Venice - the Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia - is a small but long-lived entity with oversized influence on the Arts of the West. And some truths for organic culture as well. Here's the second part of our look - Venice in the Renaissance.
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Titian, Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin, between 1516 and 1518, oil on panel, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice
Finishing the next Arts of the West post on Renaissance Venice. Part One [click for the post] looked at the development of a unique and wealthy culture in an unlikely place. Part Two will look at the emergence of a brilliant school of painting even as the wealth and power went into irreversible decline.
The Venetian economy - the pride of medieval Europe - was founded on foreign trade. Venice was the conduit between Europe and the Eastern world, making them the richest and most cosmopolitan city probably in the world. At the same time, they had a complex system of republican government that did become corrupted by wealthy interests but maintained rule by Venetians.
The size of the small Venetian empire peaked in the early 15th century, but the clouds of decline were on the horizon. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks introduced a powerful threat to the East that brought intermittent warfare and the loss of many trade routes.
While Venice did ultimately play an important role in checking Ottoman expansion, they were unable to recapture former glory. Not for lack of trying - their extensive economic relations and shrewd diplomacy created possibilities that were unique in Christendom. An anti-Ottoman alliance with Persia ultimately proved ineffective and the decisive defeat of the Safavid Persians at Chaldiran in 1514 put an end to that prospect. The Ottoman conquest of the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate - a major Venetian trading partner - closed off any other avenue of assistance from the Muslim world.
Panel of velvet, early 16th century, woven silk and metal thread, possibly Venetian, but in a style common in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Egypt as well.
Extensive trade contacts in the east gave Venice much closer cultural connections with the Muslim world than the rest of Europe. Luxury goods like this metallic textile weren't just purchased by the Venetians, they also developed high-end artisan workshops to produce them. To the point where it can be difficult to pinpoint place of origin.
The famous Venetian Murano glass works are an example of these eastern cultural contacts. Egypt and Syria inherited Roman glass production after antiquity and became centers of advanced medieval glassmaking. The Venetians adopted these techniques and concentrated their own glassworks on the island of Murano in the 13th century. By the Renaissance, Venice had become preeminent makers of luxury glass.
Sanctuary lamp (Cesendello), late 15th or early 16th century, enameled and gilt Murano glass from Venice
Here's an example of a Venetian version of a glass type popular there and in the Muslim world. The use of enamel painting and gilding for decoration goes back centuries. These pieces were kiln fired like pottery to fuse the colors to the glass.
This piece depicts the Annunciation indicating it is Christian in origin.
Close-up of the enamel painted and gilded angel Gabriel in the Annunciation.
Note the cloth of gold robe - textile with metallic wrapped threads woven into the fabric. It is quite similar to the panel velvet viewed up above.
The Venetians did manage a critical victory against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto - along with the Siege of Malta a critical check on Turkish Mediterranean advancement. But there was no recovering the lost eastern trade routes from their now implacable enemies and post-Renaissance Venetian history is one of slow decline.
Paolo Veronese, Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto, 1571, oil on canvas, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
The Virgin Mary and a cluster of saints including Peter and Venetian patron Mark the Evangelist preside over the victory. The Venetians were allied with Spanish, Papal, and other ships, but made up the largest share of the fleet.
Meanwhile, troubles to the West mounted as well. Larger European powers - first Portugal and Spain, then the Netherlands and England - usurped Venetian trade supremacy. The colonial era brought new and more lucrative sources of wealth and power.
Vasco da Gama's voyage around Africa to India was the harbinger of a new era of eastern trade.
And closer to home, wars with European powers were continually draining. The War of the League of Cambrai is a good example of the switching alliances and pointless objectives of the moronic "Italian Wars". Venice was able to maintain its small mainland "empire" that allowed for some dry land commerce and artistic activity. For example, the famous architect Palladio came from Vicenza, a mainland city where he got his start.
The mainland territories were called the Veneto. This provided some agricultural economic activity to offset the loss of trade income, but not at anywhere near the same level. It did lead to the development of a sort of landed elite or gentry.
Palladio, Villa Emo, late 1550s-1561, Vedelago
Bringing up Palladio also brings up the villa culture he's most associated with. His influential harmonious simple classicism was developed on designs for rural villas or estates for landed elites.
This example combined noble living and functional spaces. The two wings housed storage and equipment for the agricultural activity that took place on the extensive land holdings.
But through all of this change and turmoil, the unique Venetian culture and its government rolled serenely along. And artistically, the 15th and 16th centuries hit magnificent heights. Names like Bellini, Titian, and Palladio rank among the most influential creators in Western history and remain popular today.
This post will look at the highlights, main points, and important influence of the Venetian Renaissance. As usual we will also consider larger cultural lessons for the West coming out of this. In the last post we noted some essential points about systems of social order that reflect, express, and support organic culture. As we turn to cultural flowering and economic decline, we expect to see some insight into the difference between wealth and "empire" and creativity.
We ended last time with the Bellini family and the arrival of oil paint on the Venetian art scene.
Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in Ecstasy, c. 1480, oil on panel, Frick Collection, New York
Oil paint let Bellini build paintings up in semi-translucent layers or glazes of pigment. This picture combines natural and divine light with a real luminosity that seems to come from within.
Landscape is another interest the early Venetian Renaissance didn't share with the rest of Italy.
We actually wrapped up with Antonello da Messina, an itinerant artist of little fame that may have introduced oil to Bellini. Or at least made him aware of its potential. Whether that's really the case, his paintings point to some of the main things Venetian art will be known for.
The Virgin Annunciate is an original take on the popular Annunciation subject that puts you in the position of the archangel Gabriel. Mary looks up from her prayer book and gestures towards us with mild surprise. This kind of interactive realism is unusual in any era, but Venetian artists work to build more personal connections between viewers and paintings. It's part of the old artistic fascination with emotional effects - light, color, and spectacle - that we looked at in the last post.
