The History of Venice in Painting

the Histor of in Painting

enice

Georges Duby Guy Lobrichon the Histor of in Painting

enice

of

the Histor

enice in Painting

• Edited by Georges Duby of the Académie Française and Guy Lobrichon in collaboration with Terisio Pignatti Daniel Russo Michel Hochmann Adriana van de Lindt-Russo Pierre Vaisse Geneviève Nevejan • Abbeville Press Publishers New York London

Slipcase: Edward Pritchett

Bacino di San Marco (Basin of Saint Mark) Oil on canvas Christie’s, London See page 348

Frontispiece: Vittore Carpaccio Detail of Legend of Saint Ursula Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice See page 79 for the original edition Layout: Roselyne de Ayala Production: Barbara Kekus, Florence Cailly Prepress: Edilog, Paris With grateful acknowledgments to Place des Editeurs for the english-language edition Editor: Susan Costello Production Editor: Erin Dress Copyeditor: Miranda Ottewell Translation: Transedition Ltd. Production Manager: Louise Kurtz Slipcase design and typographic layout: Misha Beletsky Composition: Julia Sedykh This book was set in Abrams Venetian, designed by the late George Abrams in 1989.

This typeface is based on the incunabula Roman letterforms used by the early Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson in the 1470s.

First published in the United States of America in 2007 by Abbeville Press, 137 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013 First published in France in 2007 by Editions Citadelles & Mazenod, 8, rue Gaston de Saint-Paul, 75116 Paris editor’s note Not all paintings are dated. It has been deemed preferable to omit such dates that are still a matter of debate and/or conjecture.

Copyright © Editio, Editions Citadelles & Mazenod, 2007. English translation copyright © Abbeville Press, 2007. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without ­permission in writing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to ­Abbeville Publishing Group, 137 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013.

Printed and bound in China.

First edition 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Histoire de Venise par la peinture. English The history of Venice in painting / edited by Georges Duby and Guy Lubrichon ; in collaboration with Terisio Pignatti ... [et al.]. — 1st ed. p. cm.

Originally published: L’histoire de Venise par la peinture. Paris : Citadelles & Mazenod, 2006.

Includes index.

Summary: “Illustrated collection of scholarly essays that provides commentary on both the history of Venice and the bequest of paintings it left to the world”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7892-0933-7 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7892-0933-0 1. Venice (Italy)—In art. 2. Painting, Italian—Italy—Venice.

3. Venice (Italy)—History. I. Duby, Georges. II. Lobrichon, Guy. III. Pignatti, Terisio, 1920– IV. Title.

ND1460.V45H5813 2007 758'.994531—dc22 2007020023 For bulk and premium sales and for text adoption procedures, write to Customer Service Manager, Abbeville Press, 137 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013, or call 1-800-Artbook.

Visit Abbeville Press online at www.abbeville.com.

C ontents La Serenissima Georges Duby 7

a People’ s Paradise Guy Lobrichon 11

The Gospel of Color Terisio Pignatti 27

The Seat of an mpire xiii to xv centuries Daniel Russo 39

the Arsenale of the est xvi century Michel Hochmann 103

esponse to Decline a european culture in the xvii and xviii centuries Adriana van de Lindt-Russo 177

the Dream That Was enice end of the xviii to the early xx century Pierre Vaisse and Geneviève Nevejan 323

AppendiXes

the doges of venice from the late xii century to 1797 478 the principal cycles of venetian narrative painting xiv and xv centuries 479 index of works illustrated 480 biographies of artists 483 index of proper names 490 index of places 495

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la serenissima

L a S erenissima

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Giambattista Tiepolo Young Lady in a Tricorn Hat, c. 1755–60 Oil on canvas, 24⅜ × 19¼ (62 × 49 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington

ver since Venice came into being, back when the Veneti first fled the flood tide of barbarian hordes on the Terraferma mainland and sought refuge at the Rialto, the city of Venice has existed on the fringes. Throughout its history, it has remained there, disturbingly marginalized.

Venice emerged from the waters and, for all one knows, may at some point return to them. It is at once a city poised for adventure and a piece of jetsam thrown up and abandoned by the tides, a city of two elements—earth and water—at the intersection of two worlds, a city that was for centuries the sole crossroads between the brutal and bellicose Occident and the rich treasures of the Orient. Like Palmyra before it, Venice drew rich and sustaining nourishment from this intermediate position as a far-flung Adriatic outpost of the Byzantine Empire. Yet it was too distant from that empire’s center to be dependent on it, and Venice evaded the outreach of Saint Basil and Charlemagne alike.

