‘Facing Crisis: Art as Politics in Fourteenth-Century Venice’, Anna Christidou Memorial Lecture by Stefania Gerevini (Bocconi University), CEU – Vienna Campus & Zoom, 26 March 2026 (5:30–8:00 pm Central European Standard Time)

Although Venice emerged as a leading Mediterranean power in the Trecento, the city faced a series of crises during a brief but cataclysmic period coinciding with Andrea Dandolo’s dogeship (1343–1354): earthquakes, disease, fierce military conflicts, and dramatic political and institutional tensions had the republic on edge. It was nevertheless precisely at this time that the government sponsored a series of ambitious and sumptuous artistic campaigns in the church of San Marco: a reliquary-chapel, a new baptistery, and a folding altarpiece that blended Byzantine and Italianate visual forms. Far from being mere “vanity projects”, these works were affirmative political interventions that interrogated the meaning of community, authority, and (shared) political leadership at a time when those notions were unsettled. Looking beyond established concepts of triumph and imperialism, this seminar situates the arts of San Marco and the artistic interactions between Byzantium and Venice into ongoing processes of state formation, and attests to the power of images to inform—and transform—political imaginations in troubled times.

Stefania Gerevini is Associate Professor of Medieval and Byzantine Art at Bocconi University, Milan, and holds a PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Prior to joining Bocconi, she held academic positions at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, The Courtauld, and The British School at Rome, where she is currently a member of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Letters. Stefania’s research and publications primarily concern the nexus between art and politics; and medieval materiality and performativity. Her recent book Facing Crisis? Art as Politics in Fourteenth-Century Venice (Harvard University Press), focuses on artistic interactions, political conflict, and public memory in Trecento Venice. The agency of medieval artifacts, the semantic affordances of different artistic media, and the interplay between materiality and immateriality are instead central to her current project, Hidden in Plain Sight: the Metalwork Altarpieces of Medieval Venetia (MUR-PRIN 2022), which she leads as principal investigator.

Find out more about the lecture and how to access the Zoom link on the Central European University’s website.