VENICE IN PERIL SUMMER LECTURE: Michelle Lovric will be presenting the Venice in Peril Summer Lecture, entitled "The Night Venice Nearly Died: The Conspiracy of Bajamonte Tiepolo 1310–2010," at The Royal Geographical Society, 7pm, Tuesday 1 June 2010. Additional information is available at info@veniceinperil.org.

CINI FOUNDATION: The Fondazione Giorgio Cini announces a new initiative: the Vittore Branca International Center for the Study of Italian Culture, which aims to create an international academic community and to provide a place of study and meeting for young researchers and expert scholars interested in furthering their knowledge in a field of Italian culture (especially the culture of the Veneto) – the visual arts, history, literature, music, drama – from an interdisciplinary point of view.

The residential facilities on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore provide scholars and researchers with the opportunity to work and stay at length in Venice at economically reasonable conditions in a setting conducive to reflection and intellectual exchanges.

Moreover, For the period from June 2010 to May 2011, the Vittore Branca International Center for the Study of Italian Culture offers twelve scholarships to young students wishing to work for six months on research projects directly or indirectly concerning the historical, artistic and documentary heritage of the Giorgio Cini Foundation. Each scholarship amounts to 12,500 euros. Scholarships are aimed at postgraduate students – studying for a master’s degree, doctorate or specialization – and Ph.D. graduates. Each application for admission will be individually examined by a Panel appointed by the Foundation. Scholarship holders are expected to stay in the Vittore Branca Center residence for six months and they have the opportunity to take part in the cultural activities organised by the Foundation.

DENNIS ROMANO: The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University is pleased to announce the appointment of Dennis Romano as Walter G. Montgomery and Marian Gruber Professor of History.

PILOT ONLINE COURSE ON ITALIAN RENAISSANCE PALEOGRAPHY: 20 July 2009

The Medici Archive Project is currently accepting applications for enrollment in its first Online Course in Italian Paleography and Archival Studies. Made possible by a grant from The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, this free-of-charge pilot course is designed to increase access to the wealth of information contained in manuscript historical materials, particularly those from late-fifteenth- through seventeenth-century Tuscany. Participants in this 13-week online course will not only acquire skill in reading historical Italian writings, but they will also receive a broad introduction to the nature of Italian archives. From the letters of Michelangelo to the inventories of the Medici family, the digitized documents used to train the course’s participants in paleographic skills will also expose them to a wide range of document types useful for art historical research.

The course, conducted in English, will run from October 12, 2009 to January 10, 2010. IT will be taught by Father Luciano Cinelli, O.P., and Dr. Sheila Barker. Organized into a sequence of eleven online lessons, each lesson lasts one week except for the final lesson, which will extend over the last three weeks of the course. With every lesson, the students are asked to transcribe a digitized document dating from the fifteenth through the seventeenth century; the featured document is contextualized with supporting materials also available online. Specific guidance in reading and interpreting the document will be provided by the course instructors in the form of explanatory comments posted on a restricted-access Forum. Throughout the week, course participants will be able to obtain individual help in these exercises by posting their questions on the Forum; both their questions and the instructor’s responses will be available for all course participants to view. At the end of each weekly lesson, students will e-mail to the instructor a transcription of the document; they will be expected to make improvement progressively, developing skills to read incrementally more challenging documents as the course proceeds. Students will be assessed at the end of the course on a pass/fail basis, and passing students will receive a statement from the Medici Archive Project attesting to their successful achievement of the course’s goals (a letter of recommendation may also be requested).

The online course will be operated using an open-source Course Management System called Moodle. While this is a user-friendly system, should participants require technical support, the MAP’s Technology Director, Lorenzo Allori (lallori@medici.org), will be available to answer questions. The program can be used with both Microsoft (Windows) and Apple (Mac) operating systems.

Enrollment is limited to twenty students. Priority will be given to graduate students, post-graduate scholars, and museum curators with demonstrated interest in art history or Tuscany’s Grand Ducal period. Knowledge of Italian is required. The deadline for receipt of all application materials is September 30th. Applicants will be notified of the decision on their acceptance on or before October 5.

For information, please contact: Dr. Sheila Barker, sheilabarker1970@yahoo.it

ENGLISH WRITERS IN ITALY: English Writers in Italy is an informal association of English and American writers based in various regions of Italy. Our website is www.englishwritersinitaly.com. Our membership includes novelists, poets, journalists, translators and academics. We meet two or three times a year. The next meeting is in Umbria in May. We are currently putting together a proposal for an anthology provisionally entitled Exiles in Paradiso, about living, working and studying in Italy.