Over time, the city on the lagoon gradually made its mark in the salt and slave trade before plowing its initial profits back into more lucrative markets based on rare and precious commodities from the banks of the Bosphorus. When its monopoly there was challenged, Venice duly extended credit facilities to crusaders unable to pay their passage in full. After Constantinople fell in 1204, Venice enthroned a Latin emperor. Parts of Greece were colonized, trading posts established, and trade routes secured along the Silk Road into the very heart of China. Venice was not slow to take up arms in order to secure these and other gains, both to defend itself against its sworn rivals, the Genovese, and to carry the banner of Christianity against the military might of the Turks.

The lion of Saint Mark was featured everywhere throughout the Aegean, asserting the city’s “most serene” self-confidence.

The fruits of the city’s audacity and intrigues promptly manifested themselves in the form of a newfound opulence initially based on the spoils of conquest. Soon, however, Venice began to produce goldsmiths and sculptors from within its own ranks, followed some time later by painters who, as the celebrated Pala d’Oro demonstrates, permutated Latinate elements and polychromatic oriental detail to unprecedented ornamental efect.

The Pala d’Oro was marveled at throughout Europe, not least by those who, like Albrecht Dürer, traveled from the far side of the Alps to view it.

Curiously enough, the first realistic “views” of Venice—and arguably the most beautiful—date from within a few years of the discovery of the New World. (Carpaccio, it will be recalled, worked in Venice between 1494 and 1500.) This cataclysmic event

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resulted in much of the Mediterranean area being efectively abandoned to Turkish and other influences for an extended period. As the focus of attention shifted to the Atlantic and to the exciting prospect of new trade opportunities, Venice’s status as a trading state slowly eroded. From that point on, Venice rested—albeit quite sumptuously—on its laurels, which is to say, its accumulated capital. It disbursed that capital to glorify several prominent families and the state those families had so zealously arrogated as their birthright.

For the better part of a century, Venice was unquestionably the dominant force in painting. Yet the patrons of Venice proved largely disinclined to celebrate the singular attractions of the city per se. The prodigious painters of this golden age eschewed narrative and all that was picturesque, opting instead to retain only the essential qualities of Venice: the skies above, their reflection in the waters below, the limpid golden light that bathed the city. What is more, the likes of Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto celebrated Venice at its most ample and triumphant as a female figure—a seductress.

To sustain its brilliance and prosperity, the Republic of Venice now stressed its rarity value, insisting that visiting Venice equated to a unique and delectable experience, a visit to an ostentatiously cosmopolitan city that aforded its guests every conceivable distraction, particularly that of sensual pleasure. It was said that there was “no other place in the world where freedom and license reign with such authority” as in this charming, serene, and discreet city, “where one could sleep late into the day” before partaking of life’s pleasures.

Foreign travel was anything but unusual in the Europe of the day, but up to that point, travelers were mostly “pilgrims” who tended to justify their yearning for the exotic in terms of its value to their physical and spiritual well-being. Mass tourism of a more profane nature, however, was inaugurated once traveling to Venice became fashionable.

Venice certainly did not want for publicity. That said, the city’s attractions were perhaps overstated. In November 1580, French essayist Michel de Montaigne spent a week in the city. He was particularly struck by three things: the remarkable political structure rooted in the calm yet disciplined and vigilant approach to the threat imposed on Venice by the surrounding sea; the Venetian Arsenale; and, not least, “the presence of so many foreigners in the Piazza San Marco.” In other respects, he noted, Venice was “other than I had imagined it and a little less admirable.” Above all, Montaigne recorded his disappointment at the courtesans of Venice: “I see little trace of the beauty ascribed to the ladies of Venice, although I have seen the most noble of these ply their trade.”

Be that as it may, ensuing decades saw the festive nature of Venice develop apace in terms of scope and sophistication. It reached its apogee in the eighteenth century—although not in the hot summer months, when disease was rife. The Venice Carnival was a long series of festivities that began on October 5 and continued for the better part of six months (other than during Lent) until after Easter Sunday the following year. Venice attracted pleasureseekers from all over Europe, who, though somewhat surprised to find themselves snubbed by Venetian nobility, were nonetheless ready to be captivated by the many diversions Venice had to ofer: elaborate magisterial processions on the Grand Canal; the commedia dell’arte; the opera (five were typically performed each night); liturgical music in churches, hospices, and confraternities (scuole); as well as the women of Venice, of course. These included young novices, glimpsed ever so briefly behind convent grilles and wearing “the simple habit that reveals their shoulders and throat.”

