28 What Was the Dominant Concern in the Art of Venice?

Fine art from the Republic of Venice

Venetian painting was a major strength in Italian Renaissance painting and beyond. Beginning with the work of Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516) and his blood brother Gentile Bellini (c. 1429–1507) and their workshops, the major artists of the Venetian schoolhouse included Giorgione (c. 1477–1510), Titian (c. 1489–1576), Tintoretto (1518–1594), Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) and Jacopo Bassano (1510–1592) and his sons. Considered to give primacy to colour over line,^[1] the tradition of the Venetian school contrasted with the Mannerism prevalent in the rest of Italia. The Venetian style exerted great influence upon the subsequent development of Western painting.^[two]

Past chance, the main phases of Venetian painting fit rather neatly into the centuries. The glories of the 16th century were followed by a great autumn-off in the 17th, but an unexpected revival in the 18th,^[3] when Venetian painters enjoyed great success around Europe, as Baroque painting turned to Rococo. This had ended completely by the extinction of the Republic of Venice in 1797 and since then, though much painted past others, Venice has not had a continuing style or tradition of its own.^[4]

Though a long decline in the political and economic power of the Democracy began before 1500, Venice at that appointment remained "the richest, most powerful, and near populous Italian city"^[5] and controlled significant territories on the mainland, known as the terraferma, which included several modest cities who contributed artists to the Venetian school, in item Padua, Brescia and Verona. The Commonwealth'due south territories too included Istria, Dalmatia and the islands at present off the Croatian coast, who besides contributed. Indeed, "the major Venetian painters of the sixteenth century were rarely natives of the city" itself,^[half-dozen] and some more often than not worked in the Democracy'southward other territories, or farther afield.^[7]

The rest of Italy tended to ignore or underestimate Venetian painting; Giorgio Vasari's neglect of the school in the starting time edition of his Lives of the Near Fantabulous Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in 1550 was so conspicuous that he realized he needed to visit Venice for extra material in his 2nd edition of 1568.^[8] In dissimilarity, foreigners, for whom Venice was often the beginning major Italian city visited, always had a great appreciation for it and, later on Venice itself, the best collections are at present in the big European museums rather than other Italian cities. At the top, princely, level, Venetian artists tended to exist the most sought-subsequently for commissions abroad, from Titian onwards, and in the 18th century almost of the best painters spent significant periods abroad, generally with smashing success.^[9]

Media and techniques [edit]

Venetian painters were among the first Italians to use oil painting,^[ten] and also to paint on sail rather than wooden panels. As a maritime ability good quality canvas was always available in Venice, which was also beginning to run rather short of timber. The large size of many Venetian altarpieces (for example Bellini'southward San Zaccaria Altarpiece of 1505, originally on console) and other paintings encouraged this, as large console surfaces were expensive and difficult to construct.

The Venetians did not develop a "native school" of fresco painting, oftentimes relying on Padua and Verona, Venetian from 1405, to supply painters (notably Paolo Veronese). They continued to add gold footing mosaics to San Marco long after the rest of Europe had abandoned the medium. Somewhat perversely, they were happy to add frescos to the exterior of palazzi, where they deteriorated fifty-fifty faster than elsewhere in Italy, and accept merely left a few shadowy traces, but autonomously from the Doge'due south Palace, used them little in other interior settings. The rapid deterioration of external frescos is frequently attributed to the seaside Venetian climate, possibly wrongly.^[eleven] Probably partly for this reason, until the 18th century (with rare exceptions) Venetian churches were never given a coherent scheme of decoration, but feature a "rich profusion of unlike objects in a picturesque confusion", often with much wall infinite taken up by grandiose wall-tombs.^[12]

Compared to Florentine painting, Venetian painters by and large used and have left fewer drawings.^[xiii] Perchance for this reason, and despite Venice being Italia's largest centre of printing and publishing throughout the Italian Renaissance and for a considerable time afterwards, the Venetian contribution to printmaking is less than might be expected. Like Raphael, Titian experimented with prints, using specialist collaborators, but to a lesser extent. The engraver Agostino Veneziano moved to Rome in his twenties, and Giulio Campagnola and his adoptive son Domenico Campagnola are the main 16th-century artists who concentrated on printmaking and remained in the Republic of Venice, obviously generally in Padua.^[14] The situation was different in the 18th century, when both Canaletto and the 2 Tiepolos were significant etchers, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, though famous for his views of Rome, continued to describe himself every bit a Venetian for decades after moving to Rome.^[15]

Early development, to 1500 [edit]

