Library Exhibit Talk on Renaissance Venice

The role of imagery in the governance of Renaissance Venice will be explored in an exhibit talk sponsored by the Yale Law Library. Christopher W. Platts will speak on "Representing the Law in Renaissance Venice: Images of Authority from the Reigns of Doges Leonardo Loredan (1501–21) and Andrea Gritti (1523–38)" on November 11, 2016, at 1 pm in Room 121 of the Yale Law School.

Platts co-curated the Law Library's current exhibition, "Representing the Law in the Most Serene Republic: Images of Authority from Renaissance Venice," with Mike Widener, the Law Library's rare book librarian. The exhibit is on display through December 16, 2016, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, on Level L2 of the Sterling Law Building.

The exhibition draws on the outstanding collection of Italian law books in the Law Library's Rare Book Collection, along with drawings and medals from the Yale University Art Gallery and reproductions from the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. A catalogue of the exhibition is available online.

Platts is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art Department at Yale. His dissertation treats the development of Venetian Gothic painting during the early fourteenth century. Before Yale he trained in art history at Harvard and the Courtauld Institute in London, and at Yale he took an MPhil in Medieval Studies. The Law Library exhibit is not his first. At the Getty Museum in Los Angeles he conceived and co-curated the 2015 exhibition "Renaissance Splendors from the Northern Italian Courts."