Venice Unveiled: Discovering the Artistic Splendours of La Serenissima
This course and city experience form part of The Story of Art and the Cities that Helped Write It, an ambitious long-form programme exploring art history through the places where it was created, collected, transformed, and preserved. Through a combination of expert-led online learning and immersive city experiences, the programme places great works of art back into their original cultural context—revealing the people, power, ideas, and institutions that shaped them. Each individual course and city experience can be enjoyed on its own, while also contributing to a wider journey across the cities that defined the story of art.
a must-see destination for art lovers.
Find out more about The Story of Art and the Cities that Helped Write It programme here
Overview
The churches, palaces, and museums of Venice hold a unique place in the story of art because they reveal how beauty, power, and commerce could combine to shape an entire city. Built as a maritime republic whose wealth depended on trade across the Mediterranean and beyond, Venice used art and architecture to project prestige, stability, and magnificence. Its grand palaces, public buildings, and richly decorated churches became settings for some of the most celebrated achievements of the Renaissance, while the city’s openness to the East brought distinctive materials, colours, and visual influences that set Venetian art apart. Collections and sites such as the Doge's Palace, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Basilica di San Marco, and the palaces lining the Grand Canal show how art functioned as civic identity, diplomatic display, and private prestige. Venice was also the home of masters such as Titian, Tintoretto, and Giovanni Bellini, whose works transformed the use of colour, atmosphere, and spectacle in European painting. To study Venice is to understand how a city of merchants and statesmen became one of the most visually extraordinary centres of art in the world.
Dates
Online Course: 3, 10, 17 May 2028 Wednesdays, 4pm GMT
Venice Experience: 26 & 27 May 2028 Friday & Saturday, 9:30am-5pm
Fee
Online course €380 - 3×1-hour lectures preparing each city (collectors, context, art history framework)
Venice experience only (2 days) €1950 Lecturer-led immersive museum + collection-focused city experience
Online + Venice experience (combined package) €2,450 Full pre-study + guided on-site immersion for one city
Lecturer’s Biography
Aliki Braine
Born in Paris in 1976, Aliki Braine studied at The Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford, The Slade School of Fine Art, London, and The Courtauld Institute, where she was awarded a distinction for her master's in 17th-century painting. Aliki has been a regular lecturer at the National Gallery since 2001 and teaches at the Wallace Collection, Courtauld Gallery, and The Arts Society. She is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Fine Art Photography at the University of the Arts London. Aliki is also a practicing artist who regularly exhibits her photographic work internationally.
Publications & Exhibitions
Books
Art; The Whole Story, Thames and Hudson (2010)
501 Artists, Barons Publishing (2007)
1001 Paintings to See Before You Die, New Burlington Books (2006)
Reviews
Robert Shore, Beg, Steal and Borrow; Artists Against Originality, Elephant Books (2017)
Pauline Martin, L’Évidence, le vide, la vie; La photographie face à ses lacunes, Ithaque Editions (2017)
Brady Wilks, Alternative Photographic Processes: Crafting Handmade Images, Focal Press (2015)
Robert Shore, Post-Photography: The Artist With a Camera, Laurence King Pub (2014)
Exhibitions
‘Veronica Bailey & Aliki Braine: Cross-Reference', dalla Rosa Gallery, London (2018)
‘Wilful Damage’, Galerie Raum Mit Licht, Vienna, Austria (2011)
‘Les Evidences du Réel; La photographie face à ses lacunes’, Musée d'art de Pully, Lausanne, Switzerland (2017)
‘Material Light’, Kulturni Centar, Belgrade, Serbia (2015)
