The Gothic art of the 1300s and 1400s in Venice.

Between the 1300s and the first half of the 1400s, a particular style, called “Venetian Florentine Gothic”, very imaginative, luminous and sinuous, spread in Venice. The civil building that best presents this style to us is Palazzo Ducale, in which the motif of the openwork window and the inversion between full and empty - usually in buildings the fullest and heaviest part is at the bottom and the most open and light at the top, instead here on the ground floor there is a portico, a portico on the first and a solid part on the second - they infused the structure with a unique sense of lightness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Palazzo Ducale was covered with frescoes between 1409 and 1414, with external artists of great fame, such as Pisanello, Michelino da Besozzo (perhaps) and Gentile da Fabriano, works that are now almost totally lost.

Other buildings, made with this style, enriched with curvilinear geometric games, given by the use of the inflected arch, with which the builders began to decorate the multi-lancet window or central window of the "Venetian houses", are the Ariani palace at the Angelo Raffaele, the Ca 'd'Oro palace, that of Ca' Foscari and Contarini Fasan in the Grand Canal and others also in the inner part of the city, such as Palazzo Seriman ai Gesuiti and the two Palazzi Soranzo in San Polo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two churches, which adopted the scheme and construction elements common to the other religious buildings in the area, were the Basilica dei Frari and the Chiesa de San Zanipolo, built between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; some constructive elements typical of Gothic architecture, such as the bundled columns and the polystyle pillars, were replaced by cylindrical pillars or by simple pilasters; however, the typically Gothic pointed arch and the wealth of plastic and pictorial decorative motifs were retained.

Other churches to remember are those of the Madonna dell'Orto, de Santa Maria dei Carmini, de San Stefano, de San Giacomo de l'Orio and de Santa Caterina, the latter with the wooden roof "ship hull", a characteristic Venetian element .

 

Other buildings, made with this style, enriched with curvilinear geometric games, given by the use of the inflected arch, with which the builders began to decorate the central mullioned window or window of the "Venetian houses", are the Ariani palace at the Angelo Raffaele, the Ca 'd'Oro palace, that of Ca' Foscari and Contarini Fasan in the Grand Canal and others also in the inner part of the city, such as Palazzo Seriman ai Gesuiti and the two Palazzi Soranzo in San Polo.

In architecture, the Basilica of San Marco was crowned and it was decided, in 1422, to extend the Doge's Palace on the side of the square, up to San Marco, continuing the style of the previous part, from the fourteenth century. Thus was born a Venetian style free from the European trends of the moment. The elegant multi-lancet windows with finely decorated arches of the Ca 'Foscari, Palazzo Giustinian and Ca' d'Oro belong to this style, where once the façade was also decorated with dazzling gilding and polychrome effects.