The Course Register 2026
Georgiana Back, Guy Banwell, Catherine Bennett, Emilia Berry, Theo Boyle, Jack Braka, Esme Butler, Lulu Childress, Josephine Chkheidze-Brett, Sophie Dalhuisen, Ramier Dorsett, Cecily Harley, Michael Hartt, Claudia Henderson,Thomas Hill, Georgina Hugi, Olivia Kleemans, Leo Ladanyi, Julia Lek, Lucas Magnay, Eva Meyrick, Isabella Muirhead, Jenna Murphy, Iona Neville, Lucille Nuuja, Lyra O'Carroll, Charles Peers, Maisie Rees, Cosima Remers, Alexander Ross, Alice Rothwell, Cleodie Stewart Howitt, Freddie Stuart, Sophie Zirps
Record of Past Programme
The John Hall Venice Course 2026
THE PROGRAMME
January 26 - March 27
Director: Charlie Hall
Accommodation:
Venice. Hotel Pausania
Florence. Hotel Maxim
Rome. Hotel Smeraldo
Lectures:
Whitcomb Room, National Gallery, London
Istituto Canossiano, Venice
Lecturers and Syllabus
SHAUL BASSI is professor of English and postcolonial literature at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy. He is the director of the Venice Centre for Humanities and Social Change. His work has focused on Shakespeare and post-colonial theory. He has also written about the present environmental and social issues of Venice, as well as the city's history.
The Ghetto of Venice: the place that became a metaphor
Shakespeare’s Venetian anti-heroes; how Othello and Shylock were ‘othered’
JOHN BLEASDALE was born in Ulverston, Cumbria. He studied at the University of Liverpool before moving to Italy, where he now teaches at the University of Venice. He’s written extensively on film and his work has appeared in The Guardian, The Times, Variety, Sight and Sound and The Economist. He is a host of the Writers on Film podcast.
Visible Darkness: The Cinema of Jonathan Glazer
Terrence Malick and the Magic Hour: How to move into the light
La Dolce Bellezza - The Seduction of Italian Film in Federico Fellini and Paolo Sorrentino
XAN BROOKS
Venice Through The Lens – a view of how filmmakers have portrayed the magical
LOUISA BUCK MA Cambridge, MA Courtauld Institute, Journalist, broadcaster and art critic, reviewer for Radio 4’s “Front Row”. Author of “Moving Targets : A Users’ Guide to British Art Now” - published by Tate Gallery Publications and “Owning Art: the Contemporary Art Collectors Handbook” Turner Prize Judge 2005. Contemporary Art Correspondent for The Art Newspaper and a regular contributor to Artforum, Vogue and The Guardian.
Key Moments and Movements in Modern Art (1)
Key Moments and Movements in Modern Art (2)
Peggy Guggenheim: the life of an Art Addict
Modern and Contemporary Art, from YBAs to NFTs
Body Matters: the body as source and subject matter
MARIKA CONTALDO SEGUSA runs a cookery school. Cookery classes take place in her kitchen on the lido, ending with a convivial dinner eating the delicious food that has been cooked. Also included is a trip to the Rialto market to source the food.
Cookery Classes
PATRICK CRAIG is a counter tenor, harpist, teacher, lecturer and conductor. He is a Vicar Choral at St Paul's Cathedral and over twenty years has sung more than a thousand concerts with the Tallis Scholars.
The Tradition of Classical Music in Europe: Chant and polyphony in the western tradition
Monteverdi and the Venetian revolution
The contribution of Bach and Handel
The Creation of the Modern Orchestra
REBECCA DARLEY is a professional writer, researcher and editor, with degrees in History, Archaeology and Byzantine Studies.
The Mosaics of Ravenna: Images as truth
From Torcello to Rivo Alto: Byzantium in Venice
The Singular Divine in Late Antiquity
FRANK DABELL studied at Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. He is a former fellow of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. After many years in New York, he returned to Rome, where he was raised, and is now part of the art history faculty at Temple University Rome
JANE DA MOSTO MA (Oxon.), MSc Imperial College London. Co-author of ‘The Science of Saving Venice’.
Saving Venice: critical issues and ways of looking at them
SIMON DAVIS Associate Partner at Richard Rogers Partnership. Architects responsible for Centre Pompidou, the Lloyds Building, London and the Millennium Project, London.