Then there were those who were far more “available,” the ubiqui-

Above.

Veronese (Paolo Caliari) La Bella Nani, c. 1560–65 Oil on canvas, 46⅞ × 40⅝ in. (119 × 103 cm) Louvre Museum, Paris

Right.

Albrecht Dürer A Venetian Lady, 1505 Painting on wood, 12¾ × 9⅝ in. (32.5 × 24.5 cm) Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Portraiture flourished in Venice largely thanks to Titian, the master of a successful studio who helped educate the next generation of Venetian painters.

His famous pupils Tintoretto and Veronese subsequently went their separate and rivalrous ways.

Veronese was renowned both as a colorist without equal and as an excellent painter of women, their attire, and their jewels. Yet his female portraits were characterized by their anonymity. La Bella Nani is a case in point. A passing reference dating from around 1660 suggests the work was owned by the Nani family of Venice, but there has been speculation of late to the effect that the beauty in question was none other than Elena Badile, destined to become Veronese’s wife in 1566. A striking resemblance to the woman portrayed in the loggia of the Villa Maser may nonetheless suggest she was, in fact, Giustiniana Giustiniani-Barbaro.

The art of portraiture in Western Europe reached its zenith in the sixteenth century. Far from limiting themselves to portraits of kings and queens, artists also celebrated the rise of rich merchants and courtesans. Nowhere was this truer than in Venice, as musicians, painters, sculptors, and architects were drawn to the city. Albrecht Dürer visited the German colony in Venice in 1494–95 and again in 1505–7, just when his compatriots were in the process of refurbishing (at substantial cost) the Fondaco dei Tedeschi—the German commodity exchange—on the west bank of the Grand Canal.

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tous ladies of pleasure. “It should not be thought they are in such number as to be trampled underfoot,” wrote Charles de Brosse in a letter from Italy dated 1739, conceding however that during Lent, “there are as many women on their backs under the Procuratie as there are on their feet.” The same source estimated their number at “no more than twice that of Paris—albeit more occupied and with a charming manner,” all dressed in the vestiti di confidenza that would later make such an impression on the visiting Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

This Venice proved a fertile breeding ground for figurative painting. Almost overnight, painters began recording with great attention to detail many aspects of everyday Venetian life that attracted the traveler: the canals, the theater, the strolling players and street artists, and the outlines of figures seen in the penumbra of convents and alcoves—in short, all the masques and artifices designed to attract and seduce.

It might be asked to what extent the features of Venice as depicted by Canaletto or Guardi difer from those we encounter today. In essence, the decor is much the same. Nothing—or virtually nothing—has been altered. The radical changes wrought by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries appear not to have touched the city of the doges, leaving it marginalized, embalmed in its own reputation.

No doubt the time has come for Venice to mend its licentious ways. But, paradoxically perhaps, the city continues to dispense its visual and spiritual largesse. Two centuries ago, when Europe’s painters began working sur le motif and attempting to capture the fleeting interplay of light and color, Venice became the destination of choice par excellence. This held true for genuinely great artists—among them Joseph Mallord William Turner, Camille Corot, and Claude Monet—but also for those demonstrably less gifted, including painters like Félix Ziem, who made their mark only painting traditional Venetian scenes. Those days are now long gone, and figurative painting is largely a relic of the past. But the iridescence that is Venice is still there, mysterious and fragile as ever, and regarded all the more precious by those who continue to cherish the city unsullied by crowds and reduced to her bare essentials.

Georges Duby Académie Française

Giambattista Tiepolo Oil on canvas, 53⅛ × 108¼ in. (135 × 275 cm) Detail from Venice Receiving the Homage of Neptune, 1756–58 Sala delle Quattro Porte, Ducal Palace, Venice From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the republic of La Serenissima portrayed itself almost without exception as a woman. This holds true for Jacobello del Fiore’s allegories of Justice, Giambattista Tiepolo’s “Queen of the Seas,” Francesco Guardi’s “Virtuous Warrior,” and even Tintoretto’s Venus. Veronese led the way with his sumptuous renderings of ancient Roman goddesses and heroines (allegorical stand-ins for Venice) receiving blessings from Heaven and generously redistributing them, thus emulating the Virgin Mary, in whom Venice saw a reflection of its own sublime essence.

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Above.

