Art in Renaissance Venice (Renaissance and Reformation)

Introduction

This bibliography concentrates primarily on Venetian art and artists of the 15th and 16th centuries. In this period the achievements of the city’s painters, sculptors, and architects reached unparalleled heights. Though the tradition came back to life in the 18th century, most would agree that the “golden age” of Venetian art occurred in the two Renaissance centuries. The particular visual power of Venetian art in this period was immediately recognized, though it was often seen by outsiders as too naturalistic, sensual, or color based, or as insufficiently concerned with elevating intellectual ideas or forms. Many of the items listed in this bibliography bear witness to a remarkable revival of critical, scholarly, and public interest in the tradition over the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Though this upsurge initially began under the impact of Romantic, and then modernist, values, it has since taken on a new kind of historical objectivity under the impact of the foundation and development of art history as an academic discipline. Since the mid-19th century, study of the art of Renaissance Venice has been founded on close and systematic scholarly study, and to this extent it has represented a concerted attempt to understand the tradition on its own terms or in relation to its original artistic, social, and religious meanings and functions. This broad move toward historical contextualism has offered many new insights into the original material practices, processes, and discourses by and through which Venetian artworks were made and understood in their time. It has delivered a new understanding of just how far such works mirror the unique social, cultural, and physical environment of Venice itself, and of how far they represent an integral expression of the city’s emergent sense of itself.

General Overviews

Rosand 1984, a landmark collection, includes essays by many leading Venetian scholars, covers a broad range of topics, and has a chronology extending over more than five centuries. The essays in Humfrey 2007, published more than a quarter century later, indicate the main ways Venetian art history has developed. Contributions suggest the development of newly rigorous interests in art’s relation to broader social, economic, and geopolitical questions (e.g., the relation between the center, Venice, and its periphery, the terra firma). The brilliant surveys of Huse and Wolters 1990 and Brown 1997 are more introductory in nature, but they too reflect the rise of contextualism in Venetian studies, laying great emphasis on the shaping force of nonartistic factors on the development of art in the city. Hills 1999, a subtle study, is rather different in kind but still follows the “cultural” turn, showing that the long-recognized Venetian love of color reflects a kind of totalizing response to the unique physical and cultural environment of the city.

Brown, Patricia Fortini. Art and Life in Renaissance Venice. New York: Prentice Hall, 1997.
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Original overview that places Venetian Renaissance art firmly in its unique social and cultural context. Departs from the usual chronological treatment of major artists to explore art’s place within key cultural themes (e.g., “Venezianitá,” “The Art of Public Life,” and “Caste, Class, and Gender”). Also published as The Renaissance in Venice: A World Apart (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1997).
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Hills, Paul. Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250–1550. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
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Elegantly written and superbly illustrated account of the artistic, social, and environmental formation of the special Venetian awareness of color. Connection of Venetian colored glass with Renaissance paintings is striking though tendentious. Insight that Venetian painters increasingly rejected bright colors in favor of admixtures with black and white is more important.
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Humfrey, Peter, ed. Venice and the Veneto. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Well-organized collection of commissioned essays by leading authorities establishing connections between visual art and the state and religious institutions of Venice. Essays in Part 3 offer a useful overview of the relationship between art in Venice itself and the subject cities on the mainland (terra firma).
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Huse, Norbert, and Wolfgang Wolters. The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460–1590. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
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Originally published as Venedig, die Kunst der Renaissance (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1986). Rich overview combining survey-style coverage with careful contextualization. Wolters’s chapters on architecture and sculpture are particularly useful, combining analyses of building types and patrons with short accounts of specific works by leading architects and sculptors. Successfully combines accessibility with complexity.
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Rosand, David, ed. Interpretazioni veneziani: Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro. Venice: Arsenale, 1984.
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Important collection by an international range of scholars that remains unique in its breadth of coverage of artistic media. Papers on many aspects of Venetian art, including architecture, painting, and sculpture. Contributions of Rosand, Debra Pincus, Jaynie Anderson, Philipp Fehl, and Marilyn Perry have proved important for subsequent scholarship.
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Catalogues and Encyclopedias

Among the many catalogues and encyclopedias including discussions of Venetian art, Moschini Marconi 1955, two groundbreaking volumes devoted to the rich collections of the main art gallery in Venice (the Gallerie dell’Accademia), occupies a special place. Like the collection they catalogue, these volumes provide an important starting point for scholars of Venetian art, containing a wealth of detailed information on paintings of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Penny 2008, a catalogue of the late Renaissance Venetian paintings in London’s National Gallery, is much narrower in its coverage and much deeper in its analysis of the given works. Its level of detail serves to reveal the indissoluble individuality of Venetian works of art. As a model of object-based art historical scholarship, Nicholas Penny’s book seems to resist or challenge the generalizing mode of the “survey” or catalogue type to which it belongs. The dictionary entries in Turner 2000 provide, on the other hand, very useful syntheses and bibliographies on many Venetian artists.

Moschini Marconi, Sandra, ed. Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia. Vol. 1, Opere d’Arte dei secoli XIV e XV. Rome: Istituto Poligrafo dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1955.
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Volume 2 is Opere d’Arte del secolo XVI (Rome: Istituto Poligrafo dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1962). Catalogue of paintings in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, home to the world’s prime collection of Venetian art. Given that the catalogue entries are now half a century old, the information given cannot always be taken at face value, yet still an important source on provenance and earlier restorations.
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Penny, Nicholas. The Sixteenth-Century Italian Paintings. Vol. 2, Venice 1540–1600. National Gallery Catalogues. London: National Gallery, 2008.
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Lavishly illustrated catalogue of late Renaissance Venetian paintings in London’s National Gallery. That more than five hundred pages are devoted to just fifty-three works suggests the superb detail of the analyses. Despite its narrower chronological coverage, this book successfully supersedes Cecil Gould’s earlier catalogue, The Sixteenth-Century Venetian School (London: National Gallery, 1959).
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Turner, Jane, ed. Encyclopedia of Italian Renaissance and Mannerist Art. 2 vols. New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, 2000.
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Useful selection of dictionary entries from the 1996 MacMillan’s Dictionary of Art, containing long and shorter articles by leading scholars on all the major Venetian Renaissance painters, sculptors, and architects. Each entry has a useful bibliography, although these are inevitably becoming outdated.
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Primary Sources and Collections

Early printed books devoted to Venetian art and artists provide a fundamental scholarly source for scholars. Until 1550 little was written about the powerful traditions of art in the city, but with the rising interest of humanists and leading patrons, a number of publications were quickly published in Venice, including a guidebook to the city’s art, Sansovino 2002 (first edition, 1556) and a theoretical text by Ludovico Dolce (in Roskill 2000). Dolce’s dialogue uses humanist tropes to mount a robust defense of Venetian painting, particularly that of Titian. His promotion of local painting was stimulated in part by Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (Florence, 1550), in which Venetian art was seen as inferior to that of the Florentines. The defense of Venetian painting against Vasarian academic-idealist values also underpinned the 17th-century publications of Ridolfi 1914–1924 and Boschini 1966. In contrast to these more polemical texts, those of Sansovino 2002 and especially Michiel 1903 offer a more objective kind of information about the original locations and early provenance of Venetian art. The items listed in this section should be consulted alongside the vast collections of documents held in Venice in locations such as the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (near the Church of the Frari) and the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (opposite the Ducal Palace), both of which have online catalogues.

