Virtual Studiolo

FAIN: HAA-263878-19

Regents of the University of California, Irvine (Irvine, CA 92617-3066)
Deanna M. Shemek (Project Director: June 2018 to present)
Anne Elizabeth MacNeil (Co Project Director: November 2018 to July 2021)

The design and production of a 3D environment re-creating Isabella d’Este of Mantua’s (1474-1539) art and music “studiolo” for use with virtual reality headsets, laptops, and visualization walls.

The Italian Renaissance is famed for art, architecture, music, and learning. The integrated experience of these achievements is difficult to grasp, given the dispersal of physical evidence and the disciplinary confines of our learning. It is also often gendered as male. This online, virtual reality project for study of one of Renaissance Italy's most stunning art spaces and collections -- the studiolo of Isabella d'Este (1474-1539) -- will address both of these problems with cross-disciplinary tools for approaching the period through one of its most important women. Its immersive, interactive character will convey the human scale, cognitive density, and aesthetic specificity of a Renaissance art space and capture the multi-sensory complexity of interiors meant to dazzle visitors with humanist ideals. Individual and collaborative work in this environment will foster new approaches to studying and teaching the multi-media Renaissance and provide models for analogous projects in other periods.

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