School of Francesco Guardi La Piazzetta, eighteenth century Oil on canvas, 18¼ × 14¼ in. (46.5 × 36 cm) Museo Mandralisca, Cefalù, Sicily A crowd has congregated on the Piazzetta around a platform around the column surmounted by the Lion of Saint Mark. Some charlatans are seen

Charles de Brosses admired and probably coveted this picture. In his Lettres d’Italie he writes, “Each arcade of the Procuraties serves as an entrance to a café always filled with customers.”

A gentleman has emerged from a cofeehouse and now stands in the right foreground, holding his cup; he clearly prefers to drink his cofee

standing under the arcade and watching the busy piazza. Two men sit nearby, chatting amiably. On the left, a group of figures is seen seated at a table.

This is a prime example of Canaletto as a painter of scenes from everyday life. It demonstrates his ability to capture and breathe life into ordinary events and gestures. Canaletto adopts an unusual viewpoint by portraying the piazza toward the east, from the direction of the Procuraties (southwest). In his Abecedario, Mariette ofers a succinct description of Canaletto’s technique: “His delicacy of execution, his verisimilitude, his uniqueness of viewpoint, made visitors to Venice seek him out, the English especially.”

Above and pages 200–201.

Canaletto

Above and pages 204–5.

Francesco Guardi

Oil on wood, 18½ × 31⅞ in. (47 × 81 cm) Louvre Museum, Paris

Oil on canvas Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna

Left.

Canaletto

Piazza San Marco and the Colonnade of the Procuratie Nuove

Oil on canvas, 18½ × 31⅞ in. (47 × 81 cm) National Gallery, London

The Molo from the Bacino di San Marco

From left to right: the Zecca (the public mint), the Libreria, the Piazzetta with its two columns, and the Campanile; farther back, the Basilica of San Marco and the Torre dell’Orologio. On the quayside, the facade of the Ducal Palace, the Bridge of Straw (Ponte della Paglia), the prisons, some wooden houses, and the Palazzo Dandolo (now the Hotel Danieli).

Canaletto bathes these buildings in a calm morning sunlight that somehow conveys a sense of a city awakening to a new day. Boatmen call to one another, and figures in the Piazzetta scurry to and fro.

This painting splendidly illustrates Goethe’s comment that Venice is a “great and noble work of people pooling their energies to erect this wonderful monument not to any master but to a single nation” (Italienische Reise, entry for September 29, 1786).

trying to swindle the passersby. The island of San Giorgio Maggiore appears in the remote background. To the left is the Basilica of San Marco, and on the right the base of the Campanile.

The canvas is based on a view (veduta) by Francesco Guardi (now in the Ca’ d’Oro, Venice), but there are some major diferences between that painting and this, most notably the introduction of the crowd and the mountebanks.

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Piazza San Marco with Clock Tower, c. 1765–75

The Torre dell’Orologio (clock tower), erected between 1496 and 1499 at the eastern end of the Procuratie Vecchie, was entirely reworked as of 1514 according to plans once attributed to Mauro Coducci but now credited to the Tuscan architect Giovanni Celestro.

At the top of the Torre an automatic device operates during the feast of the Ascension, a major Venetian festival, setting in motion images of the Three Wise Men preceded by a herald. They emerge from the clock face on the left, pay homage to the statue of the Virgin, and retire through the door on the right. Above, the Lion of Saint Mark once faced the figure of Doge Agostino Barbarigo (1486–1501), whose statue was destroyed in 1797 by order of the Venetian authorities following the city’s annexation to the French republic.

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Above.

Canaletto

Santa Maria della Salute

Oil on canvas, 20⅛ × 28 in. (51 × 71 cm) Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice La Salute, as it is commonly known, is a votive building erected at the behest of the Senate after the plague year of 1630. Every November 21, a procession of leading state dignitaries commemorated the end of the epidemic. Built between 1631 and 1681, this church was designed by architect Baldassare Longhena. This elegant construction faces the entrance to the Grand Canal and is a powerful pictorial presence in its own right. The

Opposite.

Canaletto

Scala dei Giganti

Oil on canvas, 68½ × 53¾ in. (174 × 136.5 cm) Duke of Northumberland Collection, Northumberland, England “You certainly know the Palace of St. Mark by reputation: an uncouth creature, massive, dark and gothic, and in the worst possible taste. Nevertheless, there is something magnificent about the construction of the great courtyard within, particularly on one side. It is quite compellingly decorated by two fountains and by a superb staircase fashioned entirely from white and violet marble.

It is known as the Scala dei Giganti—the Staircase of the Giants, so named, it would seem, in antici-

ground plan is octagonal, and the building boasts a magnificent cupola. Its exterior and interior decoration mark La Salute as one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical buildings in seventeenth-century Venice.

