Introduction  |  Course Structure  |  Assessment  |  How to apply  

Introduction 

For the art historian, Venice is the most extraordinary city in the world. Venice's visual culture represents a unique fusion of East and West, reflecting its role as Europe's trading entrepot. Venetian artists responded to the city's acquatic setting in their use of colour and light; its architects built palaces and churches that defied the muddy foundations of the lagoon.  In the Renaissance, Venetian craftsman produced luxury goods that were exported across the known world: Murano glass, silk and velvets, printed books, and goldsmiths' work. Since the Renaissance, Venice has provided a constant point of visual reference, from Turner and Ruskin to modern cinema and contemporary art.   

The Venice stream of the MA degree offers an unparalleled introduction at postgraduate level to the art and culture of Venice. We take you to Venice for ten weeks in the Autumn term, where you will follow an intensive programme of study at Warwick's dedicated teaching base in the city. As well as engaging with Venetian art per se, the course uses the example of Venice to interrogate some of the broader issues in Art History today: aesthetics and perception; cultural interaction and the arts; the spatial contexts of art; architecture and urbanism; and the arts within a global society.   

Course structure

The course opens with a term based in Venice studying Italian Renaissance art in situ.  There you will benefit from Warwick’s 40-year long association with the city, and from the expertise of our specialists in Venetian art and culture.  Seminars are combined with site-visits, study sessions in Venetian workshops (for example a traditional printers, or a bronze foundry), and behind-the-scenes visits to Venetian museum stores. We teach as much as possible in front of original objects, or within period settings. 

During the Autumn term in Venice, students take the following two core courses: 

Venetian luxury and display  

Venetian art and its histories

For further information on Warwick's teaching and research activities in Venice, visit the Venice Programme section of our website.

In the Spring term in Warwick students take two further modules:

           Then and Now: Displaying the Renaissance

 Art History and its Methods

In the Summer term and over the summer vacation, students work closely with their tutors on researching and writing their dissertation on a topic related to their studies on the course. Many students go on to publish their dissertation research in a variety of contexts. Previous Dissertation Titles.

The MA degree can also be studied part-time, see the MA course FAQs page for more details. 

Assessment

There are no exams on the MA. Our aim is to develop your research and writing skills to the point where you are able to present articulate, cogent, complex, and original arguments based on your research of images, buildings, artefacts, documents and other primary sources.

To this end each individual module is assessed through a 5,000 word extended essay, written over the vacation following the term in which you take the module. You therefore write four essays, two over Christmas following the two modules you study in Venice in autumn, and two over Easter following the two modules you take in the spring term (one of which is the core Art History and is Methods module).

The four module essays, and the extensive feedback you will receive for them, prepare you to write and research your dissertation, which you work on over the late spring and summer to submit in September. During this time you will receive close one-to-one tuition from members of staff to guide you through your programme of research and writing up. The dissertation is 15,000 words long.

The final mark for the degree is calculated according to the following weighting: Dissertation at 34%, each of the four module essays at 16.5%.

How to apply

It is easy to apply for the Venice course via the University of Warwick's standard online postgraduate application form. Please indicate in your personal statement that it is the Venice course that you wish to apply for.