Venetian Art in Situ Part I

Overview

The Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (commonly known as the Frari) is Venice’s most important and impressive Franciscan church, and was richly endowed through the centuries by prominent families and confraternities who adorned its altars.

With masterpieces by Paolo Veneziano, Giovanni Bellini, Titian and many others, the Frari is arguably the best site in Venice to appreciate the evolution of Venetian art from the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, and to better understand these artworks by seeing them in their original physical and cultural contexts. Titian’s celebrated Assumption of Mary is set on the high altar; unusually, the church also retains its spectacular fifteenth-century choir structure and rood-screen.

Join Dr Susan Steer for a close look at the spellbinding Frari which - together with SS Giovanni e Paolo, which is discussed in a second lecture - served as an unofficial pantheon of the city, and thus presents an impressive and diverse array of funerary monuments.