Architecture Today
GREGORY DOWLING MA (Oxon.), is Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of Venice, has written thrillers set in Italy and England, translator.
English poets in Italy
Venice After The Fall. 1797 and the end of the Venetian Republic
Byron in Venice; Shelley; Keats and Imagination; Browning and Italy
Humanism ; the Enlightenment ; Romanticism
DAVID EKSERDJIAN is Professor of Art History and Head of Department at the University of Leicester.
Learning to Look; A Short Guide to Looking at Art
DR FAWAZ GERGES is Professor of Middle East Politics and International Relations, London School of Economics
The Fall of the Ottoman Empire & the making of the modern Middle East
The organic crisis of the post-independence state in the Middle East and the rise of non-state actors like Al Qaeda and ISIS
CHARLIE GERE is professor of media theory and history at the University of Lancaster
‘All That is Solid Melts into Air’: Marx, Babbage, Turner and Ruskin in Venice and the beginnings of Modernism
‘Gondolas, Lights, Music’: Nietzsche, Wagner, Mann, Proust - Venice, Nihilism and Fin de Siecle Decadence
‘This putrescent city…’: Marinetti, D’Annunzio, Pound and Mussolini – Venice, Futurism and Fascism
‘Is there life on Mars?’ - Bowie, Trump, 4Chan and the Data Apocalypse
CHARLIE HALL
Renaissance Rivals. How competition between Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael became the fuel that drove the engine of the Italian Renaissance
Why are we looking at so much religious art?
The Medicis – the family who bankrolled the Florentine Renaissance
NICHOLAS HALL Independent art dealer based in New York
The Comfort of Strangers: The Hotel Experience and Artists
Fantastic Art
CHARLES HOPE MA, D.Phil., Director of the Warburg Institute, London University. Formerly Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford University. An Organiser of the Genius of Venice exhibition at the Royal Academy, author of “Titian”, and other publications.
Venetian Renaissance Painting. The contribution of Venice to Early Renaissance altarpieces and painted narratives – Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Carpaccio
Giorgione and the limits of connoisseurship
Giorgio Vasari and Art Histories
A Question of Attribution
Titian and the Venetian High Renaissance
ANDREW HOPKINS was previously Assistant Director of the British School at Rome, from 1998 to 2002, and now Professor and Chair of Architectural History at the University of L'Aquila.
Venetian Architecture: The early settlement of Venice and the solutions to the environment, together with the use of light and water
The perfect house: Andea Palladio’s Venetian Villas
Venetian Architecture: The Expression of Wealth and status as well as the use of space in the public arena (the Piazza as Forum)
The emergence of a specifically Venetian version of the Renaissance and Baroque, as distinct from the Florentine and Roman.
Venetian Architecture: How ‘ordinary’ people and those of minorities such as Greeks, Jews in the Ghetto and Slavs lived, worshipped, and built architecture.
JEREMY HOWARD MA (Oxon.), MA Courtauld Institute, is a lecturer in Art History at The University of Buckingham. He has published many articles on aspects of eighteenth and nineteenth-century collecting with particular reference to The Grand Tour.
The Grand Tour
GEOFFREY HUMPHRIES Portrait-figure artist, has lived in Venice for 40 years and exhibited throughout Europe.
Life drawing and portraiture classes
MARIE-LOUISE LEONARD is Research Fellow at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. A social and cultural historian of early modern Italy. Her primary research interests are health, disease, public health, and occupational health.
Venice, 1600 years of history
Plague and Public health in Venice, 1348 – 1630
WILLIAM LORIMER Christie’s Continental Furniture specialist, former director of Education department and NADFAS lecturer..
A View of the Commercial Art World -The Auction House
NIGEL MCGILCHRIST MA (Oxon.), has lived and worked as an Art Historian in Rome for thirty years. He has taught at Rome University and has been Director of the Anglo-Italian Institute, and External Consultant to the Superintendence of Fine Arts of the Italian Government, during that period. He lectures for a consortium of American Universities, teaching the history of painting techniques and materials. A frequent contributor to the Arts Page of The Times, and a regular lecturer for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DCand San Diego Museum of Art, California.
