Renaissance vs Venetian Glass
ルネサンス / ヴェネツィアン・グラス
Renaissance comes from Historical Styles and Venetian Glass from Vessel and Craft Techniques. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Renaissance
A movement that rediscovered ancient proportion and the human body and fixed three dimensions on a flat surface through linear perspective. Mathematics became the common language of painting and architecture, and the norms of the next five hundred years, symmetry, the classical orders and the golden ratio, were established here.
Venetian Glass
The glass made on Murano in Venice, and the forms that its material dictates. Soda glass is light and highly malleable, so shapes are drawn, twisted and applied while hot rather than cut away when cold. Opaque white lattimo and threaded filigrana run inside the body, while gilding and enamel painting sit on the surface.
| Renaissance | Venetian Glass | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 14th–16th century | 13th century– |
| Family | Historical Styles | Vessel and Craft Techniques |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | One point linear perspective / The classical orders and symmetry / Composition based on the proportions of the body / A clear triangular composition | Walls stay thin, and stems and handles arrive as drawn out lines / Threads of opaque white glass run through the clear body as nets and stripes / Cut engraving is rare, and the ornament instead sits on the surface as gilding and enamel / Small discs sliced from patterned canes are scattered across the wall |
| Best used for | Showing authority and balance through proportion itself · Building an image whose depth is constructed geometrically | Recreating the look of white threads running inside a clear body for glassware or bottle packaging · Bringing the softness of a form that was stretched rather than carved into product shapes or 3D work |
| Type | Set Roman capitals in the proportions of inscriptions. | Run lettering around the rim as a thin gilded stroke. Never cut the letters into the surface. |
| Composition | Steady figures and elements on a central axis and a triangle. | Keep the vessel axially symmetrical while stretching only stem and rim outward. Ornament travels as a band, not as a filled panel. |
| Material | Move from tempera to oil and build up transparent layers. | Form thin, assuming a glass that is light and stretches. Bed white threads into the clear body and finish the outside with gold and opaque enamel. |
| Caution | Pasting on columns and symmetry gives you stage scenery. Decide one basis for the proportions and carry it through the whole. | Adding the weight and cut facets of lead glass removes the reason the shape was stretched in the first place. |