Antonello da Messina, The Virgin Annunciate, 1476, oil on wood, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo
Antonello's oil paint accounts for the realistic texture of Mary's skin and the light falling on her. Light projected by the angel in our place. The luminosity is similar to the Bellini painting up above and a huge advantage of oil over tempera.
Venetian art had always prioritized light. Oil paint simply replaced glittering mosaic and livid color with saturated tones and almost supernatural luminosity.
The standard narrative contrasts the art of the Renaissance Venice with Florence on emotion vs. logic grounds. This isn't entirely accurate - all art communicates at least in part through emotional resonances. Where it is true is in the emphasis - while the Florentines are working out linear perspective and using repetitive drawing techniques to copy statues and classical details, the Venetians are developing captivating color and interactivity. It's not that Venetian painting isn't an intellectual exercise either. It's highly technical. But the technique uses light and color to max out the emotional engagement.
The distinct culture of Venice - at once insular and cosmopolitan - made for a unique connection to the humanist ideas that were sweeping Italy. We've looked at that in a number of posts from art to history to the occult. Here are a pair of early posts looking at the link between Renaissance humanism and satanic globalist inversion [click for the first and the second]. Venice didn't have an antique history or ruins to inspire the obsession with ancient culture, and the literary classicism of Florence was slower to arrive. It eventually does, but Venetian classicism and humanism takes its own unique form like everything else.
Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in His Study, 1474, oil on lime, National Gallery
Antonello again - here capturing the great early Christian theologian in a fantastical humanistic study. But artistically it's more an exercise in interactive engagement than pure rationalism. There is perspective, but arranged to make it seem like a magic window opened to you. The symbolic birds and bowl on the shelf enhance the illusion.
Also, what is this place? The saint is like a sacred display in sharp oil colors. Humanist scholarly ideal, but different from the linear rationalism of contemporary Florence.
You can see it in the late arrival of classically inspired architecture in Venice towards the end of the 15th century. Remember the Renaissance architecture posts - early Renaissance Florentines like Brunelleschi introduced a mathematically precise idiom with basic geometries and Greco-Roman detailing [click for a post]. Fifty years later, a Venetian like Pietro Lombardo is consciously using classical details but without the geometric precision or any effort to evoke theoretical principles of antiquity. It's classicism of motif but not in a rationalistic way. Once again, more about aesthetic emotional reaction to visual stimulus than founding art on higher logic.
Pietro Lombardo, S. Maria dei Miracoli, 1481 Venice
Good example of this kind of classical motif based Venetian Renaissance architecture. It's covered with Roman arches, pilasters and capitals, simplified forms etc., but no resemblance to ancient buildings or simplifying governing logic.
Also note the color, texture, and busy ornamental patterns. More Venetian love of emotion-based art. Not a black/white contrast with central Italy but tendencies.
Eventually a more conventional centralized classicism does make it to Renaissance Venice in the 16th century. Jacopo Sansovino came from Rome and brought a central Italian classicism with him. But even Sansovino's more conventionalized Renaissance classicism is on the heavy ornamental side. His masterpiece - the Marciana Library - uses the classical orders in stacked arcades, but maxes out the layers of decoration. Different levels of depth with columns projecting, lots of sculpture, different colors - classical architecture adapted to the Venetian love of visual stimulus and emotional response.
Jacopo Sansovino, Marciana Library, 1537–1588
Close-up of Sansovino's ornamental Venetian classicism. This will have an influence on the aristocratic building of Europe in the future.
The color effects come from contrasting light and shade from the deep windows and projecting marble elements.
Lesson 1 - Organic culture absorbs influences on its terms while the beast system has top-down authorities imposing fake rules.
An organic culture absorbs influences but adapts them in ways that remain true to the basic principles of the culture. As seen in earlier Renaissance posts, the path to Art! begins with establishing a central discourse that supplants the Band's definition of art as Logos plus techne.
Art is one of those things that crosses levels of reality in Ontological Hierarchy terms. It's why it's so hard to define in the purely material terms of the metaphysically gelded Flatland that makes up the risible foundation of modern "thought". Subjective material preferences in technical skill and objective immaterial truth.
That which we can see directly expresses that which we can't. One is variable, one isn't.
But once the definition has been transposed from [culturally-determined making in truth] to [something someone said] there is a central node of control that can be jacked and inverted. For the whole beast network of institutions, critics, gatekeepers, "theories", etc. to develop, there has to be the assumption that art is a singular identifiable thing that can be gatekept. The immaterial truth has to be removed as an ultimate standard because it exists outside human control. We express it in material terms, but it isn't subject to them. It's the expression that is ultimately subject to the judgment of whether or not is expresses logos.
When the arts of the West gets jacked by top-down aristocratic theorizers, the differences will be folded together into a set of "rules". Then the rules become the replacement for the logos that they were supposed to represent. Representation-reality inversion that we covered extensively in a series of posts [five posts on centralization near the bottom of this page].
On a larger scale, Western culture is itself an interplay of larger shared values and localized national expressions. Here's a graphic from an earlier post.
Superimpose the three ingredients of Western culture onto the interwoven ontology and epistemology of the ontological hierarchy. This makes it clear how common abstractions express in different material forms. Click for a long post.
Lesson 2 - the Arts of the West are built on regional cultural tastes within broader concepts of art.
And this is consistent with organic cultural formation. Everything keeps coming back to bottom up vs. top down. In the Renaissance, when beast centralization was just forming, there are still strong differences between local traditions. It's why Venetian and Florentine-Roman painting is so different. Linear and coloristic or logical and emotional are just imperfect shorthand ways of referring to two different value-expectation sets.
The Venetian cultural love of light and color is transposed away from gleaming gold and glittering mosaics to the effects of oil paint. From there, the sensuous qualities of the medium join in with the luminosity and chromatic intensity into a general classification of emotion. Compare the soft texture and overt eroticism of Titian's Danae to the classical monumentality and linear qualities of Michelangelo's Delphic Sibyl. Different contexts, but the point comes through.
