Venetian painting
Venetian painting was a major force in Italian Renaissance painting and beyond. Beginning with the work of Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516) and his brother Gentile Bellini (c. 1429–1507) and their workshops, the major artists of the Venetian school 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 Italy. The Venetian style exerted great influence upon the subsequent development of Western painting.[2]
By chance, the main phases of Venetian painting fit rather neatly into the centuries. The glories of the 16th century were followed by a great fall-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 by 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 Republic began before 1500, Venice at that date remained "the richest, most powerful, and most populous Italian city"[5] and controlled significant territories on the mainland, known as the terraferma, which included several small cities who contributed artists to the Venetian school, in particular Padua, Brescia and Verona. The Republic's territories also included Istria, Dalmatia and the islands now off the Croatian coast, who also contributed. Indeed, "the major Venetian painters of the sixteenth century were rarely natives of the city" itself,[6] and some mostly worked in the Republic's other territories, or further afield.[7]
The rest of Italy tended to ignore or underestimate Venetian painting; Giorgio Vasari's neglect of the school in the first edition of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in 1550 was so conspicuous that he realized he needed to visit Venice for extra material in his second edition of 1568.[8] In contrast, foreigners, for whom Venice was often the first major Italian city visited, always had a great appreciation for it and, after Venice itself, the best collections are now in the large European museums rather than other Italian cities. At the top, princely, level, Venetian artists tended to be the most sought-after for commissions abroad, from Titian onwards, and in the 18th century most of the best painters spent significant periods abroad, generally with great success.[9]
Media and techniques[edit]
Venetian painters were among the first Italians to use oil painting,[10] and also to paint on canvas rather than wooden panels. As a maritime power 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's San Zaccaria Altarpiece of 1505, originally on panel) and other paintings encouraged this, as large panel surfaces were expensive and difficult to construct.
The Venetians did not develop a "native school" of fresco painting, often relying on Padua and Verona, Venetian from 1405, to supply painters (notably Paolo Veronese). They continued to add gold ground mosaics to San Marco long after the rest of Europe had abandoned the medium. Somewhat perversely, they were happy to add frescos to the outside of palazzi, where they deteriorated even faster than elsewhere in Italy, and have only left a few shadowy traces, but apart from the Doge's Palace, used them little in other interior settings. The rapid deterioration of external frescos is often attributed to the seaside Venetian climate, perhaps wrongly.[11] 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 different objects in a picturesque confusion", often with much wall space taken up by grandiose wall-tombs.[12]
Compared with Florentine painting, Venetian painters mostly used and have left fewer drawings.[13] Perhaps for this reason, and despite Venice being Italy'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, apparently mostly in Padua.[14] The situation was different in the 18th century, when both Canaletto and the two Tiepolos were significant etchers, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, though famous for his views of Rome, continued to describe himself as a Venetian for decades after moving to Rome.[15]
The Bravo, an example of a painting often attributed to Titian or Giorgione, but also to Palma Vecchio[42]
![The Bravo, an example of a painting often attributed to Titian or Giorgione, but also to Palma Vecchio[42]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Tiziano%2C_i_bravi.jpg/172px-Tiziano%2C_i_bravi.jpg)
The 17th century was a low point in Venetian painting, especially in the first decades when Palma Giovane, Domenico Tintoretto (the son), the Bassani sons, Padovanino and others continued to turn out works essentially in the styles of the previous century. The most significant artists working in the city were all immigrants: Domenico Fetti (c. 1589–1623) from Rome, Bernardo Strozzi (c. 1581–1644) from Genoa, and the north German Johann Liss (c. 1590? – c. 1630). All were aware of the Baroque painting of Rome or Genoa, and in different ways developed styles reflecting and uniting these and traditional Venetian handling of paint and colour.[43]
New directions were taken by two individual 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 free 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 Johann Carl Loth.[45]
At the end 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 commodity primarily for export."[47] The first significant artist in the new style was Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734), from Belluno in the terraferma, who trained in Venice before leaving under a cloud. He returned for a decade in 1698, and then again at the end of his life, after time in England, France and elsewhere. Drawing especially on Veronese, he developed a light, airy, Baroque style that foreshadowed the painting of most of the rest 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, but also by 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 style was greatly in demand for decorating houses. It was actually slower to be accepted 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 achieved great international success, in particular in London, Paris and Vienna.[50]
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) is the last great Venetian painter, who was also in demand all over Europe, and painted two of his largest fresco schemes in the Würzburg Residence in northern Bavaria (1750–53) and the Royal 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, as well as Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, the most distinguished of several of the family to train with and assist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.
[52]
Canaletto, his pupil and nephew Bernardo Bellotto, Michele Marieschi, and Guardi specialized in landscape painting, painting two distinct types: firstly vedute or detailed and mostly accurate panoramic views, usually 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 final development by Guardi, who produced many freely painted scenes set in the lagoon, with water, boats and land in "paintings of great tonal delicacy, whose poetic mood is tinged with nostalgia".[53]
Pietro Longhi (c. 1702–1785) was Venetian painting's most significant genre painter, turning early in his career to specialize in small scenes of contemporary Venetian life, mostly with an element of gentle satire. He was one of the first Italian painters to mine this vein, and was also an early painter of conversation piece portraits. Unlike most Venetian artists, large numbers of lively sketches by him survive.[54]
The death of Guardi in 1793, soon followed by the extinction of the Republic by French Revolutionary armies in 1797, effectively brought the distinctive Venetian style to an end; it had at least outlasted its rival Florence in that respect.[55]