Archivio di Stato di Venezia.
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Information system of the Venetian State Archive. This catalogue indexes more than fifteen hundred fonds or bundles of documents and also lists finding aids and relevant printed and manuscript inventories. It is available in both Italian and English and is an important preparatory aid for study in the archives.
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Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.
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Online guide to the vast collections of manuscripts, printed books, and cartographic holdings of the Marciana Library at the center of Venice. The library includes a superb collection of early books devoted to Venetian Renaissance art.
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Boschini, Marco. La carta del navegar pitoresco: Edizione critica con la “Breve Istruzione,” premessa alle “Ricche Minere della Pittura Veneziana.” Edited by Anna Palluchini. Venice and Rome: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1966.
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Written as an epic poem in an extravagant literary style based on that of the Neapolitan poet Giambattista Marino, Boschini’s book is a spirited defense of Venetian colorism against the attacks of idealist-academic critics. Includes vivid description of Titian’s use of his fingers to establish highlights in his late paintings.
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Michiel, Marcantonio, ed. The Anonimo: Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy Made by an Anonymous Writer in the Sixteenth Century. Translated by Paolo Mussi. Edited by George C. Williamson. London: G. Bell, 1903.
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Original title is Notizia d’opere di disegno, known as the Anonimo Morelli. This manuscript was first discovered in Venice (1800) and records a well-connected Venetian nobleman’s notes on the paintings he had seen in private collections. Probably written 1520–1540, the manuscript is an invaluable source of information on the early provenance of important works, including, for example, Giorgione’s Tempest.
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Ridolfi, Carlo. Le maraviglie dell’arte ovvero le vite degli illustri pittori veneti e dello stato. 2 vols. Edited by Detlev von Hadeln. Berlin: G. Grote, 1914–1924.
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Key source on Venetian Renaissance art. Ridolfi’s account is in part an answer to Giorgio Vasari’s marginalizing account of the Venetian school in the Vite (Lives of the Artists, 1550, 1568). Ridolfi, however, adopts Vasari’s biographical treatment of artists and his notion that Venetian art progressed through history, arriving at perfection in the 16th century.
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Roskill, Mark W. Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
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First published 1968 (New York: New York University Press). Roskill publishes a parallel text translation of Ludovico Dolce’s Dialogo della pittura (Venice: Giolito, 1557). The “dialogue” between Pietro Aretino (see Aretino 1957–1960, cited under Collections of Documents and Letters) and a visiting Florentine serves as a vehicle for the praise of Titian’s painting and Venetian colorism.
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Sansovino, Francesco. Venetia, città nobilissima et singolare, descritta in XIIII. libri. Introduction by Adriano Prosperi. Bergamo, Italy: Leading Edizioni, 2002.
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Fascimile reprint. This title originally published 1581 (Venice: I. Sansovino). A 16th-century guidebook to Venice containing much useful information on Venetian art and architecture. First edition of 1556 published under the pseudonym Anselmo Guisconi (as Tutte le cose notabili che sono in Venetia). The 17th-century editions of Giovanni Stringa (1603) and Giustiniano Martinioni (1663) contain much new material.
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Collections of Documents and Letters

Many collections of Venetian documents were published in the 19th and early 20th centuries and are still available in the world’s major research libraries. Examples such as Paoletti 1894–1895 have proved particularly useful. It reproduces a range of finds from the Venetian archives (see Archivio di Stato di Venezia, under Primary Sources and Collections) in what was a pioneering age for documentary art history. Such collections can seem a little random, though this is certainly not the case with the series of documents published in English translation in Chambers, et al. 2001. The careful selection and ordering of the section on the visual arts (by Jennifer Fletcher) has made it an important interpretative source in its own right. The modern edition of Pietro Aretino’s letters on art (Aretino 1957–1960) provides a different kind of overview, generating a sense of the “period eye” of one leading critic of art in the mid-16th century.

Aretino, Pietro. Lettere sull’arte di Pietro Aretino. 4 vols. Notes by Fidenzio Pertile. Edited by Ettore Camesasca. Milan: Edizione del Milione, 1957–1960.
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Reproduces letters on art and artists by the Tuscan poet Pietro Aretino, who was doyen of Venetian artistic culture in the mid-16th century. His many letters give a vivid picture of contemporary artistic taste and values. Those celebrating the naturalistic painting of his close friend Titian are particularly revealing.
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Chambers, David, Brian Pullan, and Jennifer Fletcher, eds. Venice: A Documentary History 1450–1630. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
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First published by Oxford University Press (1992). Provides an overview of artistic life in Renaissance Venice through primary documents (section 10). These demonstrate the primacy of state and confraternity commissions, but the sections devoted to private commissions, collecting, connoisseurship, critical values, techniques, and artists’ lifestyles are also revealing.
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Paoletti, Pietro. Raccolta di documenti inediti per servire alla storia della pittura Veneziana nei secoli XV e XVI. 2 vols. Padua, Italy: R. Stabilimento P. Prosperini, 1894–1895.
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Useful collection of documents relating to Venetian painters and paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries. Includes wills of the Bellini and Vivarini families and other painters.
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Journals and Serials

Among the academic journals devoted specifically to Venetian art, those listed in this section have established themselves as particularly significant and useful, though of course much new material is also published in other places. The majority of the journals listed here are published in Venice but are careful to feature work by foreign scholars alongside that of Italian academics. Their quality of production and generally high level of scholarship indicates the continuing vibrancy of international research on Venetian art. Archivio Veneto (from 1871) established a kind of benchmark in the documentary scholarship on Venetian art in the late 19th century, while Arte Veneta (from 1947) offers essays concerned more with problems of style, attribution, and connoisseurship. Studi Veneziani (from 1985) is a cross-disciplinary historical journal that includes more contextual studies of Venetian art. Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’Arte (from 1957) and Venezia Cinquecento: Studi di Storia dell’Arte e della Cultura are focused on Venetian art alone (the latter just to the 16th century) and have included some major contributions to the literature.

Archivio Veneto.
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Published continuously since 1871 under various titles, such as Nuovo Archivio Veneto. Primarily concerned with Venetian history, but earlier issues in particular contain archival contributions to Venetian art history. Published by the Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Venezie.
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Arte Veneta: Rivista di Instituto di Storia dell’Arte.
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Founded in 1947 by Rodolfo Pallucchini, this journal was originally published triannually. Now published each year, it has become an important resource containing articles, reviews, and notices on many aspects of Venetian art. Now published by Electa of Milan under the auspices of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.
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Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’Arte.
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First published in 1957, this annual journal issued by the Cini Foundation in Venice is devoted exclusively to Venetian art. Though the majority of contributions are in Italian, it also includes items in English.
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Studi Veneziani.
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A cross-disciplinary cultural history journal that frequently includes academic essays on Venetian Renaissance art and also a useful “Notes and Documents” section recording new archival discoveries. Published biannually from 1985 in Pisa (Fabrizio Serra Editore) under the auspices of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Istituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato).
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Venezia Cinquecento: Studi di Storia dell’Arte e della Cultura.
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An academic journal devoted exclusively to Venetian art of the 16th century, edited by Augusto Gentili of the University of Venice, and published biannually by Bulzoni Editore since 1991. Has become an important forum for the publication of new research and contains contributions from an international range of scholars.
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Exhibition Catalogues

Although a number of relevant exhibitions were mounted before 1950, the frequency, scale, and intellectual ambition of such shows has increased exponentially since then. The related exhibition catalogues have meanwhile taken on greater significance, not merely in publicizing and documenting the individual works displayed but also as important scholarly interventions in their own right. Martineau and Hope 1983 is a catalogue that does much more than simply list the chosen works and that can stand as a good introduction to the whole subject. The same is true of Humfrey, et al. 2004, from an exhibition that generated an entire new sense of the throughput of Venetian art in one small country of northern Europe. The analysis offered in Pallucchini 1981 and Aikema and Brown 2000, on the other hand, makes a more specific contribution to understanding Venetian Renaissance art in its wider Italian and European contexts. The more recent catalogue Brown, et al. 2006 offers a more specific scholarly focus still, analyzing the development and interrelationship of key Venetian paintings from just three decades of the 16th century. Ilchman, et al. 2009 continues this move toward the specific and the thematic, focusing on the theme of rivalry between leading painters in relation to a series of shared subjects.

