The Golden Age of VENETIAN PAINTING
VENICE was ‘this strange dream upon the water’ to Dickens. Petrarch called it ‘another world.’ The more cynical Thomas Mann said it was ‘half fairytale and half tourist trap’.
Refugees, escaping from the barbarians in the 5th century, established a city on numerous small islands in the Lagoon, with canals as arteries and the sea as defence. The relics of St. Mark were smuggled to Venice in the 9th century, a prestigious shrine (second only to St. Peter’s relics in Rome) which attracted pilgrims and trade. Because of her geographical position, Venice became the commercial link between East and West and her wealth grew. Ships built by Venetians were chartered by the Crusaders. Lucrative monopolies in spices and glass-blowing added to her power and magnificence. Although initially dominated by Byzantium the city soon became a free republic under its elected Doge (‘Duke’), the last of whom was deposed by Napoleon in 1797.
Water makes Venice unique (although General Grant once said that Venice would be fine if it were drained). Canals reflect the brilliant Adriatic sky. For light suffuses Venice – light and colour. Colour dominates Venetian painting, as line dominates Florentine. Venetian artists from Bellini (1430-1516) and Carpaccio (1465-1525) to Tiepolo (1696-1770) share a passion for colour but they also loved mood and form. Tintoretto’s (1518-94) and Veronese’s (1528-88) restless canvases contrast with Giorgione’s (1477-1510) masterpieces, like the great Tempest (c. 1505) – so serene and mysterious – yet they are part of the same tradition. The quintessence of Venetian painting is found in Titian (1488/90-1576), a genius of immense versatility, a master of compositional bravado. And in Titian’s Assumption (1518) in the Frari, with its dramatic movement as the Virgin is borne by angels to Heaven, and luminous, evening light and colour, we have perhaps the embodiment of the glory of Venice, and the brilliance of her art. But Venice itself is a work of art, as anyone can testify who watches the sun set behind Palladio’s great churches, behind Longhena’s Salute on the Grand Canal, or catch the mosaics on St. Mark’s.
A key figure in Venetian painting is Antonello da Messina (died 1479), from Sicily. In 1456 he met a painter in Milan, a pupil of Van Eyck from Bruges (Van Eyck had perfected oil painting). The pupil, Petrus Christus, taught Antonello the intricacies of applying glazes in oil. When Antonello came to Venice in 1475 he passed these on to Giovanni Bellini (who added ground-up glass to pigments to reflect light better). Antonello also passed on the Flemish tradition of microscopic detail, of minute variations of light on reflecting objects; and a calmness of expression, of composition. Antonello made the individual portrait an art form in its own right, and in his San Cassiano Altarpiece (1475-76) he created the prototype altarpiece, with its balance, accurate light, sympathetic architecture and pyramidal layout. Over the next century Venetian painters transformed their art: calmness became the agitation of Tintoretto, asymmetry; new subjects were introduced, like female nudes. The use of pliable canvas over solid wood panels allowed looser brushstrokes, impasto.
Venetian painting is as luminous as her palazzi, as the Grand Canal. If ‘getting lost is the only place worth going to’ in Venice, you can lose yourself in her art. It is as seductive as Proust found the city: ‘When I went to Venice, I discovered that my dream had become – incredibly but quite simply – my address.’