If you would like to join the association, or you have a piece (300-2,500 words) you'd like to put forward for inclusion in the anthology, please contact Gay Marks g.marks@alice.it

GRANTS FOR INDEPENDENT RESEARCH ON VENETIAN CULTURE AND HISTORY: The Trustees of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation announce its annual call for applications for predoctoral and postdoctoral grants for historical research on Venice and the former Venetian empire and for the study of contemporary Venetian society and culture. Disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences are eligibile areas of study, including (but not limited to) archaeology, architecture, art, bibliography, economics, history, history of science, law, literature, music, political science, religion, and theater. The deadline for applications is December 15. Guidelines and application forms are available from the Foundation's website: www.delmas.org.

GRANTS FOR VENETIAN RESEARCH: The Trustees of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation of New York announce that up to £20,000 will be made available in 2009/2010 to scholars from Great Britain and the Commonwealth for Research in Venice. The principal areas of research envisaged concern both the past (art, architecture, history, law, language, literature, music) and the present (conservation, culture, environment, politics) of Venice and the territories formerly subject to it. Further particulars may be obtained from the Secretary to the Delmas Foundation’s Advisory Committee, Professor Julian Gardner, 44, Foundry House, Eagle Works, Walton Well Road, Oxford OX2 6AQ (telephone 01865 511 499) e-mail julian.gardner@warwick.ac.uk). Applications should reach Professor Gardner by Friday 15th. May 2009

CESARE BARBIERI GRANT: The Cesare Barbieri Endowment for Italian Culture (Trinity College, Connecticut) will award a research grant in modern Italian history. The amount of the grant has been increased to $7,500 and the application procedure is streamlined. You will find all information at the the link below: http://www.cbendowment.org/grant

ITALIAN LANGUAGE COURSES: The Dante Alighieri Institute of Venice announces a series of Italian language courses to be offered throughout 2009. For additional information contact: info@venicedantealighieri.it, or www.venicedantealighieri.it.

ARCHIVIO DI STATO ONLINE: L'Archivio di stato di Venezia annuncia che sono on line sia il Sistema informativo dell'archivio, che descrive tutti i fondi archivistici e gli strumenti di corredo (finding aids) collegati, nonché, per circa la metà di essi, la rispettiva articolazione in serie, sottoserie e - da poco iniziata, e per ora circoscritta a pochi fondi - anche le unità. I soggetti produttori (le istituzioni o le persone o famiglie che hanno prodotto gli archivi) sono presenti, ma ancora in corso di approfondimento.

E' on line anche il Progetto Divenire, che mette a disposizione numerose serie riprodotte come immagine digitale (Registri del Maggior Consiglio Senato e Consiglio di Dieci (fino all'anno 1500), nonché numerosi disegni, mappe e pergamene con regesti.

SCHOLARS NEEDED: Context Travel is currently recruiting scholars, professors, and other specialists to join our network. We organize lectures and walking seminars for corporate clients, institutions, and intellectually curious travelers. We’re looking for serious scholars with a deep understanding of the city and its cultural heritage. You must also be a gifted teacher who can make your material come alive for adult learners.

Currently we have the most need for scholars in Venice and the Veneto (Padova, Vicenza, Verona) during Fall 2008 and Spring/Summer 2009 but CVs for all cities are welcome.

If you are interested in learning more, check out our website: www.contexttravel.com. Interested candidates should send their CV to Jessica Stewart at jessica@contexttravel.com.

TITIAN, TINTORETTO, VERONESE: RIVALS IN RENAISSANCE VENICE: The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has announced an exhibition on the “Big Three” of Venetian sixteenth-century painting for the spring and summer of 2009. This exhibition will be on view in Boston from March 15 to July 19, 2009 and at the Musée du Louvre, Paris from September 14, 2009 to January 5, 2010.

Although forty years separate the birth of Titian from that of Paolo Veronese, the careers of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese overlapped for almost four decades of painting in Venice. This exhibition will explore the innovations and achievements of Venetian Renaissance painting by examining the rivalries and mutual influences among these three artists. Through the carefully chosen examples in this exhibition, each painter will emerge as a distinct and compelling personality, who forged his own art by responding to his rivals, recognizing the demands of the market, and offering his own original ideas. Clusters of pictures by these three artists – with specific juxtapositions of subject matter, format, and style – will make clear just how lively and fertile the artistic scene in Venice was.

Although famous for their towering altarpieces and expansive church decorations, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese also pioneered the canvas easel picture as an object for collectors; the success of this new and portable format made these artists famous across Europe during their lifetimes. The exhibition will feature important examples of religious, mythological, and allegorical easel pictures intended for collectors, as well as large-format works originally destined for churches and palaces. A group of impressive portraits will illustrate new varieties in portraiture and how the Venetian brushstroke could make the sitter palpably present. Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese together created a body of work that defined a “Venetian style” through loose technique, rich coloring, and often sensual subject matter.

