We ended our week in the brilliant sunshine that we have become accustomed to with a couple of fantastic trips away from the lecture room. Notwithstanding an excellent lecture from yours truly, we headed over to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the home of Venice's Benedictine community since the 10th century, where, amongst others, the Florentine architect Michelozzo worked, Palladio and Longhand in particular (seeing as Michelozzo's library was destroyed by fire in the 16th century)
Dropping into Palladio's cenacolo, that used to house Veronese's spectacular painting of the Miracle of Cana, stolen by Napoleon's troops ion 1797 and amazingly restored, replaced by Adam Lowe, who was on the John Hall Course in 1978 and now runs the brilliant Factum Arte studio in Madrid. We saw the superb staircase designed by Longhena, the first 'staircase as room' construction, in which a set of stairs becomes an architectural feature. Then we visited Palladio's extraordinary church, designed in the 1560's and built by 1580
We attempted to get a John Hall Venice 2023 group photo but unfortunately some of the group failed to show up.
On Saturday we took an early train to Padova, viewing Mantegna's ruined frescoes in the Erimitani church, the stupendous Giotto decoration of the Arena/Scrovegni chapel and ended up in the Basilica of Saint Anthony where we managed to access the are behind the High Altar to marvel at Donatello's gilt-bronze reliefs..
A great end to Week B!