14th century [edit]

Paolo Veneziano, probably active between about 1320 and 1360, is the first major figure we tin name, and "the founder of the Venetian school". He seems to have introduced the "composite altarpiece" of many minor scenes inside an elaborate gilded wooden frame, which remained dominant in churches for two centuries. These transferred to painting the class of the huge, precious stone-encrusted and very famous Pala d'Oro behind the main chantry in San Marco, the enamel panels for which had been made in, and afterwards looted from, Constantinople for successive doges.^[16] In fact, i of Veneziano's commissions was to paint "weekday" panels to fit over the Pala, which was only revealed for feast-days. His style shows no influence from Giotto, active a generation earlier.^[17]

The earliest form of Italian Renaissance painting was first seen in Venice when Guariento di Arpo from Padua was deputed to paint frescos in the Doge'south Palace in 1365.

15th century [edit]

The traditional Italo-Byzantine style persisted until around 1400 when the ascendant manner began to shift towards International Gothic, with Jacobello del Fiore a transitional effigy and the tendency, which continued in the rather charming work of Michele Giambono (c. 1400 – c. 1462), who also designed mosaics for San Marco. Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello were both in Venice during much of the years 1405–1409, painting frescos (now lost) in the Doge's Palace and elsewhere.^[eighteen]

By the mid-century, when the Florentine quattrocento was fully mature, Venice still lagged well behind. Maybe the nearly visible work in Venice in the Tuscan style was a mosaic Expiry of the Virgin, in the Capella Mascoli in San Marco, next to a design by Gambono, though other works in the city included frescos past Andrea Castagno.^[19] The Vivarini and Bellini families were the ii major dynasties of 15th-century painters in the city, and the Vivarini, though in the terminate more bourgeois, were initially the first to embrace styles from the south.^[20]

Carlo Crivelli (c. 1430–1495) was born in the city, simply spent his mature career outside the Republic's territories. His style – highly individual, rather linear, and somewhat neurotic – had no influence on later Venetian painting.^[21]

From the belatedly-15th century, Venetian painting adult through links with Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) (from nearby Padua) and of a visit by Antonello da Messina (c. 1430–1479), who introduced the oil painting technique of Early Netherlandish painting, probably acquired through his training in Naples.^[22] Some other external factor was the visit by Leonardo da Vinci, who was particularly influential on Giorgione.^[23]

During his long career, Giovanni Bellini has been credited with creating the Venetian style.^[2] After before works, such every bit his Madonna of the Small Trees (c. 1487), which largely reflect the linear approach of Mantegna, he subsequently developed a softer manner, where glowing colours are used to stand for form and advise an atmospheric haze. Applying this approach in his San Zaccaria Altarpiece (1505), the loftier viewpoint, the uncluttered and interconnected figures arranged in space, and the subtle gestures all combine to form a tranquil yet imperial image.^[24] With such works he has been described as reaching the Loftier Renaissance^[24] ethics, and certainly expresses the key distinctive factors of the Venetian school.

Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1465–1525/1526) was a pupil of Bellini, with a distinct mode. He was rather conservative, and ignored the High Renaissance style developing in the later part of his career, indeed retaining a Belatedly Gothic poetry in many works. With Gentile Bellini, many of Carpaccio's big works give us famous scenes of contemporary life in the city; at this period such views were unusual. He was one of the first painters to generally utilise canvas rather than panels. In that location were a number of other painters who connected essentially quattrocento styles in the two decades afterwards 1500; Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459–c. 1517) is the nearly significant.^[25]

16th century [edit]

Giorgione and Titian [edit]

Titian'south early on and dramatically composed Pesaro Madonna (1526), with rich Venetian colouring

Giorgione and Titian were both apprentices at Bellini's workshop. They collaborated on numerous paintings, and their styles could exist then similar that it is difficult to conclusively assign authorship. A speciality of Giorgione'southward were idyllic Idealized scenes, with an example being his Three Philosophers, and this element was adopted by his chief Bellini, who increased the landscape in his many Madonnas,^[26] and by Titian in work like Pastoral Concert (1508) and Sacred and Profane Dearest (1515). This emphasis on nature as a setting was a major contribution of the Venetian Schoolhouse.

Titian, through his long and productive life, with a wide variety of themes and subjects was the most influential and greatest of all the Venetian painters.^{[27] [28]} His early on Pesaro Madonna (1519–1528) shows a bold new limerick for such a traditional religious subject,^[29] putting the focal bespeak of the Madonna off from the centre and on a steep diagonal. Colours are used to enliven the painting, but also to unify the composition, such as by the large red flag on the left counterbalancing the red in the Madonna^[30] and such good and sumptuous use of colour became a authentication of the Venetian way.

