Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Republic of Venice undertook a series of decorative campaigns that turned their administrative and executive headquarters, the Palazzo Ducale, into a powerful vehicle of political propaganda. Functioning as a junction between four of the most important state halls in the palace, the Room of the Four Doors regulated foot traffic and was walked through by a flux of people. This presentation will show how its decoration, formed of frescoes by the celebrated painter Jacopo Tintoretto as well as of stuccoes, represents one of the most significant and ambitious programmes of the Palazzo. With its emphasis on the liberty and nobility of the Venetian state and ruling class, it aimed to demonstrate how the once triumphant Republic was still on a level with the greatest European monarchies of the time.

Presented by Dr. Giorgio Tagliaferro, Associate Professor of History of Art, University of Warwick.

Giorgio Tagliaferro is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. He specialises in Renaissance and early modern European art, with a main focus on Venice. He received a PhD in History of Art at the Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice (2004), where he also was a part-time lecturer (2004-10). He was teaching adjunct for the European Programme of the Emerson College (2007-2013) and a visiting lecturer at the Charles University in Prague (2010, 2011). He is the recipient of a residential scholarship at the Getty Research Institute (2012), a research fellowship at Warwick (2013), a British Academy Small Grant (2015-16), and a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2016-17).
He has published widely on various aspects of Venetian art, especially on the self-representation of the Venetian Republic and on artists such as Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. He is the main author of Le botteghe di Tiziano (2009) and co-edited the volume Tintoretto: Identity, Practice and Meaning (2022). He is currently working on a book project on the sixteenth-century pictorial cycles in the Doge’s Palace, Venice.

*This virtual lecture for the Rosand Library & Study Center at Save Venice is open to all and will be in English.

Image: Detail of the 16th-century stuccowork on the ceiling of the Room of the Four Doors, Palazzo Ducale