The Renaissance at Home

The Italian Renaissance was not just about magnificent architecture and ambitious painting on a vast scale. The period saw an equally remarkable transformation in the domestic interior. As the cities of the northern Italian peninsula benefited from an economic boom, newly wealthy merchants and bankers spent lavishly on objects for their urban and their country palaces. Demand for decorated objects inspired novel production techniques such as maiolica and intarsia. Rituals and etiquette of entertaining and dining became increasingly elaborate and called for furnishings and tableware to match. New types of objects made to celebrate and to commemorate life events such as marriage and childbirth, and to enhance everyday religious devotion, incorporated talismans and motifs that tell us much about contemporary life. In lectures and gallery talks, using the unrivalled collection in the V&A Renaissance galleries, this study day offers an introduction to the art and the objects of domestic life in Renaissance Italy.

Suitable for participants aged 18 or over.