Aikema, Bernard, and Beverley Louise Brown. Renaissance Venice and the North: Cross Currents in the Time of Dürer, Bellini, and Titian. New York: Rizzoli, 2000.
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Catalogue of an exhibition held at Palazzo Grassi, Venice (September 1999–January 2000). Important contribution to study of relations between Venetian and northern art (especially Flemish and German) during the Renaissance. Also published as Il Rinascimento a Venezia e la pittura del Nord ai tempi di Bellini, Dürer, Tiziano (Venice: Bompiani, 1999).
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Brown, David Alan, Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Jaynie Anderson, Deborah Howard, and Mauro Lucco. Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
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Catalogue of the exhibition held at the National Gallery in Washington, DC (June–September 2006), and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (October 2006–January 2007). The sixty works by the leading painters in Venice date from 1500 to 1530 and are discussed thematically (e.g., pastoral landscapes, female nudes, Romantic portraits), facilitating understanding of their interrelationships.
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Humfrey, Peter, Timothy Clifford, Aidan Weston-Lewis, and Michael Bury. The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2004.
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Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh (August–December 2004). Brings together paintings, drawings, and prints along with books, manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts. Publishes a number of these works for the first time.
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Ilchman, Frederick, David Rosand, Linda Borean, Patricia Brown, and John Garton. Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2009.
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Organized around themes shared by Titian, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese and based on the premise that these individualistic artists sought to compete and to outdo one another. Show moved to the Musée du Louvre in Paris (September 2009–January 2010), though with a somewhat different (and less coherent) array of paintings in display. A drawback of the catalogue is that no adequate definition of “rivalry” is given.
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Martineau, Jane, and Charles Hope. The Genius of Venice, 1500–1600. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1983.
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Catalogue of a blockbuster show at the Royal Academy in London (November 1983–March 1984). Thorough treatment of Venetian paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, and decorative objects, with short, useful essays on themes, such as politics, patronage, and architecture, and picture types, such as altarpieces and portraits.
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Pallucchini, Rodolfo. Da Tiziano a El Greco: Per la storia del Manierismo a Venezia, 1540–1590. Milan: Electa, 1981.
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Catalogue of the exhibition held in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice (September–December 1981). Still useful account of the impact of central Italian Mannerism on Venetian art in the later 16th century, though it exaggerates and simplifies this stylistic phase.
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Painting

The Venetian tradition of painting, particularly in the Renaissance centuries, has long been a special focus of scholarly attention, and this explains the relative length of this section. Once widely criticized for its lack of due attention to “drawing” (or “design”), its lack of intellectual order, and its love of sensual colorism, the tradition is now often celebrated for these very qualities. Both views are, however, somewhat simplistic, given that drawing (if sometimes only under paintings) certainly played an important role in the famous illusionism of Venetian art, and that intellectual order underpins many of the great masterpieces from Venice. More important still, it has become clear through the scholarship that Venetian painting was always sensitive to its cultural context, acutely aware of itself as distinctly Venetian. While individual painters certainly developed their own styles, these were deeply influenced by an overarching sense of the debt owed to the local tradition. The items in this section offer a useful index of the shifting interpretative priorities among scholars of Venetian painting since the mid-20th century. The great Italian art historian Roberto Longhi (Longhi 1946), better known for his work on Piero della Francesca and Michelangelo da Caravaggio, made a pioneering contribution to the understanding of Venetian painting. Wilde 1974 was still influenced by the formalist tastes of the mid-20th century, though his analysis of stylistic change in Venetian painting in the decades around 1500 is more detailed and subtle than its predecessors. Rosand 1997, on the other hand, was groundbreaking in its focus on the shaping force of nonartistic factors (historical, cultural, religious) on the proper interpretation of Venetian paintings. The new contextualism was usefully built into Humfrey 1995, now a standard overview of Venetian Renaissance painting, though the author was careful not to let issues such as patronage confuse his sense of stylistic development. Lucco 1990–2008, a voluminous multiauthored project, offers a newly monumental overview of painting in both Venice and the Veneto, extending to the present.

Humfrey, Peter. Painting in Renaissance Venice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
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Best available short introduction to Venetian painting of the 15th and 16th centuries. Offers the reader new to the field a crisp and concise overview that is neither patronizing nor boring.
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Longhi, Roberto. Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana. Florence: Sansoni, 1946.
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Pioneering account of five centuries of Venetian painting by a renowned Italian scholar of the mid-20th century. Longhi’s chronological and formalist approach has fallen out of favor with the rise of contextual studies, but his contribution to the study of Venetian art must still command respect.
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Lucco, Mauro, ed. La pittura nel Veneto. 13 vols. Milan: Electa, 1990–2008.
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Ambitious chronological account of Venetian painting from the 14th century to the 20th. Each volume is multiauthored and typically combines chronological survey essays with closer contextual studies devoted to thematic issues, such as patronage and artistic technique.
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Rosand, David. Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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Groundbreaking introduction with chapters devoted to major works by the three main protagonists of 16th-century painting. Richly nuanced contextual/interpretative approach that nonetheless maintains a subtle visual focus. Introduction establishes the peculiarities of the sociohistorical situation of Venetian Renaissance artists. Originally published as Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982).
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Wilde, Johannes. Venetian Art from Bellini to Titian. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.
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Remains an important introduction, particularly valuable for its subtle treatment of the arrival of Renaissance illusionism in Venetian painting. Wilde’s “old-fashioned” focus on formal changes can seem preferable to the deterministic excesses of certain more recent contextual studies in the field.
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Painters

Traditional monographic study of the work of individual painters has long been the mainstay of Venetian art history, and the work of this kind remains the bedrock for an understanding the topic (but see also Themes in Venetian Art). There are massive and ever-expanding bibliographies for the major painters of the 15th and 16th centuries, with monographs being constantly supplemented by new discoveries presented in the form of journal articles and conference contributions. Among the sections included here, it is no surprise to find leading figures such Giovanni Bellini, Gentile Bellini, Jacopo Bellini, Giorgione, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese (for extended study of Titian, see the separate article Titian). The inclusion of painters such as Jacopo Bassano and Lorenzo Lotto (see Jacopo Bassano and Lorenzo Lotto) in this section rather than that devoted to more minor masters (see Other Painters) reflects the reevaluation of their work over recent decades and the widespread critical recognition of their status as major Venetian painters.

Jacopo Bassano

Jacopo Bassano’s (b. c. 1510–d. 1592) critical star has risen dramatically in the years since the quatercentenary of his death in 1992, an event marked by an important loan exhibition in his hometown that subsequently traveled to the United States (Brown and Marini 1993). On that anniversary too, the Cini Foundation in Venice published the sole surviving account book from Bassano’s workshop (Muraro 1992), stimulating interest in the great painter’s immediate workshop environment. The first detailed interpretative studies inevitably followed. If the analyses of Aikema 1996 and Berdini 1997 are sometimes questionable, those books certainly serve as a stimulus to further work on one of the great painters of the Venetian Renaissance.