Different priorities. The art of organic cultures within a common Western framework. The rest of this post will take us from Bellini's light to the unleashed painterly emotionalism to come.
Why is this relevant to the journey to modern inversion? Because classifying Florentine and Venetian art was an early stage in building the centralized beast narrative that would eventually replace L+T as the definition of art. And the emphasis on medium - oil paint - and emotional response rather than the truth of message laid the foundations for the idiocy of modern "autonomy". The retarded notion that art - the preeminent means of human cultural expression - referred only to its own making. A sort of auto-idolatry that ironically expressed the satanic do what thou wilt ideology of modern culture in general.
But that lies in the future. To a Renaissance Venetian, the idea that art wouldn't express something would be greeted with the puzzlement and disdain it deserves. Theirs was an art of oil paint intended to move the viewer in one way or another. Illusions of light and color.
Giovanni Bellini, Transfiguration of Christ, 1487, oil on panel, National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples
Bellini's treatment of this Biblical miracle is a good representative of his approach. Good colors and a clear supernatural light that seems to suffuse the entire scene. Emotionally, the painting is restrained. Jesus' divinity is conveyed by his white robes and subtle lighting instead of dramatic expressions or gestures. Even the falling Apostles don't move too violently. The sober serenity connects Bellini to 15th century painting elsewhere, but the magic light is uniquely his. There is a mystical quiet to his work that seems almost like a transfiguration of the material through art.
The figures are set in a large landscape - the Venetian interest in landscape seems connected both to their own limited mainland space and the influence of Flemish painting. The same northern art that introduced oil paint and unvarnished realism of detail.
Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan, from 1501 until 1502, oil on panel, National Gallery
Speaking of realism, Bellini's portrait of this Venetian doge is a marvel of technique. The glistening of his eye, the play of light on the skin, even the slight five o'clock shadow on his lower face, are shockingly realistic. Especially compared to the standards of the time. Then there's the texture of the robe - the luxurious textile that was a sign of Venetian wealth and trade.
That Bellini internal light makes it seem as if the doge is glowing with the status and spirit of a literal luminary.
It's in his magnificent altarpieces where Bellini's talent and innovation really shine forth. His San Giobbe Altarpiece is his first that takes the real lighting conditions of its church setting into account to create an illusion of real space. The light in the painting lines up with the light from the windows to make it seem like the two are connected. At the same time, the figures seem elevated to a higher spiritual level by their appearance. Heaven and earth combine through the magic of oil paint.
Giovanni Bellini, San Giobbe Altarpiece, around 1487-1493, iol on canvas, oil on panel, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
The arrangement of the painting - Madonna and child surrounded by saints - is called a sacra conversazione, or sacred conversation. No one actually talks or even acknowledges each other. The "conversation" takes place on a higher spiritual plane. More like a communion. The presence of St. Sebastian in the front right indicates that it was a reaction to the cessation of a plague. He was the saint most often invoked against disease.
Note the sumptuous textures and colors. The figures, marble panels, and gold mosaic throwback to San Marco and Venetian history,
The San Giobbe Altarpiece was damaged when Napoleon had it stolen during the looting of Venice after its surrender to the French. When it was returned to Italy it went to the Accademia, a major Venetian art museum. Some of the illusion is lost in the new setting. This recreation of its original placement in the church of San Giobbe shows how carefully Bellini aligned his painting with the real interior.
Note the classically-themed architecture as Renaissance humanism takes hold in Venice.
The actual frame is still in the church. Note how Bellini's painted pilasters and arched ceiling seem to extend the real frame back into space like a chapel. The lighting catches the real light from the opposite windows.
This is different from a Florentine perspective "window" on a rationally composed scene taking place elsewhere. Here, Venetian light fuels engagement with something that seems present but isn't. More of an emotional response than a rational one, but perfect for religious rhetoric.
The San Zaccaria Altarpiece was painted later but follows a fimilar formula and is still in its original location. It's easy to see how the painting seems to extend the real frame back into an imaginary chapel space. The contrast with the wall paintings on either side makes the contrast clearer.
Giovanni Bellini, San Zaccaria Altarpiece, 1505, oil on panel, San Zaccaria, Venice
It's another sacre conversazione with highly saturated colors and evocative lighting. By this point Bellini was nearing the end of his long career, and his handling of light and color were at their most refined. Note how the saints all exist in quiet reflection, but are elevated to a higher level by their noble appearance and how they are lit. The musician angel makes the connection between the moving power of beautiful music and the similar effect of Bellini's visual "music".
Bellini's long career and innovative talent dominated Venetian painting and set the course for the future. A slightly younger painter like Marco Basaiti is unimaginable without Bellini's example. Basaiti's altarpieces aren't as direct in creating the illusion of a real space but they do complicate the barrier between art and reality in engaging ways. The Agony in the Garden sets up two levels of fictional reality - the Gospel scene and the later saints in sacre conversazione-type communion. Sts. Louis and Dominic look out to facilitate our connection with the painting.
Marco Basaiti, Agony in the Garden with Saints Louis of Toulouse, Francis, Dominic, and Mark, 1510 or 1516, oil on panel, Gallerie dell'Accademia
This is a really fascinating painting by a little-known artist. Venetian landscape and lighting are in full effect in the "rear" scene as Jesus contemplates his fate. A clear distinction is made with the tiled floor the saints stand on and the dangling Cesendello lamp like the one we saw earlier in the post.
The saints are "closer" to us - in the extended space of the real church like Bellini's groups. The Biblical scene is a more fundamental truth we all share. But Jesus is still located at the top of a triangle with the saints like the sacre conversationes in Bellini's paintings. Art and reality get blurred into one continuum of faith running from Jesus through the saints, to us
Note how Francis' inward expression of contemplation seems to align with Jesus' praying form. The arrangement of the painting simultaneously makes distinctions in time and space then overcomes them with visual connections. Francis' own meditation casts his faithful devotion back to the source and brings it into his present. When it comes to Christian truth, time and distance are irrelevant. The same holds for us by extension.