The interior contains some of the finest examples of works by Titian and Tintoretto (notably the latter’s Marriage at Cana). The Rococo architecture was not universally admired, however. In his L’Italie, written in 1671, the marquis de Seignelay remarked that its architecture is “very odd and misconceived: there is a very large dome above the high altar, followed by another, smaller one [the cupola of the Presbytery], which might be intended as the chancel but which has a most displeasing efect.”

pation of my visit.” So wrote Charles de Brosses in his Lettres d’Italie, adding that the Scala dei Giganti leads to another staircase “adorned with many statues and much gilding” and to “chambers where various councils meet.”

Canaletto painted the Scala dei Giganti from the Foscari Arch connecting the Porta della Cartà and the staircase. Closed on one side by the Basilica of San Marco, the Scala dei Giganti opens onto the courtyard. Someone dressed entirely in crimson—a senator, by the looks of him—has paused on his way down to consult with one of several lawyers.

The Ducal Palace was not only the residence of the “president” of the republic but was also extensively used by various state oicials as a debating chamber.

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Above.

Canaletto

Piazza San Marco from the Campo San Basso Oil on canvas Musée Condé, Chantilly, France Left.

Canaletto

Portico (Capriccio), 1765

Oil on canvas, 52 × 36⅝ in. (132 × 93 cm) Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice The Venetian Academy of Painting and Sculpture was founded in 1750 and was initially presided over

by Giambattista Piazzetta. The republic did not accord it oicial recognition until six years later, at which juncture Giambattista Tiepolo was elected president. At the academy, historical, religious, and mythological painting reigned supreme.

Canaletto, a painter of vedute, was finally accepted as a member, but only in 1763, and despite determined opposition.

The painting reproduced to the left dates from 1765, two years before Canaletto’s death. As of quite recently, it was his only work housed in Venice. Contemporary sources reveal that it was exhibited at the great fair during the Feast of the Ascension (La Sensa) in 1777, where it met with some approval. Eight copies of the work are known. For a long time, this capriccio was regarded as no more than a bright and confident stylistic exercise anchored in the veduta tradition—a genre painting, plain and simple. In that sense, the can-

vas might be compared to the decorative theater scenery of the artist’s early work.

More important, however, was the fact that a master of perspective was a legitimate aspirant to academy membership: after all, his art was rooted in the exact science of mathematics, not merely in observation of nature or the minutiae of everyday life.

It has been suggested that the capriccio assimilates certain elements directly from the topography typical of Venice—a courtyard, an outside staircase, a well, a colonnaded portico, all details that could have been “borrowed” from the architecture of the Ca’ d’Oro. However, Canaletto has efectively reinterpreted the Gothic style of that palazzo in a more fashionable Baroque style. The richly decorated door halfway up the staircase is derived from a Roman model known to the painter, whereas the barrel-vaulted wood ceiling of the portico is pure invention.

Much of the popularity enjoyed by vedute can be attributed to a relatively small number of familiar genre motifs that feature time and time again: a beggar, a young woman by a fountain, figures on steps, and so on. These details drawn from everyday life are deliberately inserted into a framework that could have been more rigorously depicted.

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Left.

Canaletto

Rialto Bridge

Oil on canvas, 46⅝ × 60⅝ in. (119 × 154 cm) Louvre Museum, Paris “A vast prospect greets one from the heights of this bridge. Below it, the canal teems with small vessels bringing essential goods from the Terraferma, for it is here for the most part that they moor and discharge their loads. Swarms of gondolas pass between these cargo vessels.” In his Italienische Reise, Goethe thus describes the size and importance of the Rialto as a commercial axis. On this, the north side of the bridge, is the city’s fruit and vegetable market, clearly visible on the quay on the right and framed by the of-white Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, the Fabbriche Vecchie (set farther back), and the Fabbriche Nuove (the red-brick facade fronting the canal). On the left bank, just before the bridge, is the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, which served both as a meeting place and warehouse for German merchants doing business in Venice.

For his part, Giacomo Casanova saw the Rialto market primarily as a social center: “The gentry who habitually stroll about the Erberia quite early in the morning will say they are attracted by the sight of hundreds of boats arriving with vegetables, fruit, and flowers. But it is common knowledge that young men and women who have spent the night on Cythera, the island of the love goddess Aphrodite, or have wined and dined to excess, or have been driven to despair by ill fortune at the gaming table, make their way to this spot to breathe more freely and soothe their restless spirits.”