Aikema, Bernard. Jacopo Bassano and His Public: Moralising Pictures in an Age of Reform, ca. 1535–1600. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
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Important interpretative study arguing that Bassano’s many devotional paintings featuring peasants show these as godless and corrupt in contrast to the sacred protagonists. Though certainly tendentious, Aikema’s argument is usefully provocative.
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Berdini, Paolo. The Religious Art of Jacopo Bassano: Painting as Visual Exegesis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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Often subtle and theoretically inflected account of the meaning of Bassano’s religious paintings that lays useful emphasis on the ways the master’s paintings do not simply reflect the texts they are apparently based on but move beyond them in their “visual exegesis.”
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Brown, Beverley Louise, and Paola Marini, eds. Jacopo Bassano c. 1510–1592. Bologna, Italy: Nuova Alfa, 1993.
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Catalogue of the important exhibition held at Bassano del Grappa (Museo Civico, September–December 1992) and Fort Worth, Texas (Kimbell Art Museum, January–April 1993), in commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of Bassano’s death. Important for renewed attempt to establish basic chronology of the numerous works by both Jacopo Bassano and his painter sons.
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Muraro, Michelangelo, ed. Il libro secondo di Francesco e Jacopo dal Ponte. Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Istituto di Istoria dell’arte, Collezione di Fonti e Documenti per lo Studio della Storia dell’Arte, n.s. 1. Bassano, Italy: G. B. Verci, 1992.
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Publishes an account book of the workshop of Francesco and Jacopo “dal Ponte” in Bassano del Grappa. The so-called Libro secondo records payments and commissions during 1511–1588 but is most illuminating about the period 1525–1555, when Jacopo took over and transformed his father’s parochial workshop into something more complex and cosmopolitan.
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Jacopo, Gentile, and Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini’s (b. c. 1435–d. 1516) paintings have long been seen as works of exceptional quality and as having played a vital role in the development of the Venetian Renaissance. The catalogue raisonné in Robertson 1968 set a new scholarly standard in Bellini studies, though more recent contributions, such as Goffen 1989, reveal the limits to a narrow focus on stylistic chronology and attribution. As early as 1964, Meiss 1964 had shown the virtues of analyzing Giovanni Bellini’s style in relation to its iconographic and wider contextual meanings, and this more integrated approach has been continued in Belting 1985, an influential short account of the Pietà paintings, and Humfrey 2004, an important collection of essays. Alongside these advances in Giovanni Bellini studies, scholarly interest has inevitably spread to other members of the family: Meyer zur Capellen 1985, a catalogue of Giovanni’s older brother’s paintings, and Eisler 1989, a monumental study of their father Jacopo Bellini (b. c. 1400–d. 1470/1), provide further evidence of the gathering momentum of Venetian art historical scholarship.

Belting, Hans. Giovanni Bellini, Pieta: Ikone und Bilderzählung in der venezianischen Malerei. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985.
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Influential short study of Giovanni Bellini’s favored subject of the Pietà, stressing his development of this theme in relation to contemporary ideas about paintings as “image” and “history,” the depiction of likenesses or of events. Examines this in relation to Bellini’s rivalry with his painter brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. Translated into Italian as Giovanni Bellini: La Pietà (Modena, Italy: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 1996).
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Eisler, Colin. The Genius of Jacopo Bellini: The Complete Paintings and Drawings. New York: Abrams, 1989.
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Fundamental study of the first great master of the Venetian Renaissance. Reproduces all forty of Jacopo Bellini’s extant paintings and also all the drawings from the master’s two famous sketchbooks, now in the Louvre (featured in color) and the British Museum. A massive and unwieldy volume but contains some penetrating analysis.
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Goffen, Rona. Giovanni Bellini. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.
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Important contribution that offers a typological rather than chronological treatment of Giovanni Bellini’s career. Chapters on the Madonnas, half-length Passion pictures, altarpieces, portraits, and mythologies. Revises earlier formalist readings by laying new emphasis on the iconographic, symbolic, and wider contextual meanings.
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Humfrey, Peter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Giovanni Bellini. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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Contains twelve commissioned essays by leading authorities on Giovanni Bellini, carefully organized to provide a coherent overview of the painter’s art and its context in the Venetian Renaissance. Contains important and original contributions on Bellini’s social world, uses of sculpture and architecture, and painting technique.
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Meiss, Millard. Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Frick Collection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964.
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Classic shorter study of a famous Bellini masterpiece, and a model of interpretative art history writing. Brilliant analysis of Bellini’s use of light and landscape to generate naturalistic effects and symbolic meanings.
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Meyer zur Capellen, Jurg. Gentile Bellini. Stuttgart: Frans Steiner Verlag, 1985.
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Standard work on the still understudied painter who (at least until 1500) enjoyed a higher professional profile than his now more famous younger brother, Giovanni Bellini. Contains a complete catalogue of Gentile Bellini’s works, eighty-six documents relating to the artist, and an extended critical account of his work.
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Robertson, Giles. Giovanni Bellini. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968.
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New technical and historical evidence as well as more subtle methodological approaches have revealed limits to this “standard work.” Robertson’s rigid chronological framework, like his predominant focus on style, limits the depth of his analysis. But the book is still a landmark publication in the study of Giovanni Bellini’s formal development.
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Giorgione

The many questions of attribution, style, and meaning that Giorgione’s (b. c.1477/8–d. 1510) extraordinarily original works raise have led to a vast and often very inaccurate literature. The items listed in this section offer well-reasoned accounts, which are justifiably skeptical of the more outlandish assumptions and theories that had long circulated with regard to this little-known but influential artist. Settis 1990 offers an excellent overview of the many interpretative theories about Giorgione’s Tempest and also introduces the now influential idea that the painter deliberately “veiled” his subject matter for the enjoyment of his sophisticated circle of patrons. The Kaplan 1986 interpretation of the little painting is, though, much more convincing. Anderson 1997, an excellent monograph, reflects the recent trend to attribute very few paintings to Giorgione, but it includes a penetrating discussion of the painter’s attempt to emulate the effect of pastoral poetry. Giorgione has featured in many exhibitions (see, for example, Brown, et al. 2006, cited in Exhibition Catalogues). The example listed here, Ferrino-Pagden and Scire 2004, includes some further useful discussion.

