From Velazquez to Murillo

In the mid- to late 16th and early 17th centuries Seville achieved a monopoly on sea-faring trade with the Americas. The city became known as a centre of world-wide commerce and as the most important port in the Mediterranean, accentuating the decline of Venice and Genoa, which had already been surpassed, first by Antwerp and later by Amsterdam. Seville became the most cosmopolitan city in Spain, populated by foreigners from all over the world: Flemings, Italians, Germans, French, subjects or not of an empire already at its twilight. Conquests and invasions were not new to the region or to a large part of the southern peninsula, where visible signs remained of the intermingling of varied cultures: of the Phoenicians, of the Carthaginians and of the long Roman rule, out of which Spain did not fully emerged until 1492

Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
27 March – 27 June 1993

Information
Institute of Art History
Island of San Giorgio Maggiore – 30124 Venice
tel. +39 041 2710230
fax +39 041 5205842
e-mail: arte@cini.it

in collaboration with Junta de Andalucia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Società Olivetti