, constant emphasis

on the symbol of San Marco, of Saint Mark.

Venice is pinned like a butterfly

between water and sky

in a constantly changing, flickering light.

It's a city whose ties to the Byzantine world

filled many buildings with mosaics

in which a million cubes of colored stone

and colored or gilt glass glistened

with agitated light and color

reflecting the sun

or reflecting lamps and candles.

From the beginning,

Venetian painting was preoccupied with light.

The light of glowing mosaics,

the light of the sky reflected from the water

on which the city seems to float.

And probably for these reasons,

the flashing gold grounds

of late medieval painting

lasted longer in Venice

than elsewhere in Italy,

well past the mid-15th century.

And when the Renaissance came to Venice,

it was at first tentative,

and no great civic building

in the Renaissance style

arrived until the middle of the 16th century

in the form of San Savino's library,

which we will shortly see.

Painting, however,

had a phenomenal development,

and in the next seven lectures,

we'll be introducing

some of the most famous

among the renowned artists

of Renaissance Venice.

In the 14th century,

the Trecento,

I want to introduce

Paolo Veneziano

and his polyptych

with the coronation of the Virgin

from about 1358.

The sheer brilliance of the gold

in Venetian Gothic paintings

seems magnified,

perhaps influenced,

by Byzantine models.

It seems golder than the gold

in other gold-ground paintings in Italy.

Paolo Veneziano

was one of the finest

Trecento artists in Venice,

and he painted this polyptych

for the Church of Santa Chiara.

It is now in the Academy Gallery.

The academia was created,

by the way, by Napoleon,

and churches were closed

and altarpieces taken from them

and put into the museum.

That is the formation

of that gallery,

of that museum in Venice.

The large central panel here

of the coronation itself,

with Christ crowning his mother,

and both of them clad

in very beautiful robes,

is flanked by eight smaller

narrative scenes.

There are also figures above,

but I call your attention

to the four larger narrative scenes

on either side.

The ensemble probably,

it's incomplete today,

it probably once had a crucifixion

above the coronation

on that same axis.

Let me show you a detail

of the four scenes to the left

and simply identify them.

Here, the nativity,

which takes place in a cave,

which is a Byzantine tradition

rather than the stable,

which is the Western tradition,

with the baptism of Christ,

with Christ in the water

up to his chest here

in his very standard way

of showing the baptism.

The lower left is the Last Supper,

and here on the right

we have a combination

of Christ on Gethsemane,

praying and below

the immediately following scene

of the capture of Christ.

Two painters who worked

frequently together,

they were brothers-in-law,

Antonio Vivarini

and Giovanni Ndallamagna,

the latter we really know

very little about.

Vivarini from a famous

family of artists,

painted this work,

The Madonna Enthroned

with Fathers of the Church,

painted in 1446.

It's a large painting.

A great amount of gilding

is still found

in this imposing triptych.

It also has

a very elaborate

Gothic screen

behind the figures,

behind the Fathers of the Church,

the Angels and the Madonna.

And this was painted

a quarter century

after Masaccio

had revolutionized

Florentine painting

and the new Renaissance style

was well established.

I do not, however,

want to sell

this painting short.

It is a very beautiful

and very important work

in the Venetian Quattrocento.

About 16 feet wide,

it is an unusual combination

of the theme

of the Madonna

in an enclosed garden.

The phrase usually used

is the Latin phrase

hortus conclusus,

the enclosed garden,

which symbolizes

the virginity

of the Madonna.

That theme combined

with the sacred conversation

of saints

sharing a unified space,

something we've seen

and discussed before.

The Madonna and Child

in the central panel

are accompanied

by four small angels

like an honor guard.

And this central panel

has a deep seriousness.

The forefathers

of the Latin church,

who's those early writers

who laid down

the theological foundations

of the faith,

are at the left,

St. Jerome,

nearest us

in his cardinal's habit,

and by the way,

holding a model

of the Church

of Santa Maria

de la Carita,

and St. Gregory the Great

with his papal tiara,

and at the right,

St. Augustine

with the book

and the crozier,

and St. Ambrose

behind him.

Ambrose in a red robe

holds an unusual attribute

by which he is

often identified.

It is a scourge

with three knots.

The three knots

represent the Trinity,

and the scourge

with the three knots

represent St. Ambrose's

defense of the Trinity,

of the dogma

of the Trinity,

against the Aryan heresy

in the third century.

One oddity of this painting

is the scalloped base

or stage

upon which the figures stand.

It is painted

in a very illusionistic way,

but it is such

an artificial element

that it seems unrelated

to the intuitive

spatial logic

that Vivorini

gave the painting.

The ornateness

of the whole painting

would have been

even greater

than it is

before the original cornice,

which it must have had,

was lost.

Remarkably,

this painting

is in a museum,

but it's in the building

that it was painted for

at the same time

because the school,

the scuola,

or confraternity

connected to the church

of Santa Maria della Carità

was converted

during the Napoleonic occupation

to the academy,

the Accademia,

whose gallery now houses

the greatest collection

of Venetian painting,

and this painting

by Vivorini

remains in the building

for which it was made.

It seems remarkable

that this painting

was made

while Donatello

was at work

in San Antonio

in next-door Padua,

for even if Donatello's

revolutionary

spatial innovations

may have had

some influence

on Vivorini,

it's more remarkable

how slight

that influence was.

In sum,

though there are

Renaissance aspects

to this beautiful painting,

Venetian painting

is conservative

by Quattrocento standards

and would not change

until the last third

of the century.

The tentative acceptance

of the Renaissance style

in painting

and in sculpture

was even more remarkable

in architecture.

No great civic building

in the Renaissance

was raised in Venice

until Jacopo Sansevino's

library,

begun in 1537,

after the High Renaissance

had been pushed aside

in other Italian centers.

Sansevino's library

is one of the great buildings

of the Renaissance

and it was a source

of great civic pride

since it was one

of the earliest

public libraries

of the Renaissance.

It was ordered

by the Venetian authorities

in conscious emulation

of the libraries

of antiquity,

as they were known

from ancient descriptions

and principally

it was constructed

to house

a priceless collection

of Latin

and Greek manuscripts

given to the state

by a private collector

in the middle

of the 15th century.

Architecturally,

it is distinguished

by an open loggia

on the ground level

like that of the

Doge's Palace,

surmounted by

another arcade

made on the second story

also like that

of the Doge's Palace

but all of this

in the library

done in the purest

classical style.

Its construction

was not uneventful

for at one point

in the very cold winter

of 1545,

the vault

of the main reading room

collapsed.

Sansevino

was immediately thrown

into prison.

The solidity

and safety

of architecture

was not taken lightly.

Only the intervention

of his friend

Titian,

among others,

secured his release.

However,

he had to make

the repairs

at his own expense

and he received

no salary

for two years.

Perhaps surprisingly,

it was erected

opposite

the great

Gothic ducal palace

but that has given

posterity.

three astoundingly

beautiful

and historic

buildings

in three

contrasting styles,

Byzantine,

Gothic,

and Renaissance

in a single location

of the greatest

imaginable beauty.

Thank you.