Light, color, and emotional engagement - not for slack-jawed lies about autonomy, but to visualize truths about faith that can't be seen directly. It's not hard to see the same relationships represented in the ontological hierarchy realized far more artfully here. That's the thing about the truth. It's true consistently despite the form of representation.
These Venetian altarpieces are wonders in their own right. Here's a shot from the Accademia with three of them in a row that does justice to the spatial illusions and light. Bellini's San Giobbe Altarpiece and Basaiti's Agony in the Garden are the two on the right. They're big paintings - nearly life-sized. This makes their engaging illusionism that much more compelling.
Bellini's age and death opened a space at the top of the Venetian food chain. The painter that first looked like his successor was Giorgione - a somewhat mysterious figure who died quite young. What is known of him comes mainly through Vasari, the 16th-century father of art history who pretty much established the humanist Dark Age-Renaissance model of cultural history for art. One thing that is clear is his impact on Venetian art. He transformed the style of Bellini into a more fluid and sensuous idiom for the sixteenth century.
Giorgione
According to Vasari Giorgione met Leonardo during Leonardo's visit to Venice after the fall of Milan to the French and before he returned to Florence. It does appear that Giorgione absorbed some of Leonardo's advanced ideas about light and realism and incorporated them into what he learned from Bellini. Mature Venetian colore - an emotional art based on rich textural oil was born. As always, it's easier to see than describe.
Giorgione, Madonna and Child Between St. Francis and St. Nicasius, 1503/04, oil on panel, Duomo of Castelfranco Veneto
Giorgione's Castelfranco Altarpiece is another take on a sacre conversazione. Look at the richness of texture - in the atmospheric landscape, the Madonna's robes, the fine imported carpet beneath her, and the gleaming armor.
It's so visually engaging that you almost don't notice how weird it is. Where are they? It's like Basaiti's two levels of reality combined with Bellini's enthroned Madonna.
A close-up of St. Nicasius shows Giorgione's control of light and texture. The same dispassionate expression as a Bellini figure but with greater surface realism.
St. Nicasius of Sicily was a 12th-century Knight of St John martyred in the Holy Land. Hence the martial attire.
There are only a few paintings known to be by Giorgione, and those are enigmatic. The best known is his Tempest - an evocative outdoor scene of unknown subject matter. Seriously, no one knows what it depicts. Even the name is a 19th century description of what's going on. But the treatment of the landscape and especially the sky is marvelous.
Giorgione, The Tempest, around 1508, oil on canvas, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
The nursing woman and either shepherd or soldier in a stormy landscape doesn't refer to any recognizable story or symbolism. There are a bunch of theories but none conclusive. The name just refers to the depiction of the weather.
It's Giorgione's rich, velvety paint that steals the show - lush vegetation and a sky that feels almost damp. The paint and the overall poetic feel.
Poetic is probably the best way to describe The Tempest. It is often described as a "poesia" or visual poetry, as opposed to the more straightforward history paintings of Florence. This means is it intended to create an impression or feeling rather than deliver a clear message, though some link it to the menace of impending war. Even if that's true, it's an indirect, evocative reference and not a direct address. Like a poetic allegory. The sumptuous texture and turbulent sky also convey a sort of poetic aesthetic in line with the Arcadian poetic style popular among Venetian humanists. This is intended to evoke the "lyrical and musical qualities of verse, and resembles visual poetry meant to generate multi-layered responses".
Here's a close-up of Giorgione's stormy sky.
Giorgione's sensuousness and emotional response peaks in another new genre - the reclining nude. This will become one of the most common subjects in the history of Western art because it combines pin-up eroticism with the classical mythological erudition. Adam and Eve had been the preeminent nude subjects through the Middle Ages, but in the poetic humanist culture of Venice Venus took the stage.
It's not as if there hadn't been nude Venuses before Giorgione.
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1485-1486, tempera on canvas, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Botticelli's Birth of Venus is among the most famous paintings of all time.
And collectors had been acquiring antique nude sculpture for some years. But there had been nothing like the luxe texture and overt sexuality of Giorgione's Sleeping Venus laid out for viewing pleasure with her hand provocatively placed over her vagina. Compare this figure to Botticelli's linear grace.
Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, around 1510, oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
Unfinished at the time of Giorgione's death, it was completed by the younger Titian.
The early death of Giorgione reopened the vacuum at the top of Venetian art. There were a few next generation artists vying for top spot, but it was Titian who won out. This artist was from Cadore - a mainland village north of Venice - who spent time training with the Bellinis and Giorgione. That's how he wound up finishing the Sleeping Venus. During his long life, Titian would dominate Venetian art like none other.
Titian
It's impossible to overestimate the importance of Titian to Renaissance Venetian painting. His influence is akin to Michelangelo and Raphael in Florence and Rome - the inventor and disseminator of the High Renaissance style. But Raphael died young and Michelangelo worked in multiple artforms. Titian was strictly a painter, and during his seven decade career went through different stylistic changes. His fluid handling of oil paint didn't just define Venetian art - Rubens and Rembrandt in the 17th century, the Rococo in the eighteenth, Turner and the Impressionists in the nineteenth are all descendants of his technique. There's no way to cover him comprehensively in a post. We'll have to settle for a few highlights and representative pieces of his different styles.
Titian, Noli me Tangere, about 1514, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
Early maturity. Giorgione's sensuous texture and color but already more fluid in his handling of paint. The Magdalene's vivid red robe uses color to enhance visual excitement. Jesus' flesh seems soft, but note the lack of interest in perfect anatomy as seen in Raphael and Michelangelo. More emotional Venetian color as opposed to rational Florentine design.
Note the sky. Expressive, luminous, atmospheric skies become a Titian trademark.
