The two superpowers who dominated the Mediterranean for four centuries—often enemies, sometimes allies—come together again in an exhibition at the Frist Art Gallery in Nashville this spring, featuring 150 works of art from the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire.
The exhibition weaves the artworks—glass, paintings, prints, metalwork and textiles—with multiple spheres including culinary, diplomatic, economic and technological as well as artistic. It also includes an exhibit of Venetian- and Ottoman-influenced fashion created in the early 20th century by Mariano Fortuny.
The exhibition draws from the collections of Venice’s storied civic museums. The Venetian loans are joined by a trove of recently salvaged objects from a major Adriatic shipwreck, the large Venetian merchant ship Gagliana Grossa that sank while traveling from Venice to Constantinople in 1583. These items have never been exhibited outside Croatia, where the wreck occurred.
The exhibition opens May 31 and will run through September 1st. Our title image is Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan by Vittore Carpaccio.