Venice and Water
Marble: The Brilliance of Ancient Surfaces: the Polychrome: Marbles of Antiquity
Sensuality, decoration and creativity in marble
The Mechanics of Early Commerce and the expansion of the Venetian Commercial Empire
Marco Polo: Venice's Man of Marvels
Practical demonstration of tempera painting
LESLIE PRIMO MA, University College, London. During his studies he specialised in early Medieval and Renaissance studies, including, Italian Renaissance Drawing, Art and Architecture in Europe 1250-1400 Art and Architecture in Europe 1400-1500, Medici and Patronage, Narrative Painting in the Age of Giotto, the work of Peter Paul Rubens focusing on his paintings of the Judgement of Paris, and Greek Myth in paintings.
Titian and the Venetian Masters
Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne and the Nude
Tintoretto, Veronese and the Venetian Late Renaissance
The Fabric of Venice: Vedute painting and the Rococo Masters
JEREMY SAMS BA, Director and translator. Opera translations include Wagner’ s Ring, Mozart’s Figaro, Magic Flute and Cosi fan Tutte (ENO), Lehar’s MerryWidow (Covent Garden). Frequent broadcaster on opera and other music including his series, “Sams at the Opera” for Radio 3. Recent work as a director includes The Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium. He is directing the opera Die Fledermaus at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York in 2014.
Beginnings…First Meetings
Families, and how to survive them
Doing the Right Thing
Deadly Sins
Operas, Musicals, and Beyond
MARK SMITH photographer, based in Venice, publications include “The Nude: a Visual Reference for the Artist” and “Palaces in Venice”.
Course photographer
ANNA SOMERS_COCKS OBE, Founder Editor of the Art Newspaper and former chairman of Venice in Peril
Can Venice be Saved?
SUSAN STEER MA, Ph.D. Visiting lecturer in History of Art for the University of Warwick's "Venice term" BA and MA programmes. Susan has also lectured in the History of Art for the University of Bristol and has worked as both researcher and editor of the UK's national inventory of European paintings on behalf of the University of Glasgow and the National Gallery.
Visits throughout the city and lagoon islands, introducing the students to the less visited major works in Venice and the islands and teaching a useful method for looking at architecture and works of art.
DR. CLAUDIA TOBIN is a writer, curator and academic specialising in the intersections between literature and the visual arts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She is currently a Senior Research Associate at Jesus College, Cambridge and has taught art history and English literature at Cambridge and at Bristol University over the last seven years. She is the author of Modernism and Still Life: Artists, Writers, Dancers (2020) and co-editor of Ways of Drawing: Artists’ Perspectives and Practices (2019).
The Colours of the Past: how the Renaissance haunted the nineteenth century
“Italy beats me”: English writers and artists in Italy from Virginia Woolf to D.H Lawrence
BEN STREET is an Art History teacher, gallery educator and freelance curator based in London. He is a lecturer at the National Gallery and has been a gallery educator at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Hayward Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Courtauld Gallery, London. He writes on contemporary art for Art21, Artnet and Art Review. Ben is currently involved in curating exhibitions of contemporary art at a new art space in north-west London, Intervention Gallery.
Stories of Western Art
Around 1500: a year in art. A slice across geography to look beyond the limits of the Eurocentric model of art history. The problem with originality
Who is art for?
NICOLA TURNER-INMAN is Curator of Decorative Arts (Projects) at the Royal Collection.
Patronage and Taste: Venetian Art in the Royal Collection
SARAH QUILL has worked between Venice and London for many years to create a photographic archive of Venetian architecture, sculpture and daily life. Her book, Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones Revisited was followed by a new edition.
The Changing face of Venice
EVA VERMANDEL Professional photographer. Her work is in the collections of NPG, V&A and National Gallery of Scotland. Concurrently with her artistic practice, Vermandel undertakes commissions as an editorial portrait photographer and has collaborated on long-term international projects, most notably with the Icelandic band Sigur Rós and the Sydney Festival. Belgian born, she has been based in London since 1996.
Photography Course.
LOUISA WARMAN BA Courtauld Institute, MA University of Warwick, is an Art Historian resident in Venice since 2000. She works as a translator for art history publications and leads Renaissance and Medieval art history tours in the city.
Visits throughout the city and lagoon islands, introducing the students to the less visited major works in Venice and the islands and teaching a useful method for looking at architecture and works of art.