An early example of a mythic poesia like Giorgione, but look at the textures and color. Sacred and Profane Love may be a bit easier to interpret than The Tempest but just as reliant on mood and poetic allusion. The subject is probably two types of love - the title first turns up in a late 17th century catalog but the it matches the symbolism. The precise identification is illusive - worldly and heavenly love or the Neoplatonic idea of earthly and celestial Venus have been proposed. The two women appear to be the same person in different attire, with idealized features. Whatever the meaning, the style is a perfect illustration of Titian's take on emotion driven Venetian oil painting. Compare to our High Renaissance posts on Raphael and Michelangelo.
Titian, Sacred and Profane Love, 1514, oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Despite the nudity, the figure on the right appears to be celestial love and the one on the left her earthly counterpart. This lends support to the two Venuses idea. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the model may have been one of Venice's celebrated courtesans. Whoever she is, her appearance and fantastic drapery is intended to be sensually attractive. Less of a stark moral contrast between opposites than complementary manifestations of different aspects.
Earthly love is dressed in opulent silks and has a castle in the background. The rabbits suggest sexual desire [click for an occult post on rabbit symbolism].
The overall assemblage denotes the good life and worldly pleasures
Celestial love wears livid red silk - the most visually striking passage in the picture. Her nudity is less incongruous to Renaissance humanists, who depicted Truth as nude. Literally the naked truth. She holds a lamp upward and in the background there is a church instead of a castle. The rabbits are hunted as well - all signs of turning away from worldly pleasure towards more spiritual things.
Modest religious paintings and cultured poesia were common Venetian subjects, but altarpieces were more lofty projects. Titian announced his artistic supremacy with his huge Assumption of the Virgin or Assunta - a massive tour de force of light and energy. At almost 22' high, it was unlike anything prior in Venetian painting and is really Titian's coming out party.
Mary rises through bright clouds into a golden heaven, where radiant oil paint surpasses the old gold mosaic of the past. Angels coalesce in the golden light while an incredible foreshortened God awaits. Down below, the astonished Apostles react in wonder, their chiaroscuro light and shadow and chaotic poses contrasting with the vision above.
Titian, Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin, between 1516 and 1518, oil on panel, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice
There's really nothing else like it. In the Raphael post, we suggested that this may have been the inspiration for that genius' growing interest in light effects. The chiaroscuro and radiance on two levels in his magisterial Transfiguration definitely supports that idea. But the Transfiguration is absorbing evocative light into a substructure of rational - supreme - design. No one drew or composed like Raphael anywhere ever.
What Titian lacked in Raphael's drafting and compositional skills, he made up in pure luminous and chromatic energy. Once more, Venetian emotion and color, Florentine logic and design. Tendencies not absolute polarities, but not hard to see.
Raphael, The Transfiguration, 1518-20, oil on wood, Pinacoteca, Vatican
Another change that comes in is a turn away from the calm reflective expressions of Bellini and Georgione. The emotionalism implicit in an art of light and color becomes explicit in Titian's newly expressive figures.
A vision of the Assunta in the cavernous Gothic interior of the Venetian church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Its nearly 22' seems almost small in the bright apse, bridging the scale with the human-sized altar. This may be the apotheosis of Venetian light and color in creating emotional engagement with the setting and viewers.
After the Assunta there was no question of Titian's position atop the Venetian art hierarchy. Over the next 60 years he would continually evolve while working for the most prestigious patrons in Venice, then Europe. Like the Emperor Charles V, ruler of the largest empire in Europe since Charlemagne, and vast New World territories. This included reestablishing the old imperial convention of the equestrian portrait as a symbol of authority. This stunning 11' painting commemorated Charles' victory over the Protestants at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1548. The Reformation is in the air.
Note the lush textures, shining armor, and luminous sky. As time passes, Titian's style becomes more fluid and painterly - much less solid than Giorgione or even his own earlier figures.
Titian, Equestrian Portrait of Charles V, 1548, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid
The emperor rides resolutely from the darkened wood into the rising sun of Catholic victory. Renaissance humanism is slowly shifting to the religious conflict and intensity of Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Titian's incredible success will lead to him being knighted by the emperor and wind up living in a castle.
Titian's luxe, emotional style proved ideal for the growing Renaissance interest in mythological scenes. Venetian humanism had a poetic quality - perhaps related to Venice's role as the center of Italian publishing. We just saw his and Giorgione's poesia - the same lyrical evocation applied to straightforward mythic scenes as well.
Lesson 3 - Art reflects changes in organic culture but also creates new ways to visualize the changes.
Note how earlier Venetian art stuck to religious subjects With the arrival of humanist ideas secular themes and nudity crash into the art. Sensuous aesthetic appeal is a vector.
Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1522–23, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
One of Titian's most famous early mythologies captures the frozen moment when Bacchus and his wild entourage encounters the abandoned Ariadne. A clinic of colors and textures, lush vegetation and real flesh. Bacchus' blazing robe is a great example of Titian's use of vivid color to ramp up the emotional response to his scene. Ariadne is momentarily fearful, but the crown of stars above her head reveals her future divination. Light, color, energy, and emotion may be more important than the story. And the figures faces and expressions carry this emotional charge.
This leads into Titian's more erotic mythic scenes - mythological scenes whose main purpose is the sexual titillation of aristocratic patrons. These were for private collections, but extremely influential over the subsequent centuries. Consider the prevalence of nude bodies in the fine arts. Ultimately the hypocrisy will provide an attack vector for satanic modernists which is a lesson in itself. But this is an important development in the arts of the West.
The Venus of Urbino is Titian's development of the Giorgione nude he finished and one of the most influential paintings in history.
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, oil on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
There is really nothing mythological in this painting other than the title. A high-end courtesan reclines on a velvet bed in a luxurious Venetian interior while her attendants make preparations. The sensuous texture of the skin and falling golden hair epitomize Titian's erotic emotionalism. But the really provocative development is her direct expression. Unlike the Sleeping Venus, this figure looks right at us suggestively. Whether pre- or post-coital, the implicit sex is obvious.
