03/01/2023
**UPCOMING CONFERENCE**
Interested in hearing about Stuart-Venetian relations and cultural exchange? Come along to an upcoming conference and Evensong on the Stuart Serenissima, taking place on 21 January 2023 in Cambridge.
The conference is from 9.30-17.00 at Trinity College Winstanley Lecture Hall, followed by an Evensong at 18.00 in King’s College Chapel. Registration is FREE **but essential**. Tea and coffee breaks will be provided throughout the day. A buffet lunch at Trinity College will be available at a cost of £16.50 per person.
Registration, program, and further information: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stuart-serenissima-anglo-venetian-cultural-exchange-in-the-17th-century-tickets-461909763537
For those who cannot attend in person, the conference will be streamed via Teams. Please contact [email protected] directly for a link. Those who plan to watch online do not need to register on Eventbrite.
**DETAILS**
The seventeenth century has long been recognised as an especially fertile moment for Anglo-Venetian cultural exchange. The Italian historian Enrico de Mas thought it so significant that he proposed the label ‘Seicento Anglo-Veneto’ to define the period. In recent years, there has been a flurry of new studies on Anglo-Venetian relations from multiple disciplinary perspectives (including Art History, Musicology, History, and Literary Studies). This growing body of research raises new questions about the period as a whole. What was it about Stuart England that engendered such sustained interest in the Republic of Venice? How did the relationship between England and Venice differ in the seventeenth century from the centuries that preceded and followed? Does the term ‘Seicento Anglo-Veneto’ retain its value? If so, how should we define it, and when did it start and end?
The era started with a renewal of diplomatic relations with Venice at the accession of James VI & I in 1603 – part of a wider rapprochement with Catholic Europe following the death of the excommunicated Elizabeth I. But this period was also characterised by continued deep suspicions of Catholicism in England, which brought immense political upheaval and culminated in the rejection of Stuart heirs in favour of the Protestant Hanoverians in 1714. As Venice was a Catholic country with its own fraught relationship to the Papacy, the story of English relations with the Republic cuts across expected geopolitical and confessional binaries. Moreover, English commerce had begun to threaten the Republic’s hegemony over Eastern Mediterranean trade relations in an age of European expansion and proto-globalisation; the two polities had also become rival maritime empires.
A conference and Anglo-Venetian choral evensong, exploring connections between England and Venice in the seventeenth century.
