Cleo Nisse

PhD candidate Cleo Nisse received a Casa Muraro Summer Research Fellowship to spend one month in Venice surveying surviving fifteenth-century canvas paintings in Venice and the Veneto in order to compile a database of information and photographs on the pieces. This will form the foundation of Cleo’s dissertation, which investigates why Venetian painters adopted canvas and what the artistic ramifications were of the almost total shift in Venice away from panel painting, frescoes, and other types of supports. Cleo’s research methodology is fundamentally object-based, as the great proportion of fifteenth-century Venetian paintings on canvas remain in the lagoon city. In addition to close observation of the paintings themselves, Cleo is also using her fellowship to conduct research in the conservation archives of the Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo museale della città di Venezia e Comuni della gronda lagunare (SSPV) and the conservation archives of the heritage non-profit Save Venice, Inc.