A City Chosen by God

In collaboration with
Save Venice

A City Chosen by God
Venice and the Iconography of the Annunciation

A lecture by
Sophia D’Addio
Founder, Mirabilia Art Adventures
Lecturer in Art History, Columbia University

In ENGLISH

According to legend, Venice was founded in the year 421, on March 25th – the feast day of the Annunciation, in which the Archangel Gabriel delivers the message to the Virgin Mary that she will be the mother of Christ. This mythical alignment of the lagoon city with the divine favor enjoyed by the Virgin extends that providence to Venice as well, as if chosen by God to serve a divinely ordained mission – the establishment of a Christian Republic from its moment of foundation, rather than one built upon the ruins of the pagan past. The relationship between Venice and the Annunciation is most explicitly given visual form in Bonifacio de’ Pitati’s Annunciation with God the Father for the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi at Rialto, in which the sacred drama unfolds against a backdrop of the Piazza San Marco. Even without such direct references to Venetian topography, though, numerous other representations of the Annunciation produced in Venice would also have held special significance for their audience, given this intimate association. This lecture will explore how representations of this miraculous event contribute to an understanding of Venice as the recipient of divine providence, thereby bolstering the auspicious implications of its foundation myth.

Sophia D’Addio received her PhD in Art History from Columbia University, and is a specialist in Italian Renaissance art and architecture with an emphasis on Venetian painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While working on her dissertation she spent several years in Venice, supported by grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Renaissance Society of America, via the Kress Foundation; she was also the recipient of two fellowships at Save Venice Inc, through which she contributed to the cataloguing of the Rosand Library & Study Center and the editing of past conservation project entries on the website. Sophia also holds master’s degrees in art history, music performance, and Italian. She continues to teach at Columbia, and has taught on the university’s study abroad program in Venice as well. In addition to her university teaching, Sophia is the founder of Mirabilia Art Adventures, an educational platform through which she offers online art history courses, museum tours, private lectures, art historical travel itineraries, and more.

Image Caption: Jacopo Tintoretto, Annunciation, c. 1582 (oil on canvas, 330 x 310 cm)