The Long Shadow of the Venetian Cinquecento.

Washington, D.C.

Deadline : May 15, 2011

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

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-banta@nga.gov by May 15, 2011.

Speakers must be members of the Renaissance Society of America at the
time of the conference.

Please consult the RSA website for further information :
http//www.rsa.org