Titian'southward reclining Venus of Urbino (1538), with a lapdog on the correct, balancing the face on the left, is an erotic work.

Although pre-figured by the Sleeping Venus (completed past Titian later on Giorgione'due south death in 1510) Titian is credited with establishing the reclining female nude every bit an important subgenre in fine art. Using mythological subjects, works such as the Venus of Urbino (1538) richly depict the fabrics and other textures, and utilize a composition that is carefully controlled past organising colours. As an instance, in this painting the diagonal of the nude is matched by the opposite diagonal between the red of the cushions in the forepart with the crimson skirts of the woman in the background.^[31]

With other Venetian painters such as Palma Vecchio, Titian established the genre of half-length portraits of imaginary beautiful women, often given rather vague mythological or allegorical titles, with attributes to match. The artists apparently did nothing to discourage the belief that these were modelled for by the almost celebrated of Venice's famous courtesans, and sometimes this may have been the case.

Titian connected to paint religious subjects with growing intensity, and mythological subjects, which produced many of his most famous later on works, above all the poesie series for Philip Two of Spain.

With such paintings, readily transported by virtue of being oils on canvas, Titian became famous, and helped constitute a reputation for Venetian art. Possession of such paintings symbolised luxurious wealth,^[32] and for his skills in portraiture he was sought by powerful, rich individuals, such as in his long relationship working for Emperor Charles V and Philip II of Espana.^{[33] [34]}

Afterward Giorgione [edit]

Miracle of the Slave (1548), i of a trio of Tintoretto works on St Mark, the patron saint of Venice

The long dominance of Titian in the Venetian painting scene could exist a trouble for other ambitious Venetian painters. Palma Vecchio (c. 1480–1528) was slightly older than Titian, and patently content to follow in the wake of the two great innovators; many easel paintings long attributed to Titian may really exist past him.^[35] His great-nephew, Palma il Giovane (1548/50–1628), Titian's pupil, much later played a like office, using the styles of Tintoretto and Veronese.^[36]

Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480–1556/57) was built-in in the city, simply spent most of his mature career in the terraferma, especially Bergamo. He painted religious subjects and portraits in a highly individual and sometimes eccentric style, which despite their rich colouring take a restlessness that is at odds with the Venetian mainstream.^[37]

Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1485–1547) accepted a good commission in Rome in 1511, and never worked in Venice over again. Just in Rome he soon establish that Michelangelo was equally ascendant, and began a long and complicated relationship with him; eventually they fell out. His fashion combined Venetian colour and Roman classical grandeur, and did something to spread Venetian mode to the new middle of Italian painting.^[38]

Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), from Verona in the Venetian terraferma, came to Venice in 1553, one time he was established, commissioned to paint huge fresco schemes for the Doge's Palace, and stayed for the rest of his career.

Although Tintoretto is sometimes classified equally a Mannerist artist,^[39] he likewise incorporates Venetian and individualistic aspects. In his Phenomenon of the Slave (1548), the Mannerist features include the crowded scene, the twisting linking of figures (every bit in the central figures, from the foreshortened slave on the basis to the miraculous figure of St. Mark in the sky, through the turbaned, grey-robed effigy), and the drama in the gestures and poses. But the colouring maintains the warm reds, golds and greens of the Venetian school, and the figures are arranged in real three-dimensional infinite, in contrast to the more compressed compositions of many Mannerist works, and with its intensely theatrical, stage-similar display his painting is a forerunner of the Baroque.^[40]

Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510–1592), followed past the 4 sons in his workshop, developed an eclectic way, with influences not but from Titian but a range of other painters, which he and so utilized for decades from his small hometown of Bassano del Grappa, some 65 km from Venice. His sons continued to work in it long later his death; Baroque painting was very slow to appeal to the Venetian market.^[41]

These are a few of the most outstanding in the nifty number of artists in the Venetian tradition, many originally from outside the Republic'southward territory.

