Beadwork is the art or craft of attaching beads to one another by stringing them onto a thread or thin wire with a sewing or beading needle or sewing them to cloth. Beads are produced in a diverse range of materials, shapes, and sizes, and vary by the kind of art produced. Most often, beadwork is a form of personal adornment, but it also commonly makes up other artworks.
Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers. In 2020, around 258,685 people resided in greater Venice or the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 55,000 live in the historical island city of Venice and the rest on the mainland (terraferma). Together with the cities of Padua and Treviso, Venice is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.
Murano is a series of islands linked by bridges in the Venetian Lagoon, northern Italy. It lies about 1.5 kilometres north of Venice and measures about 1.5 km (1 mi) across with a population of just over 5,000. It is famous for its glass making. It was once an independent comune, but is now a frazione of the comune of Venice.
Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble with the aid of a blowpipe. A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer. A lampworker manipulates glass with the use of a torch on a smaller scale, such as in producing precision laboratory glassware out of borosilicate glass.
Antonio Vivarini was an Italian painter of the early Renaissance-late Gothic period, who worked mostly in the Republic of Venice. He is probably the earliest of a family of painters, which was descended from a family of glassworkers active in Murano. The painting dynasty included his younger brother Bartolomeo and Antonio's son Alvise Vivarini.
Venetian glass is glassware made in Venice, typically on the island of Murano near the city. Traditionally it is made with a soda–lime "metal" and is typically elaborately decorated, with various "hot" glass-forming techniques, as well as gilding, enamel, or engraving. Production has been concentrated on the Venetian island of Murano since the 13th century. Today Murano is known for its art glass, but it has a long history of innovations in glassmaking in addition to its artistic fame—and was Europe's major center for luxury glass from the High Middle Ages to the Italian Renaissance. During the 15th century, Murano glassmakers created cristallo—which was almost transparent and considered the finest glass in the world. Murano glassmakers also developed a white-colored glass that looked like porcelain. They later became Europe's finest makers of mirrors.
A plaquette is a small low relief sculpture in bronze or other materials. These were popular in the Italian Renaissance and later. They may be commemorative, but especially in the Renaissance and Mannerist periods were often made for purely decorative purposes, with often crowded scenes from religious, historical or mythological sources. Only one side is decorated, giving the main point of distinction with the artistic medal, where both sides are normally decorated. Most are rectangular or circular, but other shapes are found, as in the example illustrated. Typical sizes range from about two inches up to about seven across a side, or as the diameter, with the smaller end or middle of that range more common. They "typically fit within the hand", as Grove puts it. At the smaller end they overlap with medals, and at the larger they begin to be called plaques.
Giorgio da Sebenico or Giorgio Orsini or Juraj Dalmatinac was a Venetian sculptor and architect from Dalmatia, who worked mainly in Sebenico, and in the city of Ancona, then a maritime republic.
Chevron beads are special glass beads; the first specimens of this type were created by glass bead makers in Venice and Murano, Italy, toward the end of the 14th century. They may also be referred to as rosetta, or star beads. The term rosetta first appeared in the inventory of the Barovier Glass works in Murano, in 1496, in context with beads as well as with other glass objects.
Lino Tagliapietra is a Venetian glass artist who has also worked extensively in the United States. As a teacher and mentor, he has played a key role in the international exchange of glassblowing processes and techniques between the principal American centers and his native Murano, "but his influence is also apparent in China, Japan, and Australia—and filters far beyond any political or geographic boundaries."
Giovanna Garzoni (1600–1670) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. She began her career painting religious, mythological, and allegorical subjects but gained fame for her botanical subjects painted in tempera and watercolour. Her works were praised for their precision and balance and for the exactitude of the objects depicted. More recently, her paintings have been seen to have female bodily associations and proto-feminist sentiments. She combined objects very inventively, including Asian porcelain, exotic seashells, and botanical specimens. She was often called the Chaste Giovanna due to her vow to remain a virgin. Scholars have speculated Garzoni may have been influenced by fellow botanical painter Jacopo Ligozzi although details about Garzoni's training are unknown.
The Hofkirche is a Gothic church located in the Altstadt section of Innsbruck, Austria. The church was built in 1553 by Emperor Ferdinand I (1503–1564) as a memorial to his grandfather Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519), whose cenotaph within boasts a remarkable collection of German Renaissance sculpture. The church also contains the tomb of Andreas Hofer, Tyrol's national hero.
Flo Perkins is an American glass artist currently working and residing in the Pojoaque Valley north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art (1974), Master of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles (1981), and she studied under renowned Italian master glass blower Lino Tagliapietra. Her work can be found in several museum collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Albuquerque Museum and the Racine Art Museum as well as numerous public and private collections.
A glossary of terms used in glass art
The history of glass-making dates back to at least 3,600 years ago in Mesopotamia. However, some writers claim that they may have been producing copies of glass objects from Egypt. Other archaeological evidence suggests that the first true glass was made in coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or Egypt. The earliest known glass objects, of the mid 2,000 BCE, were beads, perhaps initially created as the accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing. Glass products remained a luxury until the disasters that overtook the late Bronze Age civilizations seemingly brought glass-making to a halt.
Barovier & Toso is an Italian company that specializes in Venetian glass.
The Seguso family has been dedicated to the art of Murano glass in Venice since May 3, 1397. Seguso is one of the most esteemed, historical and respected glass manufacturers on the island, and among the largest glass furnaces in Murano, which has a few, homonymous furnaces. Glass made by the Seguso furnace can be found in over 75 museums worldwide, such as MOMA in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Today, Seguso is known for its high end Venetian glass objects, lighting, accessories and custom installations. Seguso glass has been made for the Pope, Royalty and numerous luxury interiors throughout the world.
Domitilla Harding is an Italian designer and artist.
Luke Syson is an English museum curator and art historian. Since 2019, he has been the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, prior to which he held positions at the British Museum (1991–2002), the Victoria and Albert Museum (2002–2003), the National Gallery (2003–2012) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015–2019). In 2011 he curated the highly acclaimed Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery: Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. That same year, he played a pivotal role in the controversial authentication of the Salvator Mundi.
The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice and his Comrades is an illuminated manuscript commissioned as a diplomatic gift to Giovanni Cossa by the Venetian general Jacopo Antonio Marcello (1399-1464). The smallest miniatures are attributed to an unknown Lombard artist in the International Gothic style and the larger ones to Jacopo Bellini or Giovanni Bellini. It passed through several owners before in 1785 being acquired by the collection now known as the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris.
