I think you can base your page on the list context because it contains more functionalities than the item view.
Then, just add in your template file the rendering of a item in a sub-template file.
The view class will load the required datas with a item model instanced for that.
These are only the baselines.
To render a HTML template, you can create a layout file (used with JLayout class). It permits to render a headless template file. So you can call the HTML anywhere.
I really like the layouts files. I think Cook will use them much more. (Agility)