The Italian Cultural Institute of Toronto has supported and collaborated in this important exhibition on Renaissance Venice, which provides an interesting insight into the daily life and luxury of the lagoon city in the 15th and 16th centuries. The cultural event (“Renaissance Venice: Life and Luxury at the Crossroads”), organised by and at the Gardiner Museum, will run from 14 October to 9 January 2022.
With more than 110 objects on display (including ceramic, glass, metalware, lace and velvet) from lending institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Aga Khan Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Bata Shoe Museum, the aim of the exhibition is to recount the story of Venice in the Renaissance, a multicultural metropolis where migration and mobility shaped the daily lives of its inhabitants. Its position at the crossroads of trade routes linking Europe to the Islamic world brought a continuous flow of commodities such as pigments, spices and luxury objects.
In the homes of the Venetians, these imported goods complemented locally-made products like majolica, or tin-glazed earthenware. The exhibition ‘Renaissance Venice: Life and Luxury at the Crossroads’ features works ranging from Chinese porcelain and Islamic metalware to Venetian textiles and glass that connected distant cultures and geographies. This dynamic web of relationships forms the backdrop for the story of Venice’s majolica industry as it developed throughout the 1500s.
The exhibition also features works by contemporary artists Lindsay Montgomery, Dorie Millerson and Nadia Myre, which expand upon the connections between the present and the legacies of the past.