There are several versions of this painting, including one engraved by Boitard in 1735, which adopts a slightly diferent viewpoint.

Above and pages 214–15.

Canaletto

Santa Chiara Canal

Oil on canvas, 18⅞ × 31⅛ in. (48 × 79 cm) Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris Although a number of alterations have been made here and there, the basic topography of the island of Venice has changed little over the centuries. For a time, this was certainly true of the Santa Chiara canal. In the eighteenth century, a church of that name was located on an islet. In this painting by Canaletto, the wall that separated the Franciscan nuns from the outside world is clearly visible on the far left. Behind it is the distinctive belfry of the church of Sant’Andrea. The peace and tranquility of this district are now considerably altered.

Today it lies opposite the autorimessa, where drivers park their vehicles before entering the city.

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The Seat of an Empire xiii to xv centuries

Benedetto Bordon

Capitolario del mestier e arte de la lana

Painting on parchment, 19¾ × 17¾ in. (50 × 45 cm) Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

Michele Giambono’s Lion (page 45) is a crablike creature portrayed head-on, its wings folded back around its body; this was an earlier representation of the winged lion of Venice. The emblematic lion as conceived by master illuminator Benedetto Bordon is a very diferent creature indeed. Bordon’s lion is used to illustrate the craft of woolmaking

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as regulated by the republic. Like its counterpart painted by Vittore Carpaccio in 1516, the animal is portrayed on the move, with one front paw raised to clasp the Gospels and the other planted firmly on the ground; its two rear legs, by contrast, are still in the water, a clear metaphor for the supremacy of Venice on both land and sea.

Above.

Vittore Carpaccio Lion of Saint Mark, 1516 Oil on canvas, 51¼ × 144⅞ in. (130 × 368 cm) Ducal Palace, Venice Like Paolo Veneziano, Gentile da Fabriano, Jacobello del Fiore, Michele Giambono, the Bellinis, and Alvise Vivarini before him, Vittore Carpaccio was commissioned to decorate apartments in the Ducal Palace. His Lion of Saint Mark can still be seen there today.

Carpaccio’s lion is portrayed against the backdrop (left) of the Piazzetta, with a glimpse of the Campanile and the facade of the Doges’ Palace.

Above.

Donato Bragadin

Lion of Saint Mark with Saints Jerome and Augustine, fifteenth century

Oil on canvas Ducal Palace, Venice

Bragadin’s Lion of Saint Mark is portrayed in motion, its wings dappling against the sky. One paw rests on an open book containing the code of wisdom and moral and civic rectitude (“laws moderate Man’s cupidity”).

The inclusion of Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine, at the time the two most celebrated figures

The lion (detail, pages 38–39) holds in his paw a book open at a Latin text (“Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus”—Peace be with you, Mark, my Evangelist), an allusion to the legend of Saint Mark and his adoption as the patron saint of the Republic of Venice.

Legend has it that Saint Mark was spreading the gospel in the Upper Adriatic region when he was caught in a sudden storm and obliged to seek shelter on a desert island, where he promptly fell asleep. An angel visited him in his sleep—Carpaccio’s painting shows the winged lion emerging from the lagoon and stepping on dry land—and spoke the prophetic words inscribed above: Saint Mark was fated never to find eternal peace and rest until

his body was brought back to the very spot where the angel appeared to him.

Since there was no way of knowing exactly where the island lay, virtually every town along the Adriatic coast claimed to be the sacred spot where the apparition occurred. In 828, during the dogate of Giustiniano Partecipazio, Venetian merchants Rustico de Torcello and Buono de Malamocco appropriated Saint Mark’s remains from their burial place in Alexandria and brought them back to Venice as a gift for the doge. From that point on, the relics of Saint Mark reposed in peace in Venice.

And Venice had its new patron saint.

of the church, represents an ecclesiastical endorsement of the human concept of good government.

Saint Jerome holds a model church that, with its three distinctive cupolas, raised entrance porch, vaulted loggia, and campanile, can be none other than a miniature of the Basilica of San Marco; this impression is reinforced by the cargo boats and other vessels moored in the lagoon beyond. Saint Jerome, translator of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin—his translation known as the Vulgate—is a recurrent figure in fifteenth-century ecclesiastical iconography.

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the seat of an empire

Above.

Gentile Bellini

Portrait of Vittore Carpaccio, c. 1505 Charcoal on paper with a sienna wash Condé Museum, Chantilly Above right.

