A City in Transition

In lecture we’ve been learning about the changes Venice saw as they transitioned from the medieval way of thinking to the renaissance. Even though today was mainly focused on the transitions seen in paintings, I found evidence of these changes around the entire city in a variety of ways.

We started our day with a tour of Accademia where we got to see some of the actual paintings we were learning about and studying in class. Seeing the paintings with my own eyes made a world of difference when it came to my understanding of the concepts we were discussing. I was able to better understand what it meant to have the subjects transition from existing in a single flat plane to an appeared three dimensional space. It was also really fascinating to see how some artists would choose to reject the ideas so many others around them were embracing. Knowing how hard it is to change your way of thinking I can attempt understand the struggle they may have been going through. However since what they were rejecting is something we take for granted every day it’s still a little hard for me to wrap my head around it. Our second tour was in S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. During this tour I got to witness how much work an artist actually put into each of their pieces. When hired to paint a painting they didn’t just go throw some paint on a canvas and call it good. They would actually paint the picture so that it would work in the space it was going to be displayed. The shape it needed to be, colors it should include, and even lighting it would be in were considered. During the transition old themes were sometimes even considered as a glance back at what once was.

After breaking off into a smaller group, we went to see an exhibit of some of Leonardo da Vinci’s work that was on display in a church. Even though we haven’t discussed the changes science went through in depth I could still see similar themes throughout his scientific work that I saw in the paintings and architecture as they went through their transition. Most of da Vinci’s work seemed to be focused on the idea that man could achieve farther than what was already known. A well-known example of this is his fascination with the flight of man. This idea, that man is even worthy to attempt pushing the limits of what God gave him, is a highly renaissance way of thinking. Before the transition no one would dare push the limits of the known world because they were supposed to be thinking ahead to what they could accomplish in the afterlife not what could be achieved in the life on earth.

In lecture we’ve discussed the idea that Venice is a heterotopia, or a mirror. Reflecting back on all of the change it has seen reminds me that as a society we have the ability to change. It will be hard and there will be those who reject what may be coming, but the fact that we have that ability is a reassuring thought.