Close-up of the expression. The flushed cheeks, tilt of the head, and cast of the features have nothing to do with "humanist culture".
Towards the end of his career - Titian dies in 1576 - Titian's art keeps getting more and more painterly. Painterly meaning fluid streaks of paint on the canvas rather than delineated forms. This is the dimension of his art that we mentioned earlier that leads to streaky, brushstroke art like Impressionism.
Another eroticized scene - this one a mythic rape for moral piece of work, the king of Spain. The swirling colors show his abstracting mastery of oil paint - look at the sky and distant landscape. Eurpoa herself is all dramatic energy and the vivid fabric does the usual intensification of the scene. What makes it disturbing - and opens the path to critical attacks - is the eroticizing of rape. Consistent with Greek myth, but a problem for Christians.
Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1560-1562, oil on canvas, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Titian's portraits make a similar move from luxe saturated color and texture to painterly applications of oil paint. Consider this figure from around the same era as the Venus of Urbino and may be an idealized woman rather than a real person. There's no way to tell without documentation. The damask dress with velvet trim and gold embroidery shows that sumptuous mastery of oil.
Titian, La Bella, 1536, oil on canvas, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence
Her face isn't provocative like the Venus of Urbino but conforms to the same Renaissance standards of beauty. Along with the textures, the deep colors are perfectly chosen and balanced.
Titian, Philip II in Armor, 1550s, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid
Jump forward a couple of decades to this portrait of the King of Spain and erotic rape painting aficionado. Portraiture always has to resemble the subject so there is less freedom to dissolve into swirling painted colors.
But even here the figure is less solid and more painterly than the woman above. The light shimmering off the armor is dazzling, but the sumptuous detail is less - not exactly sharp but less materially present.
It's in his religious painting where Titian's late development from lush colored illusion to dramatic application of painted streaks of color is most visible. In terms of technique, he paints ever faster and looser, moving more into feeling and away from visual reality. As we've said a few times, this emphasis on artistic medium, materials, and technique - art - over the representation of truth is a major landmark on the road to modernism. See where "autonomy" can fit in?
Take a look at this late altarpiece...
Titian, The Martyrdom of St Lawrence, between 1557 and 1559, oil on canvas, I Gesuiti, Venice
Martyrdom scenes become more popular with the advent of the Counter-Reformation and growing religious conflict between Protestant and Catholic. Because the Protestants reject Catholic tradition - and art in many cases - Catholic art focuses in on those things. Like the cult of the saints and the early martyrs that provide a historical link to the continuity and devotion of the Roman Church.
Here. St. Lawrence's martyrdom on a grill is a lurid vision holy light breaking into a world of darkness of violence. Strategic color and light with extreme chiaroscuro makes for a more dramatic and emotional - if less clearly realistic - scene.
Titian remained active into the last decade of his life, working in his workshop in his castle home. His style and technique become surprisingly modern. Forms emerging from swirling paint and dark background to impose emotionally and fire emotional response. In some ways, Titian's late paintings are the most intense of his religious images.
Titian, St. Jerome, 1570-1575, oil on canvas, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Another Counter-Reformation image of an important Catholic saint - a Father of the Church and translator of the Latin Vulgate. The Bible rejected by Protestant reformers. Note how he venerates a crucifix - veneration of religious art was another Catholic practice opposed by the Reformation.
Look where Titian's evocative backgrounds wind up. But that red robe still enhances the emotional kick - this time the supernatural spiritual intensity embodied by the saint.
Titian, Crowning with Thorns, 1572-1576, oil on canvas, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
One more to show how the light and texture are still visible within the flurry of paint and dark shadows in Titian's final decade. Mass and volume flatten out as detail blurs in a foreshadowing of modernism to come.
But that lies ahead. In Titian's own time, the lion in winter was celebrated for distilling moving subjects to their essence and presenting them a technique that matched their raw emotional immediacy. Self-consciously artistic and perfectly in step with the Counter-Reformation desire for moving images.
Late Titian brings us to a very different religious and aesthetic environment than when we started. The suave, sumptuous aspects of Venetian color in the humanist first half of the century give way to the raw intensity of the age of religious renewal and war. In some ways Titian's titanic stature held him above current trends - much like the aged Michelangelo in Rome. But that same status made him a trendsetter, and the next generation adopted his dark shadows, swirling paint, and theatrical emotional intensity.
The post is getting long, so just a brief sample of the biggest two names that dominate Venetian art after Titian. But first, one more lesson...
Lesson 4 - Organic culture is alive and changing.
Titian isn't following "rules" - just the Venetian preference for light, color, oil paint, and emotional appeal. He develops this on his own into a new idiom. That later theorists will turn this organic development into "theory" is how art becomes Art! But that's the inversion of bottom-up creative reality into top-down tyranny of representation. An arbitrary description of something taking the place of the actual thing it describes.
Tintoretto
The first of the successors is darker, rougher, and more theatrical than Titian - a prolific artist whose speed is visible in his frenzied works.
Tintoretto, The Marriage at Cana, 1561, oil on canvas, Santa Maria della Salute
Tintoretto's dramatic contrasting light and dark conceals his original arrangement. Jesus is at the back of the table, but the telescoping perspective and light draw attention to him. The rest of the scene is filled with anecdotal detail - servants and hosts putting on the banquet - while glimpses of blue sky pull attention to the back of the picture and tie the whole thing together.
A more intimate scene brings Jesus to the front and ties a dramatic group together against dark shadows. There's nothing to interrupt an emotional connection, and the body is held so that we become almost participants at the event.
Jacopo Tintoretto, The Deposition of Christ, around 1562, oil on canvas, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
Bright light creates the foci and vivid colors amp up the emotional content.