Anderson, Jaynie. Giorgione: Painter of “Poetic Brevity.” Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997.
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Superbly produced volume including a catalogue raisonné and useful list of documents and sources relating to Giorgione. Penetrating thematic chapters on the painter’s “poetic brevity,” critical fortune, patrons, and imagery of women. Originally published as Giorgione: Peintre de la “Breveté Poétique” (Paris: Editions de la Lagune, 1996).
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Ferrino-Pagden, Sylvia, and Giovanna Nepi Scire, eds. Giorgione: Myth and Enigma. Milan: Skira, 2004.
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Catalogue of the exhibition held in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (March–July 2004) and the Accademia in Venice (November 2003–February 2004), a twin show that took Giorgione’s Laura and Three Philosophers to Vienna and his Tempest and Col Tempo to Vienna. Includes useful interpretative contributions from Augusto Gentili and Charles Hope.
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Kaplan, Paul. “The Storm of War: The Paduan Key to Giorgione’s Tempesta.” Art History 9 (1986): 405–427.
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Well-documented interpretation of Giorgione’s Tempesta as a political allegory commemorating the siege of Padua in 1509, with an interesting suggestion of the original patron.
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Settis, Salvatore. Giorgione’s Tempest: Interpreting the Hidden Subject. Translated by Ellen Bianchini. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
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Important intervention devoted to Giorgione’s famous and enigmatic little painting. Impressive treatment of the complex historiography of the Tempest, though Settis’s own interpretation of the subject as “Adam and Eve after the Fall” is wholly unconvincing. Originally published as La Tempesta interpretata: Giorgione, i committenti il soggetto (Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1978).
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Lorenzo Lotto

Like Jacopo Bassano (see Jacopo Bassano), Lorenzo Lotto (b. c.1480–d. 1556) has recently been subject to critical reappraisal, and he is now recognized as one of the leading Venetian Renaissance painters. The pioneering study Berenson 1956 had already revealed Lotto’s complex and highly individual artistic personality, and Gentili, et al. 1985 shed new light on the early phase of his career. The publication of a modern edition of the painter’s account book covering the later part of his career (Lotto 1969) represents an important source and indicates that he struggled to make ends meet. It suggests a less romantic view of Lotto’s eccentricities, and this more nuanced historical understanding was promoted further in Humfrey 1997. The widely traveled exhibition that was more or less contemporary with this publication, Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance (Brown, et al. 1997), brought Lotto’s painting to the attention of a still wider audience.

Berenson, Bernard. Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Constructive Art Criticism. London: Phaidon, 1956.
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First published in 1895, Berenson’s study offers a visually sensitive account of Lotto with important insights into his troubled character and eccentric painting style. The opening chapters on Lotto’s predecessors were revised by the author for the 1956 publication, though much of the rest of the book remained unchanged.
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Brown, David Alan, Peter Humfrey, and Mauro Lucco. Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
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Catalogue of the exhibition held at the National Gallery in Washington, DC (November 1997–March 1998), the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (April–June 1998), and the Grand Palais in Paris (October 1998–January 1999). Important scholarly work accompanying the traveling exhibition that helped reestablish Lotto’s place as a major Renaissance painter in Europe and the United States.
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Gentili, Augusto, Marco Lattanzi, and Flavia Polignano. I giardini di contemplazione: Lorenzo Lotto 1503/1512. Rome: Bulzoni, 1985.
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Still significant study focused on the early period of Lotto’s peripatetic career. Important material on Lotto’s early portraits and religious paintings and on his early associations with Giovanni Bellini and Raphael.
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Humfrey, Peter. Lorenzo Lotto. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
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Published a century or so after Bernard Berenson’s study, this monograph is now the standard work on the painter. Successfully incorporates much of the existing documentary evidence (including that contained in Libro di spese diverse, Lotto 1969) to give a well-balanced and sensitive account of Lotto’s peripatetic career.
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Lotto, Lorenzo. Libro di spese diverse (1538–1556), con aggiunta di lettere d’altri documenti. Edited by Pietro Zampetti. Venice and Rome: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1969.
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Rare survival of a 16th-century painter’s account book (see also Jacopo Bassano). Covers Lotto’s later period, giving a vivid picture of his professional struggles in a period dominated by the multimillionaire Titian. Zampetti’s edition includes a few contracts and an important set of letters as well as a useful introduction.
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Jacopo Tintoretto

Recent scholarship on Jacopo Tintoretto (b. 1518/9–d. 1594) is fundamentally indebted to Pallucchini and Rossi 1994 (first published in 1976 and 1982), which provides extensive catalogues of the many paintings by this prolific artist. A more penetrating historical reading of Tintoretto’s work was encouraged by the innovative sketch offered in a chapter by David Rosand (see Rosand 1997, cited under Painting). A contextual approach was also taken in Hills 1983, which established an important area of local parish patronage for some of Tintoretto’s key religious paintings. Nichols 1999 provides a larger overview of Tintoretto in context, paying attention to his business practice, patrons, and literary connections. Krischel 2000 offers insightful readings of Tintoretto’s works from a formal and iconograhic point of view. The Madrid exhibition (Falomir 2007) built on this new understanding but also returned to the many ongoing attributional and chronological questions raised by the overinclusive catalogue of Pallucchini and Rossi 1994.

Falomir, Miguel, ed. Tintoretto. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007.
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Excellent catalogue of the more than sixty paintings and drawings featured in the exhibition held at Madrid’s Prado Museum in 2007. Particularly useful is the updated list of documents and primary literary sources. Publicizes the evidence suggesting that Tintoretto was from the Comin family, whose origins were in Brescia.
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Hills, Paul. “Piety and Patronage in Cinquecento Venice: Tintoretto and the Scuole del Sacramento.” Art History 6 (1983): 30–34.
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Groundbreaking study of Tintoretto’s patronage by the local parish-based and reform-minded lay confraternities that commissioned many of his laterally shaped paintings, such as Last Supper and Christ Washing His Disciples’ Feet.
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Krischel, Roland. Jacopo Tintoretto 1519–94. Cologne: Konemann, 2000.
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Important shorter monograph in the Meister der italienischen Kunst series, which contains many new formal and iconographic analyses of Tintoretto’s work and lays emphasis on Tintoretto’s connections with Roman-trained Mannerists, such as Giulio Romano.
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Nichols, Tom. Tintoretto: Tradition and Identity. London: Reaktion, 1999.
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First significant critical study in English for almost fifty years. Argues that Tintoretto’s artistic practice was based on rapidity, low cost, and high volume, and that this had a marked effect on his unusual painting style. Contains chapters on Tintoretto’s painting cycles at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.
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Pallucchini, Rodolfo, and Paola Rossi. Tintoretto: L’opera completa. 3 vols. Milan: Electa, 1994.
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Still fundamental catalogue raisonné, though there have since been important and often convincing revisions of both dates and attributions, particularly relating to Tintoretto’s early career. This boxed set brings together Rossi’s original catalogue of the portraits (1976) with the two-volume catalogue of the sacred and mythological paintings (1982).
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Paolo Veronese

Studies of Paolo Veronese’s (b. 1528–d. 1588) paintings have revealed a complex and intellectually interesting artist. Veronese was traditionally understood as a Renaissance decorator whose work had little or no deeper meaning. If this view still lingers in the standard catalogue (Pignatti and Pedrocco 1995) and even in much more recent contributions, such as Huber 2005, the other items listed here amply refute it, showing that Veronese was a subtle artist, always alive to the wider contexts of his given commissions. The collection of essays devoted to Veronese included here (Gemin 1990) contributed greatly to the understanding of Veronese’s variety and complexity as a painter and began to break down the older image of the painter. Fehl 1961 analyzed documentary evidence that appeared to show Veronese’s indifference to his subject matter and the trouble this caused him with the Venetian Inquisition, but more recent studies of this particular commission (Massimi 2004) and of the artist’s painting cycles for the Church of San Sebastiano (Gentili and di Monti 2005) suggest that both he and his patrons considered the content of his work to be of great importance.