Vittore Carpaccio Portrait of Gentile Bellini, c. 1505 Charcoal on paper with a sienna wash Condé Museum, Chantilly The two small-format profiles reproduced above recall those featuring in the already extensive tradition of paintings of the Virgin and Child and in the portraits of doges and humanist men of letters.

In their pronounced funerary style, they are also reminiscent of ancient stelae.

Around 1505, images of individuals began to assert themselves and become subject matter in their own right—in Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula cycle, for

example, or in Gentile Bellini’s Miracles of the True Cross. Over and above slavish portraiture, the artist is at pains to exhibit fantasia, the faculty of creative imagination.

Leonardo da Vinci was among the very first to insist on the primordial role of the imagination in artistic creation. Leonardo spent time in Venice between 1500 and 1502—in other words, at the precise juncture when monumental canvases commissioned by the scuole were most in demand.

Leonardo’s ideas reflected a preoccupation, shared by the likes of Bellini and Carpaccio, to go beyond superficial representation in a bid to capture a “story” in its most essential detail.

In this respect, it is instructive to recall the way Carpaccio signed his work. Starting in 1502, he began to use forms of the Latin fingere (“to make”), a verb used sparingly up until then. Thus, his Vision of Saint Augustine, painted in 1502 for the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, carries his signature together with the annotation “fingebat”; his Holy

Conversation of 1507 (now in the Petit Palais Museum in Avignon) appends the phrase “A Victore ficti”; and the term finxit is appended to his Young Knight in a Landscape of 1510 (opposite), as well as his Consecration of Saint Stephen, painted in 1511 for the eponymous religious confraternity, and his Saint Stephen Preaching of 1514.

What is more, Carpaccio took to signing his work diferently, changing from the “Scarpazza” of his early paintings to the “Carpatio” of his Miracle of Saint Ursula cycle and then to the Latin form “Carpathius” on the 1502 paintings destined for San Giorgio degli Schiavoni. Using the Latin form of his name and appending the verb fingere to his signature clearly indicates his wish to be considered a fictor, a “maker” or “creator” akin to a sculptor who works plaster or wax to “create” by the intervention of the imagination. That impulse is exemplified in the two sketches reproduced here.

Opposite.

Vittore Carpaccio

manist tradition of his day. It is open to several interpretations, each as persuasive, yet inconclusive, as the next. Accordingly, it is claimed in some quarters that the portrait depicts the humanist Ermolao Barbaro, who died in 1493. It has also been suggested that the young knight is none other than Francesco Maria della Rovere, third duke of Urbino, who would have been around twenty years old at the time of the painting. This interpretation is lent a degree of substance by the fact that the ermine was an attribute of the dukes of Urbino, and that the distinctive black-and-yellow livery of the rider at background left and the colors on the sheath of the young knight’s sword are those of Urbino.

With the notable exception of some few canvases

by Carpaccio or, around 1510, by Giovanni Bellini, this type of humanist yet worldly painting was not particularly common in Venice. It is so recondite as to be accessible only to a limited circle of initiates.

Young Knight in a Landscape, 1510

Oil on canvas, 85¾ × 59¾ in. (218 × 152 cm) Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid Two parchment “labels” frame this full-length portrait of a young knight. Aixed to a branch on the right of the painting is a label bearing a signature that reads “Victor Carpathius / finxit / M.D.X.”; in the left foreground is a second label with a kind of rebus that reads “Malo mori quam foedari” (Better to die than be defiled).

Pictured immediately below this inscription is an ermine—a metaphor, perhaps, for artistic integrity.

(It was customary in the great families of Europe and, indeed, of patrician Venice—the Molin and Barbaro families immediately spring to mind—for animal and rebus to become inextricably linked.)

Vittore Carpaccio’s portrait exemplifies the hu-

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Above left and opposite.

Vittore Carpaccio

Two Venetian Ladies on a Terrace, 1490

Oil on canvas, 37 × 25¼ in. (94 × 64 cm) Correr Museum, Venice Above right.

Vittore Carpaccio

Hunting on the Lagoon

Oil on canvas, 29⅞ × 25¼ in. (76 × 64 cm) Getty Foundation, Los Angeles

If we superimpose Carpaccio’s Two Venetian Ladies on a Terrace on his Hunting on the Lagoon, it becomes clear that the two ladies in question are watching­— without particular enthusiasm, it seems—the annual grebe or wild goose hunt organized by the doge. Taken together, the two paintings are replete with metaphor—the dead birds must be ofered by the doge to members of the Grand Council— yet remain enigmatic. One of the two ladies holds a handkerchief in mute expectation of a loved one’s return.

