Holy Laboratory. Altars and Sacred Spaces in Venice ca. 1300-1797

Hardback, 180 pages, Size:225 x 300 mm, Illustrations:6 b/w, 89 col., Language: English. ISBN 9781915487223. Summary Spanning the later Middle Ages through the fall of the Venetian Republic (1797), the essays collected in this volume examine the status of Venice as an incubator-a laboratory, effectively-of artistic innovations linked with the sacred spaces, altarpieces, and ornament around the altar. The church altar not only dominated Renaissance devotions, in Venice it provided a site of vertical social integration, a place for different social, professional, and/or national groups to gather. Altars were at the center of spatial networks within the urban fabric of Venice, connecting interior and exterior spaces and serving multiple functions (from the liturgical and funerary to the artistic and the civic). Although Venetian craftsmen were largely separated by guild regulations, they would be brought together when working on altar complexes. The altar, therefore, constituted an essential site for collaboration, exchange, and reflection upon the arts in Venice. By their very nature, altarpieces are interdisciplinary objects, and these studies will interest scholars of religious studies, urban studies, media and materiality, and literature. Through comparative studies of different altar types and spaces, the authors examine liturgy and popular piety, morphology and patronage, mobility and cross-pollination, as well as the afterlives of these magnificent objects. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: A Holy Laboratory Lorenzo G. Buonanno and Gianmario Guiderelli Holy Nature and the Art of Devotion in Lorenzo Lotto's San Nicola Altarpiece April Oettinger Reinterpreting Tintoretto in the Presbytery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice Marsel Grosso Counter-Reformation Artistic and Religious Patronage: The Altars of the Venetian Church of the Minims Giulia Zanon Sacristy Altars in Early Modern Venice c. 1480-1620: Allegory and Invention Francesco Trentini Interpreting the Venetian Laboratory on the Mainland: Altars in Early Modern Vicenza Michele Guida Conte Light, Altars, and Architecture in the Work of Baldassare Longhena Martina Frank Saints' Altar-Tombs in Padua between the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Century: Typological Interferences, Multifunctionality, Ornamental Strategies Cristina Guarnieri The Altars of the Scuole Grandi: Typological Contamination and Spatial Configurations Gianmario Guidarelli An Early Modern Meta-Altarpiece? Marco Basaiti's Calling of the Sons of Zebedee in Vienna Lorenzo G. Buonanno 0 g.…