Fehl, Phillip. “Veronese and the Inquisition: A Study of the Subject Matter of the So-Called Feast in the House of Levi.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 58 (1961): 325–354.
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Probing study of the surviving documents recording Veronese’s interview with the church Inquisition following criticism of his inclusion of inappropriate bystanders in an important Last Supper painting. Reveals the painter’s assumption of the right to “artistic license” and the Venetian inquisitors’ leniency.
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Gemin, Massimo, ed. Nuovi studi su Paolo Veronese. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi su Paolo Veronese. Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1990.
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Still useful collection of interpretative essays based on the conference held at the University of Venice in 1988. Contributions from a broad range of international scholars published in Italian, French, and English on many aspects of Veronese’s career.
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Gentili, Augusto, and Michele di Monti. Veronese nella chiesa di San Sebastiano. Venice: Marsilio, 2005.
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Useful guide to Veronese’s work in the Venetian Church of San Sebastiano, in which a superb array of the master’s large-scale paintings and frescos are still found. The authors’ analysis lays emphasis on the carefully planned and internally coherent iconography of Veronese’s cycles of paintings for this church.
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Huber, Hans Dieter. Paolo Veronese: Kunst als soziales System. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2005.
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Study that includes a very important contribution to understanding Veronese’s prolific workshop, which produced more than fourteen hundred paintings. Somewhat less convincing theory of Veronese’s art as a self-sustaining formal system leads the author to underplay the roles of patrons and social context. Still sees Veronese as a pictorial decorator.
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Massimi, Maria Elena. “La cosiddetta Cena in casa di Levi di Paolo Veronese: Descrizione preliminare all’identificazione del soggetto come Cena in casa del fariseo.” Venezia Cinquecento 27 (2004): 123–168.
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Recent reconsideration of the documents relating to the commission of Veronese’s Supper in the House of Levi, noting that the subject was initially identified as the “Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee.”
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Pignatti, Terisio, and Filippo Pedrocco. Veronese: L’opera completa. 2 vols. Milan: Electa, 1995.
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Complete catalogue of Veronese’s paintings and a fundamental source for Veronese scholars. Includes list of all the known documents relating to the artist and also important information on relations between paintings and related drawings.
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Other Painters

The monographs devoted to lesser-known painters listed in this section attest to the depth and range of recent scholarly and public interest in Venetian Renaissance art. They are all landmark publications in relation to the painters they focus on, providing fully rounded studies of artistic personalities who had previously been only partially understood or studied. Steer 1982, Humfrey 1983, and Gentili 1996 provide a wide picture of painting in Venice in the period dominated by the Bellini family, while Rylands 1992, Cohen 1996, and Richardson 1980 provide a similar kind of context for the first half of the 16th century, dominated by Titian. Mason Rinaldi 1984 shows that Venetian painting did not simply die out around 1600.

Cohen, Charles E. The Art of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone: Between Dialect and Language. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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Catalogue of paintings by Pordenone, an artist whose move to Venice in the late 1520s had a significant impact on artistic culture in the city. Pordenone’s bulky figures, typically in complex movement and based in part on his experience of classicism in central Italy, helped introduce Mannerism to Venice.
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Gentili, Augusto. Le storie di Carpaccio: Venezia, i turchi, gli ebrei. Venice: Marsilio, 1996.
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Using his method of contextual iconography, Gentili offers a historically nuanced account of the large narrative paintings of Vittore Carpaccio, a pupil of Gentile Bellini. Using a range of documentary sources, he establishes the “imaginative climate” in which Carpaccio’s histories took their shape and meaning.
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Humfrey, Peter. Cima da Conegliano. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
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Fine monograph devoted to a leading follower of Giovanni Bellini. Cima’s style was in certain ways independent of Bellini, especially in its use of a cool, silvery light. But Humfrey also shows that Cima’s style remained oddly static, proving resistant to the new developments in painting after 1500.
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Mason Rinaldi, Stefania. Palma il Giovane: L’opera completa. Milan: Electa, 1984.
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Catalogues the many works of Palma Giovane, the most successful painter in Venice around 1600, whose large and multifigured paintings are still ubiquitous in Venetian churches and public buildings. Chronological overview traces Palma’s development of a manner that owes more to Jacopo Tintoretto than to his supposed master, Titian.
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Richardson, Francis L. Andrea Schiavone. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980.
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Intriguing study of the little-documented Dalmatian painter, draftsman, and etcher of the mid-16th century whose small-scale works demonstrate a fluid and cursive brushstroke. Analyzes Schiavone’s amalgamation of figural Mannerism based on Parmigianino with Venetian painterly brushwork and notes the influence of this on painters such as Jacopo Tintoretto and Jacopo Bassano.
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Rylands, Philip. Palma Vecchio. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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Useful catalogue of works by a successful painter of the earlier decades of the 16th century. Includes an interpretative essay covering themes such as the critical legacy and Palma’s innovative development of the domestic or devotional sacra conversazione.
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Steer, John. Alvise Vivarini: His Art and Influence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
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Revives the profile of a significant Venetian master of the late 15th century who had previously suffered from scholarly neglect and negative evaluation (much of Alvise’s later work had been reattributed to others). Chapters deal with Alvise’s career in chronological fashion. Also contains a catalogue, including drawings, lost works, and misattributions.
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Sculpture

Venice is still more famous for its painting and architecture than for its sculpture, yet it is still almost ubiquitous in the public spaces and buildings of the city, and there is no doubt that it has always played a central role in Venetian culture. It is sometimes said that Venice remained hostile or suspicious of figurative art in three dimensions, not only because of its aesthetic preferences for pattern, surface, and color, but also because of the possibilities of self-promotion that large-scale public sculpture offered. Yet research has shown that Venetians consistently used sculpture to get a political and religious message across and that the city developed its own vibrant and distinct artistic tradition in this medium. Connell 1988, on the working circumstances of sculptors and stonemasons, remains a key text for understanding the wider position of such artists in 15th-century Venice. Pincus 2000, on the tombs of the doges, was long awaited and delivered well, offering a detailed and nuanced iconographic and political reading of the sculptural imagery of the major monuments. The exhibition catalogue listed here (Luchs 2009) offers a newly rich understanding of Venetian sculpture around 1500.

Connell, Susan. The Employment of Sculptors and Stonemasons in Venice in the Fifteenth Century. Outstanding Theses in the Fine Arts from British Universities. New York and London: Garland, 1988.
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Groundbreaking documentary study of the artisanal social and economic circumstances of sculptors and stonemasons in 15th-century Venice. Originally a thesis submitted at the Warburg Institute (University of London) in 1976.
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Luchs, Alison, ed. Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
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Important contribution on Venetian High Renaissance sculpture, with contributions from Luchs, Adriana Augusti, Matteo Ceriana, Sarah Blake McHam, Debra Pincus, and Alessandra Sarchi. Explores relations with contemporary painting and sculpture and also examines the “Venetian” take on classical Antiquity. Focused on work of Tullio Lombardo but includes works by other prominent sculptors around 1500. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (July–October 2009).
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Pincus, Debra. The Tombs of the Doges of Venice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
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Study of the grand sculptural tombs of the doges in Venetian churches from the 13th and 14th centuries. Includes an epilogue dealing with later Renaissance monuments. Based on close readings of iconography and social context, reveals limits to individualism in the Venetian republican context.
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Sculptors

The items listed in this section offer insights into the work of major sculptors working in Venice in the Renaissance period from a monographic perspective. Schulz 1983 was pioneering in this regard, introducing Antonio Rizzo, one of the leading Venetian sculptors of the later 15th century, whose work was still late Gothic in style. The fine studies Boucher 1991 and Martin 1998, devoted to Jacopo Sansovino and Alessandro Vittoria, respectively, offer a rich picture of the classicizing work of two leading practitioners in the following century, though their studies also reveal the wider social and artistic milieu in which these artists worked.

