Professor Kristin Lanzoni taught "The Art and Architecture of Early Modern Venice" course to Macalester College art history students in the Spring of 2010. Using plans, elevations, paintings, and prints of now lost sixteenth-century Venetian monuments, groups of students recreated the exterior and interior appearance of three different ecclesiastical spaces with the architectural program, Google Sketch Up. Perusing seventeenth-century guidebooks and descriptions of the artwork contained in the interior spaces, students tracked down those paintings and sculptures now scattered in various museums, churches, and collections and placed them into this recreated setting. The result is the ability for “visitors” to visualize and experience historically important early modern architectural monuments that would otherwise be inaccessible to viewers.
These image sets are companion pieces to the three research projects completed by Kristin Lanzoni’s Art and Architecture of Early Modern Venice class in the Spring of 2010. This project was an opportunity for students to re-build an early modern ecclesiastical monument of great significance now lost to Venice. There were several components of the project that came together to form a compiled study. The goal was to understand better the urban landscape of early modern Venice, the appearance and construction of the now lost monument, as well as examine and reconstruct its original contents.
There were three ecclesiastical structures reconstructed digitally by groups of 4 to 5 students. These Venetian monuments include: Santa Lucia originally in the district of Cannaregio, an Augustinian convent complex; San Geminiano originally in the district of San Marco, a parish church; and Sant’Antonio de Castello in the district of Castello, a monastery complex. For each monument, the group conducted research as to the monuments’ original appearance, its significance to Italian architecture, its relevance to the urban construct of Venice, and what was originally contained in the structure. Plans, elevations, prints, and paintings of the building were used to recreate it digitally using Google Sketch Up. Finally, a catalogue of what was originally contained within the space was compiled using 16th and 17th-century inventories and descriptions.
