36 DOT - V

V was fairly set in stone with Venetian or Vitra written down as possibilities. Vitra was supposed to represent Bauhaus era chairs because I went to the Vitra design museum in Switzerland and they had a lot of lovely modernism, however, upon further I found that Vitra itself is only inspired by Bauhaus era and hold a large archive of chairs for inspiration and because the founders were collectors.

Therefore it was back to Venetian type, I know I touched on this field a little earlier on in the series as I went for serif humanism for my H but Venetian typography refers more especially to the renaissance perspective from one of its birthplaces Venice.

Also known as Antiqua, Venetian spring up in the late 1400s, replacing blackletter as a standardised typestyle that imitated handwriting. It was of uniform thickness and thus appeared quite dark on paper. The humanist writing of Italian scholars of the Renaissance served as a model for what is now known as the Venetian style.

Nicolas Jenson's printing workshop, set up in 1468, is widely respected as being the formal birthplace of Venetian style. His first typeface was used in De Evangelica Praeparatione in 1470. Jenson died in 1480, but held a great legacy and sparked a genre of typography still commonplace today.  

It is easy to recognize Venetian types, not just from the uniform thickness and semi-calligraphic look, but also by the small x-height, small counters, tall ascenders, sloped cross-bar on the "e", the negative axis on the "o", and two roof serifs on the M.

In a bit to try and remove this submission from the similar genre of Humanism, previously used for H, I decided to dig down into the etiquette of its display specifically in Venice as a means of setting the background and tone of the composition. For this reason, I looked into Venetian woodcutting which was a means of printing a letter onto parchment via an inked piece of wood. The ornate decorative backgrounds contrast the uniform strokes perfectly and give a nice sense of back and foreground. 

    

These lead into my sketches and then subsequently some digital development. Eventually replacing the drawn decorative background with a renaissance painting attempting to maximise negative space and use the V as a customised human frame for the background.  

The eventual letterform was designed to merge with its border as one holistically satisfying piece that appears slightly three dimensional due to the cutouts that mimic woodcut type. Some embellishments were also added both to play with the negative space on the split of the V and to punctuate the slightly smaller space to the right-hand side. Any aims of creating a symmetrical form were ditched as they looked a bit unbalanced with the slight discrepancy of weight between the left and right branches, designed to show the presence of the human hand in the piece. The painting is, of course, a Venetian classic that fits perfectly in the negative space left by the letter. This felt like a more organic portrayal of the woodcuts instead of trying to pastiche the decorative carvings as of course has a very strong link to Venice which was essential. The specific work is called The Assumption by iconic Renaissance painter Titian and was set up on the high altar of the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Titian finished the monumental altarpiece, which measures 6.6 by 3.4 metres, in 1518 after two years of masterful application of oil creating an atmospheric piece with a clear hierarchy towards the upwards and central depiction of heaven. The piece depicts the Virgin Mary being assumed into heaven. God the Father towers overhead, flanked by two angels. One of the angels holds a green crown, the symbol of earthly death, while the other bears the golden crown of heaven.

My second tile then logically wanted to be a little less complicated so I got an image of fabric in a similar colour to the Virgin Marys tunic and gave it some notice to reduce the contrast a little. 

Caption:

"V is for Venetian - originating from Renaissance Venice, Venetian type is characterised by its near-uniform thickness and semi-calligraphic form. Often woodcut and here displayed over the top of a Titiano Vecellio oil painting of the Virgin Mary transcending into heaven."