Boucher, Bruce. The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino. 2 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.
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Prize-winning monograph devoted to the leading sculptor in mid-16th-century Venice (see Howard 1975, cited in Architects and Buildings, for Sansovino’s architecture). Contains a full catalogue raisonné, including Florentine and Roman works. Particularly important discussions of Sansovino’s Venetian patronage, the division of labor with his workshop, and his artistic influence.
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Martin, Thomas. Alessandro Vittoria and the Portrait Bust in Renaissance Venice: Remodelling Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
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Focuses on Vittoria’s important contribution to the classicizing portrait bust, which was largely unknown in Venice prior to his work. Contains a catalogue of the busts but also much useful information beyond the immediate remit of the text. Establishes Vittoria’s role as the preeminent sculptor in late-16th-century Venice.
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Schulz, Anne Markham. Antonio Rizzo: Sculptor and Architect. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
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Important monograph devoted to a major sculptor in late-15th-century Venice. The six chapters deal with Rizzo’s work in chronological fashion and are followed by a list of documents and a full catalogue (including rejected attributions). Treatment of the Tron tomb and the Ducal Palace sculptures is particularly illuminating.
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Architecture

The architecture of Venice, and its historical development, is in many ways unique. Many visitors are first struck by the density and lavishness of the built environment, with its maze of canals and alleyways, and the bold defiance this suggests, given the city’s vulnerable position in the middle of a wide lagoon. The “medieval” feel and appearance of the city is often commented upon, and it is true that much of the city was built before the Renaissance centuries. But if a certain chronological disjunction therefore exists between the architectural “golden age” of Venice and that of its painting and sculpture, this only adds to the fascination of the subject. The antiquity of Venice became one of the defining cultural conditions determining its powerful artistic tradition. The publications listed here offer overviews of the unique architectural development of Venice. Both Concina 1998 and Howard 2002 are exemplary and obligatory recent introductions for anyone interested in the subject, though the earlier Lieberman 1982 and McAndrew 1980 remain important and were groundbreaking at the time of their publication. Goy 2006 is a much more specialized text but nonetheless generates an important wider understanding of the ways certain famous Renaissance buildings came into being. Its focus on process (both material and intellectual) is in certain ways similar to that in the exciting study Tafuri 1995, though this has a more theoretical slant. Tafuri 1995 offers important insights into the place of architecture within the sociopolitical web of meanings and cultural anxieties in Renaissance Venice.

Concina, Ennio. A History of Venetian Architecture. Translated by J. Landry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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Lavishly produced study of the history of Venetian architecture in the wider context of the unique Venetian physical environment and culture. Excellent text that offers new insights on a number of important Venetian buildings and architects. Originally published as Storia dell’architettura di Venezia (Milan: Electa, 1995).
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Goy, Richard J. Building Renaissance Venice: Patrons, Architects, Builders. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
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Focusing on the clock tower in St. Mark’s Square, the Arsenal Gate, and the Churches of San Zaccaria and Santa Maria della Carita, this study of 15th-century Venetian architecture lays special emphasis on the complete process of creating important buildings. Establishes the emerging role of the protomaestro (supervising master).
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Howard, Deborah. The Architectural History of Venice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
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Superb survey of Venetian architecture up to the early 21st century. Simple chronological approach, supported by excellent illustrations, traces the special challenges to building in Venice and the very particular appearance of the built environment that has resulted. Text is crisp and never patronizing, and analysis is based on fine scholarship.
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Lieberman, Ralph. Renaissance Architecture in Venice 1450–1540. London: Muller, 1982.
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Still useful, closely focused survey of developments in Venetian architecture over a key ninety-year period. Suggests important links with changes in Venetian political ideas of the time and with other visual arts.
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McAndrew, John. Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980.
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A product of the explosion of studies on Venetian architecture in the 1970s. Concentrates on the very particular nature of the arrival and appearance of Renaissance classicism in 15th-century Venice.
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Tafuri, Manfredo. Venice and the Renaissance. Translated by Jessica Levine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
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Difficult but rewarding theoretically inclined text, containing valuable material on the impact of political and religious ideologies on 16th-century Venetian architecture. Highlights the role of the papalisti, Venetian patrician patrons who maintained close ties with Rome and sought to promote courtly classicism in their architectural commissions in Venice.
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Architects and Buildings

Howard 1975, a study of Jacopo Sansovino as an architect in Venice, complements Bruce Boucher’s study of his sculpture (see Boucher 1991, cited under Sculptors) and remains important, though Morresi 2000 is more monumental and updates the scholarship. Cooper 2005, an excellent study of Andrea Palladio, progresses the history of architecture in Venice into the later 16th century, though the author does spend more time on context than on architecture, so Ackerman 1966 remains a fundamental introduction to this architect. The key work on a third Venetian Renaissance architect, Mauro Codussi, is Puppi and Puppi 1977, another product of the rich vein of architectural scholarship in the 1970s. Foscari and Tafuri 1983 and Goy 1992 focus on individual buildings, offering vivid insights into the sometimes difficult relations between leading architects and their patrons.

Ackerman, James S. Palladio. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1966.
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Superb introduction to the architecture of Andrea Palladio. Tightly and clearly organized, with discussions setting Palladio into his context and analyzing his villa, civic, and domestic architecture and religious work, as well as an illuminating final chapter discussing the underlying principles of his architecture.
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Cooper, Tracy. Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
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Deals with Andrea Palladio’s buildings in Venice, paying particular attention to the architect’s intimate relationship with a small circle of leading patrician patrons. Contains much new archival material on Palladio but also generates a richly nuanced picture of artistic patronage and culture in later 16th-century Venice.
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Foscari, Antonio, and Manfredo Tafuri. L’armonia e i conflitti: La chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna Nella Venezia del ‘500. Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1983.
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Excellent study of the impact of official and private patronage on the design and building of a new Franciscan church in Venice in the middle decades of the 16th century. Also contains important insights on the architect Jacopo Sansovino.
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Howard, Deborah. Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.
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Study of the leading Venetian architect in mid-16th-century Venice, focusing on Sansovino’s state and church architecture following his arrival in the city in 1527. Shows how the central Italian artist adapted his style to local conditions, producing buildings that expressed the Venetian desire for cultural renewal and religious reform.
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Goy, Richard J. The House of Gold: Building a Palace in Medieval Venice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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Telling case study of the building of a patrician palace, the so-called Ca d’oro or House of Gold, on the Grand Canal during 1421–1441. Publishes extensive archival records of the entire building process and gives unique insight into specifics of commissioning and building a private palace in late medieval Venice.
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Morresi, Manuaea. Jacopo Sansovino. Milan: Electa, 2000.
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Monumental study of Sansovino’s architecture that provides exhaustive coverage of the progress of his civic and ecclesiastical commissions in Venice, noting his subtle amalgamation of Venetian and Roman elements.
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Puppi, Lionello, and Loredana Olivato Puppi. Mauro Codussi. Milan: Electa, 1977.
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Groundbreaking monograph that reintroduced the most important architect working in Venice in the late 15th century to the modern audience. Emphasizes the importance of Codussi’s particular circle of patrons in Venice on the appearance of major works such as San Michele in Isola.
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Themes in Venetian Art

Studies of art from a thematic rather than a monographic perspective have resulted in some real advances in understanding, helping break down the style-based, chronological version of Venetian art history favored in the mid-20th century. Studies of the circumstances of specific commissions, of the development of key image types, of conditions of patronage and wider cultural and political contexts, and of artistic theories of the period have effectively opened up the field. Rather than seeing Venetian art as the vacuum-sealed product of a narrow group of towering geniuses, following seamlessly on from one another, we can now see it as a more complex phenomenon whose development was always contingent on a range of intervening extra-artistic factors.

