Introduction

Trade took Venetian merchants all over the Mediterranean and as far as China, a fact that affected not only the city’s economic prosperity but its cultural identity, making fifteenth-century Venice one of the most culturally diverse cities in Europe, a fact clearly depicted in many Venetian paintings. This course reviews some aspects of the social and cultural diversity of fifteenth-century Venice and how they affected the city’s art. In particular, it focuses on Venice’s relations with the East and its several manifestations, the legacy of Orthodox Christian Byzantium, and the contemporary Islamic societies of the Ottomans and Mamluks. Studying Venice and its art thus offers a challenge to the conventional notion of Renaissance art as an entirely European phenomenon.