3 June 2026
Getting back into the studio (and typing up the notes that accumulated along the way) after traveling for a week. Went to Venice for four nights in that time, saw the Biennale and the treasures at The Gallerie dell'Accademia, which I'll get into in upcoming posts. But I must first mention the marble relief maps on the Baroque facade of the Santa Maria Zobenigo, a 9th century (rebuilt in the 17th century by the architect Giuseppe Sardi) church directly across the street from the hotel I stayed in for my last night in the city.
The maps depict areas where the Venetian general Antonio Barbaro served (he funded the church's reconstruction). In contrast with so much of the Renaissance work I was seeing, they immediately stood out to me for their somewhat abstract treatment of representation and their secular content (side note: apparently John Ruskin was not a fan of the choice to adorn the facade with images of Barbaro's military exploits rather than religious symbols—he called it a “manifestation of insolent atheism”).
Anyway, they're really great. There are six of them, one for each of Candia, Zadar, Padua, Rome, Corfu and Split. In the Corfu piece, a cluster of gable-roofed homes almost tumble off of the surface. For Rome, a fortification wall protrudes from the right edge of the piece and appears to unfurl like a ribbon—that 1988 Paul Thek painting Untitled (Banner) came to mind. There actually are banners in the corners of the works that display the cities they depict, now that I think about it. But I spent the most time in front of the Split work, which is primarily comprised of hard-angled topographical lines arching over a wonky polygon to form an altar-like shape. Or a mandala melting from the bottom. It just reads as something both totemic and strange, which is a quality I'm am always drawn to. Lovely example of art arising from the space between a faithful eye and the limits of the hand/medium.