Tintoretto's greatest project is another glimpse into Venetian society. In 1564 he was tasked with providing paintings for the Scuola Grande de San Rocco, a Christian lay organization established 1478. A Scuola - plural Scuole - was a a group of prominent Venetians who met for religious and civic purposes. Similar to a confraternity, but with a more central place in Venetian society, the Scuole took care of charitable works, civic projects, festivals, and other duties. The Scuole Grande - major scuole - used the wealth of their membership to compete in public service and in splendid headquarters. Tintoretto was a member of the Scuola and over 20 years, filled the building with the largest collection of work by a single artist in one place.
Scuola Grande de San Rocco, started 1515 by Bartolomeo Bon and finished in 1560
The building was constructed over several decades. Tintoretto's painting started four years later.
Venetian interiors weren't painted in fresco like Rome or Florence. The walls were covered in oil paintings on canvas that were mounted in frames. The result was an intense visual experience, especially when the artist was a master of chiaroscuro and vivid emotionalism like Tintoretto. He painted several rooms between 1564 and 1587 - the Sala dell'Albergo of 1564-1567 may be the finest.
Tintoretto, Christ before Pilate, 1566-1567, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice
The darkness transforms the grand setting into an intimate focused encounter. There's a velvet feel to Tintoretto's darkness that combines with the direct light to add a mystical aura. You can feel the spiritual intensity in a painting that was intended to stimulate religious devotion.
Looking closer, Tintoretto uses color to differentiate figures in the dark so he doesn't have to rely on as much light. This lets the lighting be used strategically to create supernatural qualities. Jesus' white robe makes him the clear center of attention in another sharp perspective.
Tintoretto, The Ascent to Calvary, 1565-1567, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice
Another scene from the Sala dell'Albergo. Tintoretto continues with the inventive perspectives and arrangements. Here the diagonal switchback fills a grim picture with the impression of dramatic energy. It's more colorful than the above, but still shrouded in the impression of darkness.
Note how Jesus stands out against the light part of the sky while the upper gloom balances the lower darkness. This makes the scene feel more intimate and personal.
The descriptions of Tintoretto's paintings don't do justice to their spiritual intensity. The influence of Titian is easy to see, but the wild diagonals, colorful darkness, and powerful grouping are unique.
The largest painting in the Scuola di San Rocca is the epic Crucifixion - at 37' across, the biggest oil on canvas painting ever.
Tintoretto, Crucifixion, 1565, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice
The crucified Christ is the "sun" over a vast spectacle that's organized around him like a flat circle. There's structure and symmetry here beneath the dramatic light and shadow and swirling paint that can be easy to miss. It's more like Florentine-Roman design than pure Venetian color. Similar to the the muscular figure of Jesus - Tintoretto is clearly a master of Venetian emotionalism but open to other influences.
Close-up of Jesus and the central grouping. Movement and energy, flashes of color and suggestive light. Tintoretto is unique in his own way.
Tintoretto resembles Titian in that his late style loosens up, but he doesn't become as formless or impressionistic. Here's one more Scuole Grande di San Rocco picture from the last wave of the project - the Sala Inferiore painted from 1583-1587. He was so prolific that one will have to do, but it's enough to show some tendencies. It's flatter an rougher with even less polish and background. Vivid patches of color still bring an emotional boost but the setting is less resolved. The impression is even less real and more mystical.
Tintoretto, The Annunciation, between 1583 and 1587, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco
The angel is stunningly rendered and the dove feels supernaturally divine. The perspective is slightly skewed an the landscape unresolved. The focus is on the spiritual moment.
Tintoretto's contemporary and rival is the other big name of the late Venetian Renaissance and our last painter for this post. While Tintoretto mastered mystical darkness and lurid drama, Veronese plugged into the engaging spectacle and luxe textures.
Veronese
Paolo Veronese offers a different take on late Venetian light, color, and engagement. His early work in the church of San Sebastiano shows his relatively bold and solid forms and saturated colors. It also shows his illusionism - how he integrates his designs with our viewpoint to make it seem like the painting extends our real space. This will be very influential for the Baroque style of the next century.
Inside S. Sebastiano. Veronese's paintings are typical Venetian mounted oils. Note the oval from the story of Esther in the center of the ceiling. It looks like it opens upward.
Paolo Veronese, The Triumph of Mordecai, 1556, oil on canvas, San Sebastiano, Venice
And that central oval from right below. See how it is designed to make the most sense from the viewpoint of someone walking towards it and not from square on like a picture on a wall. That's the illusionism.
The style is textural and energetic like the younger Titian and without Tintoretto's deep chiaroscuro. Lots of energy in the figures though.
Veronese's splendor comes through best in his huge banquet scenes - compare this Wedding at Cana to Tintoretto's up above. It's a Gospel scene, but painted like a Venetian aristocratic feast with a classical setting and dynamic crowd. Jesus is centered and looks right at us, but is almost - not quite - lost in the spectacle of bright color and movement. The whole thing is topped off by an atmospheric Venetian sky. It's not quite as big as Tintoretto's Crucifixion, but at 35.5' across is no slouch.
Veronese, The Wedding at Cana, 1563, Paris, Louvre Museum.
This bright, rich, energetic style was perfect for the sort of mythological scenes popular with rich patrons in the later 16th century. Here's Veronese's take on the damsel in distress, complete with dynamic hero and strategic eroticism. A successor to Titian's old role - Tintoretto's non-religious output was minimal and his dark style poorly suited to these subjects.
Paolo Veronese, Perseus Freeing Andromeda, 16th century, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes
Andromeda's nude body is highlighted by the contrast with her vivid robe. She and Perseus are bound together visually in an arc that foreshadows their union.
Veronese's religious scenes have a similar qualities - velvet textures and clever diagonal arrangements that never cross into Tintoretto levels of dramatic energy. He seems to be more connected to the Venetian color and emotion of the earlier Titian as opposed to the later one, but doesn't look retro or old fashioned. Organic movement along a different pathway.
Look at the shimmering robes that the figures wear in this scene. But the mystical light falling on the Christ Child isn't part of an overall reality-distorting chiaroscuro. It's an addition to a coherent but luxuriant visual spectacle.