PAUL WILLIAMS Research Fellow in the Department of meteorology, Reading University. A leading environmental specialist, he was recently the lead author on climate change commissioned by the European parliament.
Climate Science from a Climate Scientist
ARTHUR WOOD is a founding partner of Total Impact Advisors in Geneva. He is a recognised innovator in social finance and is frequently invited to speak and write on innovative financing vehicles for social purposes.
You Can Change the World
Visits and Trips
Orientation walk-abouts (2); the Accademia Gallery; the Frari; S. Marco, Palazzo Ducale
Private visit to Guggenheim Collection of Modern Art
Private visits: with Nicholas True to S. Marco with the mosaics illuminated; to S. Giorgio Maggiore, now the Fondazione Giorgio Cini; to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Visits throughout the city and lagoon islands with Charlie Hall. The Zanetti glassworks on Murano
Visit to Ravenna - S. Apollinare in Classe; S. Vitale; Tomb of Galla Placida; Orthodox Baptistery; the Museum; S. Apollinare Nuovo.
Visit to Padua - the Scrovegni Chapel - Giotto; the Erimitani - Mantegna; the Santo, the Scuola del Santo – Titian
Classes in Venice
Life Drawing and Portraiture - Geoffrey Humphries
Photography – Eva Vermandel
Italian – The Istituto Venezia
Cookery – Marika Contaldo Seguso
Film Screenings
A Bout de Souffle, (directed by Jean-Luc Godard 1960, France)
La Grande Bellezza (directed by Paolo Sorrentino 2013, Italy)
La Dolce Vita (directed by Federico Fellini 1960, Italy
A Room with a view (directed by James Ivory, 1985)
The Battle of Algiers (directed by Gillo Pontecorvo 1966, Italy)
Florence
BEN STREET & CHARLIE HALL
Introduction to Florence and on-site visits – Florentine Painting, Architecture and Sculpture
Uffizi Gallery, the Accademia (Private Visits)
The Medici Chapel, Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo, S. Croce, Pazzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, the Duomo, Piazza della Signoria, the Bargello, San. Lorenzo, The Laurentian Library, Sta Trinita, Rucellai chapel, Orsanmichele, Ospedale degli Innocenti
San Marco, Galleria Palatina, Santa Felicità, Brancacci Chapel
Visit to Gardens of Villa Gamberaia at Settignano
Classes: Life Drawing at Charles Cecil Studio
Rome
FRANK DABELL & CHARLIE HALL
On first evening, a walk around the historic centre of Rome introducing its main landmarks and monuments to include Campo de Fiori area - Palazzo della Cancelleria, Palazzo Farnese and Palazzo Spada: the Ghetto area, the Capitol Hill and Michelangelo's Square, the Trevi Fountain; the Hadrianeum; and past the Pantheon to Piazza Navona
Visit to Borromini's Church of Sant' Ivo alla Sapienza followed by an Introduction to Rome by coach to include the Tiber and the Iola Iberian, Castle Spangle, St.Peter's, the Janiculum Hill, the 'Fontanone', Bramante's Tempietto, S. Pietro in Montorio, the Pyramid of Cestius & the Protestant Cemetery, the Baths of Caracalla, the Circus Maximus; the Via Appia Antica and the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and S. Giovanni in Porta Latina, S. Maria degli Angeli, Santa Constanza, S. Agnese fuori le Mura
Following days – visits to include:
Classical Rome and the Classical Survival in later epochs from the Capitol Hill into the Roman and Imperial Fora; the Colosseum; the Arch of Constantine, the church of SS.Cosman & Damian; Trajan's Markets and Column
The Heart of Rome: The Pantheon; Borromini's Church of Sant' Ivo alla Sapienza, The Caravaggio chapels in S. Luigi de' Francesi and Sant' Agostino, The Ara Pacis, and the Piazza di Spagna area.
The Borghese Collection (The Bernini sculptures and the paintings collection at the Villa Borghese) The Keats and Shelley Memorial House
Independent visit to the interior of St Peter's Basilica,
Private visits The Vatican Collections, including Cortile Ottagonale, Antiquities Collections, the Raphael Rooms and Sistine Chapel
Visit to Villa d’Este and Temple of Sibilla at Tivoli and lunch at the Ristorante Sibilla