Paolo Veronese, St. Sebastian with Saints John the Baptist, Peter, Elizabeth, Catherine and the Madonna in Glory with Angels Playing Musical Instruments, 1559-62, oil on canvas, 420 x 240 cm. Church of San Sebastiano, Venice (photo: Diana Gisolfi)
Pratt in Venice Director and Professor of Art History Diana Gisolfi organized and chaired the session “Pandemic: The Republic of Venice and the Visual Arts in Times of Plague” at the 109th College Art Association Annual Conference that took place virtually Thursday, February 11, 2021, at 10:00 AM EST.
The Republic of Venice, her capital a port city, suffered heavily during outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague, the heaviest losses occurring during 1348, 1575–76, and 1630. At the same time she took practical steps (as early as 1347) to limit contagion by instituting quarantine of visitors and isolation of victims; the “40 days” of quarantine and the designating of the island for the ill “San Lazzaro” are biblical references, meaningful in the context. Devotional steps undertaken simultaneously comprised prayer, processions with icons and relics, and major commissions in art and architecture. Some of these were initiated by vow of the Senate (the grand churches of Il Redentore by Palladio and Santa Maria della Salute by Longhena); others were fostered by monastery and confraternity dedicated to plague saints (the Hieronymite church of San Sebastiano and the Scuola-with-church of San Rocco). Civic traditions in the Republic helped promote comprehensive and coordinated measures involving all sectors of society. This session offered papers that address the response of the Republic and the roles of state, church, confraternity, monastery, guild and populace as well as architects and artists in creating lasting visual arts and cultural traditions related to plague circa 1348—circa 1630.
“Promoting the Cult of the Plague Saint San Rocco”
Sarah Blake McHam, Rutgers University
"Duration, Location, and the Visual Rhetoric of Healing in Early Modern Venice"
Elizabeth Duntemann, Temple University
“Venetian plagues of 1576 and 1630: Science against Supplication”
Andrew Hopkins, Università degli Studi dell’Aquila
Additionally, Prof. Gisolfi is teaching a newly created course in conjunction with this panel, Venice and the Visual Arts in Times of Plague, at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for the Spring 2021 semester. The course shares with students how the civic institutions of the Republic of Venice responded to episodes of the Bubonic Plague in practical terms from 1348 through 1630, and how cessation was sought and celebrated via art and architecture.