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17th century [edit]

The 17th century was a low point in Venetian painting, especially in the offset decades when Palma Giovane, Domenico Tintoretto (the son), the Bassani sons, Padovanino and others continued to turn out works substantially in the styles of the previous century. The almost pregnant artists working in the city were all immigrants: Domenico Fetti (c. 1589–1623) from Rome, Bernardo Strozzi (c. 1581–1644) from Genoa, and the northward High german Johann Liss (c. 1590? – c. 1630). All were aware of the Baroque painting of Rome or Genoa, and in unlike means adult styles reflecting and uniting these and traditional Venetian handling of paint and colour.^[43]

New directions were taken by 2 private painters, Francesco Maffei from Vicenza (c. 1600–60) and Sebastiano Mazzoni from Florence (1611–78), who both worked mainly in Venice or the terraferma in unorthodox and gratis Baroque styles, both marked by the Venetian trait of bravura brushwork.^[44]

Visits to Venice by the leading Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano in 1653 and 1685 left a body of work in the latest Baroque style, and had an energising effect on younger artists such as Giovan Battista Langetti, Pietro Liberi, Antonio Molinari, and the German language Johann Carl Loth.^[45]

18th century [edit]

At the stop of the 17th century things began to change dramatically, and for much of the 18th century Venetian painters were in remarkable demand all over Europe, even as the city itself declined and was a much reduced market, in particular for large works;^[46] "Venetian art had become, by the mid-eighteenth century, a article primarily for export."^[47] The first meaning artist in the new way was Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734), from Belluno in the terraferma, who trained in Venice earlier leaving nether a cloud. He returned for a decade in 1698, then again at the end of his life, later time in England, France and elsewhere. Cartoon particularly on Veronese, he developed a low-cal, airy, Bizarre style that foreshadowed the painting of most of the balance of the century, and was a great influence on young Venetian painters.^[48]

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini was influenced by Ricci, and worked with his nephew Marco Ricci, simply too past the later Roman Baroque. His career was mostly spent away from the city, working in several countries north of the Alps, where the new Venetian mode was profoundly in demand for decorating houses. It was actually slower to be accustomed in Venice itself. Jacopo Amigoni (a. 1685–1752) was another travelling Venetian decorator of palaces, who was also popular for proto-Rococo portraits. He ended as a court painter in Madrid.^[49] Rosalba Carriera (1675–1757), the most significant Venetian woman artist, was purely a portraitist, mostly in pastel, where she was an important technical innovator, preparing the way for this important 18th-century form. She accomplished great international success, in detail in London, Paris and Vienna.^[50]

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) is the last great Venetian painter, who was likewise in need all over Europe, and painted 2 of his largest fresco schemes in the Würzburg Residence in northern Bavaria (1750–53) and the Regal Palace of Madrid, where he died in 1770.^[51]

The final flowering also included the varied talents of Giambattista Pittoni, Canaletto, Giovan Battista Piazzetta, and Francesco Guardi, every bit well as Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, the about distinguished of several of the family unit to train with and help Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. ^[52]

Canaletto, his pupil and nephew Bernardo Bellotto, Michele Marieschi, and Guardi specialized in landscape painting, painting 2 distinct types: firstly vedute or detailed and mostly authentic panoramic views, ordinarily of the city itself, many bought by wealthy northerners making the Grand Tour. Few Canalettos remain in Venice. The other type was the capriccio, a fanciful imaginary scene, often of classical ruins, with staffage figures. Marco Ricci was the first Venetian painter of capricci, and the form received a concluding evolution past Guardi, who produced many freely painted scenes set in the lagoon, with water, boats and land in "paintings of slap-up tonal delicacy, whose poetic mood is tinged with nostalgia".^[53]

Pietro Longhi (c. 1702–1785) was Venetian painting'southward most meaning genre painter, turning early in his career to specialize in small scenes of contemporary Venetian life, generally with an chemical element of gentle satire. He was one of the first Italian painters to mine this vein, and was also an early on painter of conversation piece portraits. Dissimilar most Venetian artists, large numbers of lively sketches by him survive.^[54]

The death of Guardi in 1793, presently followed by the extinction of the Democracy by French Revolutionary armies in 1797, finer brought the distinctive Venetian style to an end; it had at least outlasted its rival Florence in that respect.^[55]

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Legacy [edit]

Francesco Guardi, View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Tower of Maghera, 1770s, 21.3 cm (8.three ″) x 41.3 cm (16.two ″)

The Venetian school had a bang-up influence of subsequent painting, and the history of later Western art has been described as a dialogue between the more than intellectual and sculptural/linear approach of the Florentine and Roman traditions, and the more sensual, poetic, and pleasure-seeking of the colourful Venetian school.^[56] Specifically through the presence of Titians in Espana (he was careful to avoid going in that location in person), the Venetian way influenced later Castilian art, especially in portraits, including that of Velázquez, and through Rubens was more broadly transmitted through the rest of Europe.^[57]

Venice every bit a subject for visiting artists has been extremely pop, especially from shortly after Venetian artists ceased to be meaning. Amidst the best known to oft depict the city are J.M.W. Turner, James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Claude Monet.