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Pisanelli (Antonio Puccio) Saint George and the Princess, c. 1436–38 Fresco, 87¾ × 169¼ in. (223 × 430 cm) Pellegrini Chapel, church of Sant’Anastasia, Verona Pisanello’s oeuvre was influenced to a large degree by the spatial experimentation of painters such as Gentile da Fabriano in the early fifteenth century.

This is documented in the painting reproduced here, a fresco that exhibits a new trend, namely the attempt to impart a sense of movement and animation, typically by crowding scenes and processions. In Venetian painting, this aim was to find its fullest expression in the post–Jacopo Bellini generation of historical painters active around 1470 to 1480.

These figures in the fresco on the walls of the Pellegrini Chapel are set against a wholly conventional landscape, with a castle dominating the horizon. Like so many chroniclers of his day, Pisanello pays attention to minute detail in a bid to record the pictorial quality and diversity of each individual aspect of the scene. This is at its most evident in his rendering of the two corpses suspended from the gallows, each in a diferent pose, and the disparate facial expressions of the crowd that has gathered to witness the event. It is also supremely evident in the sumptuous fabric of the robe worn by the princess, every bit as rich in texture as the apparel of Saint George himself.

The influence of Gentile da Fabriano is perhaps most apparent, however, in Pisanello’s determination to impart a three-dimensional “feel” to the

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scene as a whole; this foreshadows later paintings

by Gentile Bellini and, later still, Vittore Carpaccio. Here, human and animal figures predominate, and the architecture is more fully articulated.

When the painting is viewed from the immediate foreground, the city in the background does not appear to trail of into infinity; instead, the landscape remains quantifiable, finite, and on a human scale.

Pisanello’s contribution constituted an enrichment of the Venetian tradition. Here, the influence of Verona is superimposed on that of central Italy, Umbria, and the Marches of Gentile da Fabriano to produce an embryonic stylistic approach that is both original and more historically apposite than simple allegory.

Gentile Bellini

Baldassare Estense

c. 1500 Oil on canvas, 24¾ × 18⅞ in. (63 × 48 cm) Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Oil on canvas, 20⅛ × 14⅝ in. (51 × 37 cm) Correr Museum, Venice

Portrait of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus,

Another portrait of Caterina Cornaro, painted

by Antonio Vassilacchi and now in the Correr Museum in Venice, records her arrival in Venice shortly after 1489, the date on which she elected to cede the island of Cyprus and its territories to the Republic of Venice. The likeness of the former queen appears several times elsewhere, most notably perhaps as a kneeling figure at the head of the ladies of honor in Gentile Bellini’s masterful Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo (c. 1500, pages 86–87). There is every reason to suspect that the half-length portrait reproduced above was painted at or around that same year.

Caterina Cornaro inherited the estate of the Cornaro family dynasty founded in 1368 by Federigo Cornaro. Faced with the imminent prospect of Turkish invasion, Caterina elected to retire to her estates in Asolo in the Veneto. Once there, she surrounded herself with a coterie of artists, writers, and actors, including the poet Pietro Bembo and the painter Giorgione. The ex-queen may thus be said to have enriched Venice both in terms of physical possessions and by virtue of the outstanding talents in her circle of intimates.

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Portrait of a Young Man

The influence of the Terraferma on Venetian painting cannot be overemphasized. The above Portrait of a Young Man—widely attributed to Baldassare Estense, resident painter at the court of Ferrara— confirms the significant extent to which Venice’s painters were indebted throughout the course of the fifteenth century to their counterparts from Ferrara.

Baldassare Estense worked in enamels and with a precision and sharpness one finds in certain paintings by Giovanni Bellini or Vittore Carpaccio.

His “miniaturist” technique was more than familiar to his Venetian counterparts, who made full use of it in their portrayal of foreground figures. In the Portrait of a Young Man, a book rests on a window ledge—a book of hours, one surmises, but doubtless a highly personal object in constant use (as indicated by the ruby gemstone left casually on top of it). The landscape revealed beyond the partially open curtain is painted in minute detail, with a succession of horizontal planes and bands of color, including a yellow stretch of sand that reflects the dazzling light of a summer evening. The distant figures, so tiny as to be barely perceptible, are no less precise. The same holds true of the bust seen at bottom left.

Mention should be made of two other panels painted by the Ferrara school: a Portrait of a Woman worthy of Pisanello and a Death of Saint Jerome from the convent of La Carità in Venice. These and the present portrait exemplify elements that were subsequently integrated into the grand manner of Venetian painting in the years 1470 to 1520.

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