-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] The Serenissima as a Work of Art
From: Sarah Blake McHam
Date: May 17, 2024
Organizers: Sarah Blake McHam and Patricia Fortini Brown .
Deadline: July 22, 2024

The great Jacob Burckhardt observed the emergence of the State as a work of art in Renaissance Italy as it increasingly abandoned the feudal culture of the Middle Ages. Venice, he wrote, “recognized itself from the first as a strange and mysterious creation – the fruits of a higher power than human ingenuity.” Indeed, the polity came to be called the Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic. Its mystical identity was expressed most notably in the lavish decoration of the Palazzo Ducale, in the tombs of the Doges, and in public festivities and ceremonies.
A number of conservation projects currently under way or recently completed by Save Venice, Inc. celebrate the Venetian state. They include the decoration of the Sala delle Quattro Porte and Sala dell’Anticollegio in the Palazzo Ducale, and the ducal tombs of Doge Francesco Foscari in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and of Doge Francesco Venier in San Salvador, as well as Jacopo de’ Barbari’s map of Venice and Matteo Pagan’s “Doge’s Procession" on Palm Sunday in Piazza San Marco,” engravings in the Musei Civici di Venezia. Save Venice proposes to expand our understanding of this fundamental subject with one or more sessions at RSA in Boston (20-22 March 2025). We welcome presentations covering new material on the exaltation of the Venetian state. They can concern any medium, including architecture, sculpture, painting, manuscripts, prints, and pageantry in the Renaissance and post-Renaissance periods.
Please send your full name, current affiliation, paper title (15-word maximum), abstract (200-word maximum), PhD completion date (past or expected), keywords, and a 1-page non-narrative curriculum vitae to the organizers: Sarah Blake McHam (mchamarthist.rutgers.edu) and Patricia Fortini Brown (pbrownprinceton.edu). Submission deadline is July 22, 2024. Notification of applicants will be by August 15, 2024.
Keywords: Venice, Venetian Empire, pageantry.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2] Women Artists in Venice: New Directions
From: Sarah Blake McHam
Date: May 17, 2024
Organizers: Sarah Blake McHam and Tracy E. Cooper
Deadline: July 22, 24.

How did women become artists in early modern Venice? With the usual access to training outside the home blocked by gender roles, the standard assumption is by learning from their fathers in the family workshop. Or, as the Guerilla Girls put it in their 2005 Venice Biennale entry, “Where are the women artists of Venice? Under the men.” Recent research, however, reveals a more complex situation for women who in some cases became the source of instruction for other women or helped establish informal academies that replaced botteghe.
Research programs and conservation projects on the Women Artists of Venice (WAV) were launched by Save Venice Inc. in 2022, including two sessions at the Dublin RSA meetings. The expanded result of this research is about to be published by Amsterdam University Press in fall 2024 as Women Artists and Artisans in Venice and the Veneto: Uncovering the Female Presence. A digital research portal is underway and will be publicly launched on the Save Venice website. Fruitful comparison can now be made among the 100 Venetian female artists identified and studies of women artists in other centers.
Save Venice proposes to extend our understanding of women’s artistic education and training with one or more sessions at RSA in Boston (20-22 March 2025). We welcome presentations covering new material on the training and education of women artists in Venice and the Veneto during the Renaissance and post-Renaissance periods.
Please send your full name, current affiliation, paper title (15-word maximum), abstract (200-word maximum), PhD completion date (past or expected), keywords, and a 1-page non-narrative curriculum vitae to the organizers: Sarah Blake McHam (mchamarthist.rutgers.edu) and Tracy E. Cooper (t.coopertemple.edu). Co-chairs: Tracy E. Cooper, Linda Borean. Respondent: Sheila Ffolliott. Submission deadline is July 22, 2024. Notification of applicants will be by August 15, 2024.
Keywords: Venice, Venetian women, female artists, education of artists, workshops, academies