Veronese, The Adoration of the Magi, 1573, oil on canvas, London, National Gallery .
The lesson?
Lesson 5 - Organic culture follows organic pathways
Venetian color and emotion aren't "rules" imposed by some fake asshole poseur "authority". They're cultural preferences and tendencies that develop naturally. This makes them more flexible and fluid, able to accommodate the success of late Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese at the same time. Which is better? It doesn't matter, so long as all of them are operating in ways that resonate with the culture that they belong to. They're all highly proficient and light up different corners of those cultural tendencies. Compare this to the mono-retardery of modernism. Venice was infinitely culturally richer as a result.
Here's one more luxe Veronese. The saturated color and fine texture almost resembles an embroidery.
Paolo Veronese, The Finding of Moses, 1570-1575, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art
Rich landscape distance, incredible Venetian sky, lively movement, luxe textiles - it's all here. Venetian oil color at the end of the Renaissance and foredawn of a new era.
One final figure before we wrap - this one a move away from painting into the world of architecture. But perhaps the most influential of them all, with the possible exception of Titian.
Palladio
No architect came to define Renaissance classicism like Palladio, a provincial from the Veneto who wound up in Venice. Unlike the other big names of Renaissance architecture like Alberti and Bramante, he didn't live in Rome. He did spent quite a bit of time visiting the Eternal City, but never as a resident. It seems that his relatively peripheral position gave him the outsider perspective to adapt the classical legacy into something new.
We noted at the beginning that Venice wasn't a hotbed of the sort of humanism that would lead to the early development of Renaissance classicism. This city of light and spectacle preferred ornate Gothic designs well after Florence was exclusively huffing antiquity.
Bartolomeo Bon, Ca' d'Oro, 1422-1440, Venice
The "house of gold" is an exceptional example of the canal palaces built by Venice's merchant elite. Note the date and elaborate Gothic decoration.
When Renaissance classicism did come, it came in the form of Roman expat Jacopo Sansovino. Classical elements had been turning up in the late 15th century, but he was the first to bring a coherent grasp of the classical architectural principles worked out in Rome. He appealed to to Venetian taste with heavily decorated buildings that replaced Gothic finery with classical. But the layering of forms, ornamental sculpture and play of surface and shadow carried over.
Jacopo Sansovino, Palazzo Corner della Ca' Granda, after 1532, Venice
Sansovino's version of a grand canal house. It's more symmetrical and neatly divided by classical columns an entablatures. But it appeals to wealthy Venetian desire for spectacle in a similar way.
Palladio's designs were different. He took the basic forms and ideals of classical architecture and distilled them down into harmonious simplicity. Instead of heavy decoration, he relied on the purity of his clear basic proportions to shine forth. This was consistent with humanist ideas about the fundamental nature of simple rations seen in earlier architecture posts. But no one had designed building in such a way. We don't have a canal house to show, but here's a palace from his native Vicenza. It's easy to miss how innovative this is because Palladio was so influential. The entire history of subsequent Western classicism followed his lead to some extent.
Palladio, Palazzo Chiericati, begun 1550, Vicenza
It doesn't follow any ancient prototype, but is based on rigorous, simple mathematical ratios. There are classical elements used for decoration - the patron did want a palace - but they are more restrained that Sansovino and not layered. The deep recesses on the front create an engaging chiaroscuro effect with the basic colonnades and without need for intricate details. Quite different on the surface from the contemporary painters. But Venice didn't impose the rule that all arts must follow the same patterns, and so architecture and painting could follow their own development paths.
Palladio is most famous for his villas - mainland estates that served either as agricultural hubs or just suburban showpieces. And the most famous of these - one of the most historically influential buildings of all time - is his Villa Rotonda.
Palladio, Villa Rotonda, 1567-1570, Capra Valmarana
This perfectly proportioned perfectly symmetrical building is a perfect statement of Palladian classicism and inspired imitators as far as Jefferson's Monticello. It's loosely based on Roman antiquity but is utterly unique in its appearance. Ideally situated in its landscape, it marries clear lucid design, ancient architecture, and environmental awareness in an unprecedented way.
A proportioned temple front greets you on all four sides.
Despite the rigorous symmetry, it somehow looks great on its site from any angle.
Palladio also designed church architecture - these are different from his palaces and villas but apply the same ideas. Antique-inspired forms distilled to a pure harmonious classical ideal of Palladio's invention, with enough ornament for grandeur, but no more. Palladio is similar to Titian in that his innovations will be perverted into modernist inversion. In Titian's case, it's elevating smearing oil paint as a technique to the "essence" of art by excluding the essential activity of making a picture and moving an audience. In Palladio's it's taking the simplicity and geometry, rejecting the beauty and grandeur and making ugly abstract boxes that hate humanity. But again, that comes with future perverts.
Palladian classicism harnessed to the glory of God looks like this...
Palladio, Il Redentore or Santissimo Redentore, begun 1577, Venice
Again, ignore the familiarity. Palladio is like the original Star Wars - so influential that the original seems derivative because you've seen so many derivations. To truly appreciate it, you have to consider that these are the prototypes of future archetypes. Victims of their own success.
The facade is simplified classical grandeur. Note the harmony - every angle is the same, and consistent proportions determine the arrangement of the whole.
Palladio brought the big central nave and low side chapels into unity by imagining a facade of two overlapping pedimented temple fronts. They're so flawlessly integrated that they seem natural, not disjointed.
The interior carries the same motifs and proportions into a brightly lit experience of grand simplicity. We'll let this be the last word, since with Palladio, Veronese, and Tintoretto, the Venetian Renaissance wound down.
Recap the lessons.
Organic culture absorbs influences on its terms not authorities imposing fake rules. The Arts of the West are built on regional cultural tastes within broader concepts of art. Those arts reflects changes in organic culture and new ways to visualize the changes. Because organic culture is alive and changing.
alond organic pathways.
Then continue our journey through the arts of the West.
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