Meet too [edit]

• List of painters and architects of Venice

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Steer, vii-10; Martineau, 38-39, 41-43
2. ^ ^{a b} Gardner, p. 679.
3. ^ Steer, 175 describes the cause of the revival every bit "something of a mystery"; it is besides a "mystery" to Wittkower, 479.
4. ^ Steer, 208
5. ^ Freedberg, 123
6. ^ Freedberg, 123
7. ^ In the 16th century, Lorenzo Lotto, Carlo Crivelli and others; in the 18th century most major Venetian painters spent long periods away (run into below).
8. ^ Martineau, 38-39
9. ^ Martineau, 47-48
10. ^ Steer, 58-59
11. ^ Steer, 28 quoted; Penny, thirteen
12. ^ Steer, sixteen
13. ^ Martineau, 243-244
14. ^ Martineau, 303-305
15. ^ RA, 21
16. ^ Steer, 11, 15-22 (15 quoted)
17. ^ Steer, 22
18. ^ Steer, 28-33
19. ^ Steer, 35-36
20. ^ Steer, 36-43
21. ^ Steer, 43-44
22. ^ Prado Guide, p. 223.
23. ^ Prado Guide, p. 248.
24. ^ ^{a b} Gardner, p. 681.
25. ^ Steer, 66-68, 90; Freedberg, 166; Martineau, 66
26. ^ Gardner, pg. 680
27. ^ Gardner, p. 684
28. ^ Prado Guide, p. 248
29. ^ Gardner, p. 685
30. ^ Gombrich, p. 254
31. ^ Gardner, p. 686
32. ^ Prado Guide, p. 244
33. ^ Prado Guide, p. 254
34. ^ Gardner, p. 687
35. ^ Steer, 101-102
36. ^ Steer, 131, 144, 169
37. ^ Steer, 103-106; Martineau, 33, 175-182
38. ^ Steer, 92-94
39. ^ Gombrich, p. 283
40. ^ Gardner, p. 688
41. ^ Steer, 146-148, 169
42. ^ Steer, 114-116
43. ^ Steer, 169-174; Wittkower, 106-108
44. ^ Wittkower, 348; Steer, 173-174. They differ markedly in their evaluation of Maffei.
45. ^ Wittkower, 347-349; Steer, 174
46. ^ Steer, 175-177
47. ^ Steer, 201
48. ^ Steer, 176-177; Wittkower, 479-481
49. ^ Steer, 179-180
50. ^ Steer, 132
51. ^ Steer, 186-195
52. ^ Steer, 180-186; Wittkower, 481-484
53. ^ Steer, 198-208; Wittkower, 491-505
54. ^ RA, 277-278; Steer, 198; Wittkower, 496-497
55. ^ Steer, 208
56. ^ Gardner, pp. 682–683.
57. ^ Martineau, 47-48; Prado Guide, p. 118.

References [edit]

• Freedburg, Sidney J. Painting in Italy, 1500–1600, 3rd edn. 1993, Yale, ISBN 0300055870
• Gardner's: Art Through the Ages—International Edition, Brace Harcourt Jovanovich, 9th edition, 1991.
• "RA": Martineau, Jane (ed), The Genius of Venice, 1500–1600, 1983, Purple University of Arts, London.
• Martineau, Jane, and Robison, Andrew, eds., The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century, 1994, Yale University Press/Royal Academy of Arts, ISBN 0300061862 (catalogue for exhibition in London and Washington).
• Penny, Nicholas, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Book Ii, Venice 1540–1600, 2008, National Gallery Publications Ltd, ISBN 1857099133
• The Prado Guide, Ed. Maria Dolores Jimenez-Blanco, Museo National Del Prado, English second revised edition, 2009.
• Steer, John, Venetian painting: A concise history, 1970, London: Thames and Hudson (World of Fine art), ISBN 0500201013
• Wittkower, Rudolf, Art and Compages in Italy, 1600–1750, Penguin/Yale History of Art, 3rd edition, 1973, ISBN 0-xiv-056116-1

Farther reading [edit]

• Rosand, David, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, 2nd ed 1997, Cambridge UP ISBN 0521565685
• Federico Zeri, Elizabeth E. Gardner: Italian Paintings: Venetian Schoolhouse: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, (New York, N.Y.) (online)

External links [edit]

edelsteinthersibley.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_painting

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