The exhibition anticipates remarkable loans from the most important European and American museums including the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Louvre, the Prado, the Uffizi, the Museo di Capodimonte, Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Several paintings will come from the specific sites for which they were commissioned – churches in Venice – and others have never been seen in the United States. Religious narrative paintings, the female nude, portraiture, and late styles will be explored through carefully selected pairings and juxtapositions of works by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. Many pictures have received recent conservation treatment and scientific analysis. Particular care has been taken to avoid duplicating the checklists of recent shows of Venetian painting.

With some sixty paintings total, this exhibition will also offer the best display of works by Tintoretto ever assembled in North America, as well as the biggest groups of pictures by Titian and Veronese in this hemisphere in about two decades. The exhibition has been curated by Frederick Ilchman (filchman@mfa.org) of the MFA and Jean Habert and Vincent Delieuvin of the Louvre.

MEDITERRANEAN HISTORICAL REVIEW – CALL FOR PAPERS: Mediterranean Historical Review is a bi-annual, refereed journal, published by Routledge. The journal is interested in receiving papers treating the history of the Mediterranean basin, emphasizing contacts, relations and influences within a Mediterranean context, as well as questions of a comparative and comparable nature. For information regarding the submission of manuscripts, please visit our website: http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/cmc/mhr/mhr.html. Or contact us at: mhrtau@post.tau.ac.il.

SENATO. DELIBERAZIONI MISTE: Series published under the patronage of the Senato della Repubblica Italiana and directed by: Maria Francesca Tiepolo, Dieter Girgensohn and Gherardo Ortalli.

The Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti is publishing the registers of the Venetian Senate for the period up to the war of Chioggia (1381), in a total of twenty volumes. This will make available documentary material of extraordinary importance for historic research. The Consiglio dei Rogati o dei Pregadi (Consilium Rogatorum), later the Senate, was possibly set up in 1229-1230 as an organ of support to the Great Council. Its function soon moved from that of preliminary inquiry and advice on matters of trade and navigation to decision-making, eventually in every aspect of economic financial and administrative matters and of internal and external policy. Over the years the Consiglio dei Rogati became the most important of the Venetian councils, at the heart of the institutional order. The deliberations (or parti), valid as law, were recorded from the end of the thirteenth century, and have been conserved from register XV onward.

More information: www.istitutoveneto.it/senato/ or amministrazione@istitutoveneto.it

AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE MARCIANA: As no one knows better than the readers of News on the Rialto, the Marciana Library is one of the world’s great cultural resources, which has been granting public access to its unparalleled collections for half a millennium. For the past nine years grants to the Marciana from The American Friends have been contributing to new projects at the library, and if you have worked there during that time you have been a beneficiary of those grants. For the past few years all the funds from The American Friends have been dedicated to entering the Marciana’s sometimes indecipherable hand-written catalogues of printed books into the on-line data base. These grants made it possible to continue the Golem project, the results of which have been integrated into OPAC (On line Public Access Catalogue), which you can now access from your office. As recent visitors to the Marciana can testify, once they have negotiated their way through the construction dust, they have found vastly improved access to the library’s collections.

The Marciana has now become the leader among the Italian state libraries in providing on-line services for its patrons. That leadership role is manifest in the Marciana’s sponsorship of a conference on December 17 of last year at the Palazzo Ducale on “L'evoluzione dell'accessibilità informatica.” The Marciana is setting the example.

As one of his final acts as the Marciana’s Director before retiring, Marino Zorzi began a campaign to digitize the catalogue of manuscripts, a project that would parallel what Golem has achieved for printed materials. This is an exciting prospect for researchers in the Marciana, and The American Friends have undertaken the responsibility for helping to finance the costs of the campaign.

The American Friends consist of people like you, scholars who work in Venice. Many are not even Americans, but all love the Marciana and have been willing to contribute. We would like to invite all the patrons of the Marciana, but especially the forestieri who have benefited from this magnificent Italian state institution, to join the Friends.

Of course, your gifts are tax-deducible. Please send your contribution to

The American Friends of the Marciana Library, Inc.
25 East End Avenue, Suite 15G
New York, New York 10028-7052

Many thanks,
Edward Muir
President

VENICE LAGOON FOUNDATION: The Forum for the Lagoon, of Venice, and the University of Minnesota have together set up the Venice Lagoon Foundation, a charitable organization intended to promote studies on the condition and preservation of the Venetian Lagoon's ecosystem. Its first projects will deal with the reclamation of the island of S. Giorgio in Alga, the Forum's future home, and the opening of an "eco-museum" within the Arsenal of Venice.
Website: http://www1.umn.edu/vlf/home.htm