HISTORY OF ART PATRONAGE

The course will examine the relationship between patrons and artists in the Italian and European context, mainly during the 17th and 18th centuries.The artworks that will be analyzed will cover works of architecture, sculpture and painting.
The course will provide the students with the appropriate tools to consider the artistic and architectural expressions in relation to the context in which they were born.The artistic "genius" will then be compared with the dynamics of the commission and the expectations of the patrons to highlight the dialectical relationship between society and artistic creation.
At the end of the course students will be able to deal with the analysis of a work of art not only in terms of their formal and stylistic qualities, but they will also have acquired the ability to read the artist and his work from a socio-cultural angle.

- Knowledge and understanding: students must be able to know the examples treated in class and to understand their meaning in a historical and contemporary perspective.
- Ability to apply the acquired knowledge: students must use an appropriate vocabulary to express contents and meanings.
- Communication skills: students must know how to formulate the acquired knowledge in written and oral form.
- Learning skills: at the end of the course the student must be able to recognize and historically place the examples treated during the lessons. To this end, the student must know how to integrate the lecture notes with the reading of the indicated bibliography.

Basic knowledge of art and architectural history.

The course programme is structured around the artistic and architectural heritage of the Ca 'Foscari University and will investigate the clients and the artists who contributed to its formation. An important topic of the course will be the analysis of the original function of the buildings and the subsequent and multiple changes and functional adjustments. The chronological arch will extend from the Middle Ages to the contemporary. In particular, the following buildings will be analyzed: Ca 'Foscari, Ca' Giustinian, Ca 'Bottacin, Ca' Bembo, Palazzo Cappello, Ca 'Dolfin, the Auditorium S. Margherita.
The course aims to sensitize students to consider the places of their university not only as spaces for study but also as potential objects of scientific research.
Some visits are planned. Their organization will depend on the number of attending students.

A comment on the bibliography will be given during the course.
The texts dealing with specific topics of the course will be available through the Moodle page.

M. Frank, Il patrimonio architettonico e artistico dell'Università Ca'Foscari Venezia alla viglia delle celebrazioni per il 150° anniversario dell'ateneo, in: Valorizzare il patrimonio culturale delle università. Focus su arte e architetture, a cura di Laura Stagno e e Lauro Magnani, Genova 2016, pp. 104-115.

Ca' Foscari. Storia e restauro del palazzo dell'Università di Venezia, a cura di G.M. Pilo, L. De Rossi, D. Alessandri, F. Zuaner, Venezia 2005.

Ca' Foscari - Palazzo Giustinian: uno sguardo sul cortile, a cura di F. Bisutti e G. Biscontin, Crocetta del Montello 2012.

G. Tochini, Minacciare con le immagini. Tintoretto: gli affreschi scomparsi della "Casa Barbariga" e la svolta ideologica del patriziato veneziano, Roma 2010.

Ca' Dolfin e i Cadolfiniani. Storia di un collegio universitario a Venezia, Venezia 2014.

The evaluation will be based on a written exams (approx. 2 hours) with three types of questions
1) 3-4 questions on topics discussed during lessons, conceived for very short ("telegraphic") but precise answers
2) From a range of several topics discussed during the course students will have to choose one and answer in form of a short paper
3) Students will be asked to write a short abstract of the text they have chosen from the above indicated bibliography.

lectures
Several visits will be organized.

written