Renaissance Venice: Inside an Artist’s Workshop–Materials, Techniques, and Conservation with Sara Grinzato

How did Titian, Veronese, or Tintoretto paint? Where did their pigments come from? How experimentative were they? Why do some of their artworks appear so dark today? This seminar aims to explore the materials and techniques used by Venetian painters in the sixteenth century and their conservative challenges today. Join art historian and conservator Sara Grinzato on a virtual visit inside a workshop of a Venetian painter in the Renaissance time.

We’ll start off by analyzing the materials used by Venice’s painters, including canvases, pigments, mediums, varnishes, and frameworks. The world of pigments will be presented in their complexity, underlining the international role of Venice in the trade of colors and tints. In the final section of our seminar, we’ll discuss the discoloring and chemical decay of some pigments in oil, and the way these affect the contemporary’s vision of some important masterpieces.

Led by an expert on Venetian art, Sara Grinzato, this seminar is set to capture the attention of art lovers. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with an increased knowledge of Venice’s function for Renaissance painters and their workshops, and with an awareness of the fragility of conserving Venice’s masterpieces.

Sara Grinzato is a professional art historian, conservator and expert in the Venetian art. She is active as an independent scholar, researching on the arts of Venice from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century.

This conversation is suitable for all ages.

90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.