Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., 22-24 March 2012

The Long Shadow of the Venetian Cinquecento

The legacy of the golden age of Venetian painting reached far into subsequent centuries, affecting generations of artists and art theorists. Sixteenth-century artistic giants such as Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and their contemporaries continued to shape artistic development and tastes in collecting well after they had ended their own artistic practices. For an artist visiting or working in Venice in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, theirs was a shadow that had to be negotiated and acknowledged in some fashion. The reverberation of the Venetian cinquecento was even so robust as to spread far beyond the borders of the lagoon to inform and influence artists and theorists who spent very little or even no time in Venice proper.

This session will explore the ways in which later artists and theorists responded to or actively worked against the enduring specter of Venetian cinquecento painting. How did the Venetian legacy shape early modern artists’ work and reputation in Venice or abroad? Also of interest are the artists who reacted to Renaissance Venetian models without ever having set foot in Venice. To what purpose did artists adapt their own manner of working to emulate or counter what they encountered in sixteenth-century Venetian art, whether through first-hand observation or by proxy? How did Venice’s reputation as an artistic center shift throughout the post-cinquecento period and how did that inform artists and authors of the early modern period? The richness of the Venetian legacy is such that a broad chronological and geographical range of subjects is encouraged; papers dealing with mediums beyond painting are particularly welcome.

Interested participants should send an abstract (up to 150 words) for the proposed paper and a short c.v. to Andaleeb Banta, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., at a-bantanga.gov by May 15, 2011.