Sixth Form visit to see the Pala Pesaro, Venice
6b Art Historians visited Venice in March as part of their Pre-U course, exploring its vibrant and suggestive city spaces, encountering its eclectic architecture and engaging with a range of sculpture and painting from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. In the Doge’s Palace, a monographic exhibition on John Ruskin, Victorian theoretician, aesthete, water colourist and chronicler and defender of the sadly crumbling nineteenth century fabric of Venice, was atmospherically installed in the first floor ducal suite. In the Franciscan church of Santa Maria Gloriosa, it was thrilling for the students to view Titian’s newly restored Pala Pesaro and compare it to his earlier Assunta over the high altar; the angry lemon yellow of St Peter’s cascading cloak came as something of a shock.
The group is pictured at the pseudo-Byzantine throne in the courtyard of Peggy Guggenheim’s Palazzo Venier.