Specific Commissions, Image Types, and Cycles

The study of specific commissions, image types, and cycles has resulted in some of the most telling research on Venetian art. An important early example of this kind of study is Schulz 1968, which catalogued the specifically Venetian phenomenon of the painted wooden ceiling of the 16th century. This study suggests the shortcomings of more monolithic approaches to formal development in art history, showing how this was more dependent on the specific image type than had been assumed. Similar insights in relation to other favored Venetian image types followed. Demus 1984 notes the very site-specific development of the mosaics in St. Mark’s in the medieval period, while Humfrey 1993 focuses on key developments in the Venetian Renaissance altarpiece. Brown 1987 offers an important overview of the development of history painting around 1500, suggesting that this was governed by a quite distinct set of Venetian cultural values. Rosand and Muraro 1976 and Rearick 2001 greatly extend our knowledge of Venetian prints and drawings, although they should be read alongside certain items in other sections of this article (see Exhibition Catalogues and Painters, for example).

Brown, Patricia Fortini. Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
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Study of the large-scale narrative painting cycles commissioned by Venetian scuole (lay confraternities). Argues that Venetian history painting is characterized by eyewitness, “documentary,” and chronicle qualities, as opposed to the selective humanist approach employed in other Italian Renaissance centers. Includes a catalogue of Venetian narrative cycles (state included) during 1314–1520.
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Demus, Otto. The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice. 4 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press for Dumbarton Oaks, 1984.
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Essential work on the medieval mosaic decorations of St. Mark’s between the 11th and 13th centuries. Stylistic and iconographic guide rather than full catalogue. The two plate volumes are particularly important, including more than one thousand illustrations in color and black-and-white. Does not include 14th-century and Renaissance mosaics.
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Humfrey, Peter. The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
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Fundamental study of the Venetian altarpiece, 1450–1530. The first part, “Contexts,” analyzes physical environment, purposes and uses, donors and business practices. The second, “Objects,” traces the emergence of the Renaissance style and includes an important chapter on sculptural altarpieces. A useful appendix lists one hundred altarpieces from the period.
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Rearick, William R. Il disegno veneziano del Cinquecento. Milan: Electa, 2001.
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Important study of Venetian drawings of the 16th century by a leading expert in the field. Attempts a much-needed overview of a relatively neglected field. Reemphasizes the importance of drawing for Venetian Renaissance painters in the artistic process.
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Rosand, David, and Michelangelo Muraro. Titian and the Venetian Woodcut. Washington, DC: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1976.
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Catalogue of the exhibition of 114 Venetian woodcuts from American and European public collections held at the National Gallery in Washington, DC (October 1976–January 1977). First modern attempt to offer an overview of the development of the woodcut in Venice in the 16th century. Stresses Titian’s fundamental impact on Venetian woodcut style.
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Schulz, Juergen. Venetian Painted Ceilings of the Renaissance. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968.
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Classic study of the advent, from around 1540 onward, of lavish gilded wood ceilings with cycles of paintings incorporated. Provides a catalogue of ninety-three examples from Venetian churches, scuole (lay confraternities), and public and private buildings. Includes important reconstructions of a number of dismantled ensembles.
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Patronage and Collecting

The study of patronage has become an important feature of the scholarship on Venetian art (see also Sculpture, Architecture, and Architects and Buildings). Cope 1979 is a revealing microstudy of artistic patronage in the sacrament chapels of Venetian churches, while Goffen 1986 focuses on the impact of patronal values on commissions to Giovanni Bellini and Titian in the context of Venice’s leading Franciscan church. Wolters 1983 concentrates on the politically charged pictorial cycles in the main state building of Venice, while Cottrell 2000 examines commissions in the lesser-known context of the state treasury. Hochmann 1992 offers a broader overview of relations between Venetian artists and patrons from the mid-16th century onward.

Cope, Maurice E. The Venetian Chapel of the Sacrament in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Garland, 1979.
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Key study of the impact of religious reform on artistic patronage in Venetian churches. Focused on decoration of chapels in which the sacrament was reserved between masses. Concern with the proper reservation of the Eucharist grew steadily during the 16th century, and major artists, such as Jacopo Tintoretto, were frequently employed.
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Cottrell, Philip. “Corporate Colours: Bonifacio and Tintoretto at the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi.” Art Bulletin 82 (2000): 658–678.
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Examines the extended commission for paintings in the mid-16th century in one Venetian state building: the Treasurer’s Palace near the Rialto Bridge. Original contribution to understanding the career of the painter Bonifacio de’Pitati.
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Goffen, Rona. Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice: Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986.
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Richly documented contextual study of painting and patronage in the enormous Franciscan church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Focusing on the altarpieces commissioned by the Pesaro family from Giovanni Bellini and Titian, Goffen also suggests a vital connection between Franciscan theological values and the extraordinary naturalism of the paintings.
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Hochmann, Michel. Peintres et commanditaires à Venise (1540–1628). Rome: École Française de Rome, 1992.
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Broad study of the social and economic circumstances of Venetian art in the late Renaissance. Considers pricing, organization of workshops, interaction between writers and painters, and theory and criticism of the arts. Particularly useful as a compendium of information on the social position of artists vis-à-vis leading patrons.
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Wolters, Wolfgang. Der Bilderschmuck des Dogenpalastes: Untersuchungen zur Selbstdarstellung der Republik Venedig im. 16. Jahrhundert. Weisbaden, Germany: Steiner, 1983.
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Fundamental study of the extensive cycles of paintings in the Ducal Palace, especially those commissioned following the two disastrous fires of 1574 and 1577. The paintings are analyzed in relation to the patrician programs they fulfilled and to their formulation of the republic’s self-definition as the perfect state.
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Impact of Political and Social Context

Understanding of the formative role of the historical context on Venetian art has also involved new recognition of the impact of sociopolitical values. Muir 1979 emphasizes the role played by visual art in the promotion of Venetian social hierarchy, and this theme is central to Rosand 2001, which focuses on art’s role in visualizing the leading myths of Venice. In an important earlier intervention, Schulz 1978 notes the role of artistic realism in naturalizing ideological constructs. The place of art in negotiating cultural and political boundaries between Venice and the Islamic East is an important theme in Chong and Campbell 2006. Nichols 2007 focuses on the manipulative visual reaction to the pervasive reality of social deprivation in the city. Koos 2007 offers new insights on the role of gendered concepts in Venetian High Renaissance portraiture.

Chong, Alan, and Caroline Campbell. Bellini and the East. London: National Gallery, 2006.
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Catalogue for a show at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (December 2005–March 2006) and the National Gallery in London (April–June 2006). Focuses on the fertile sociocultural position of Venice between the Christian West and the Islamic and Byzantine East. Features all known works of Gentile Bellini made on his diplomatic/artistic visit to Constantinople in 1479.
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Koos, Marianne. Bildnisse des Begehrens: Das lyrische Männerporträt in der venezianischen Malerei des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts—Giorgione, Tizian und ihr Umkreis. Emsdetten, Germany: Imorde, 2007.
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Study of the impact of contemporary discourses of love and gender on “lyrical male portraiture” in Venice, especially in the work of Giorgione and Titian and their followers. Indicates growing interest in gender issues in the context of Venetian studies.
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Muir, Edward. “Images of Power: Art and Pageantry in Renaissance Venice.” American Historical Review 84 (1979): 1–52.
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Analyzes the role of visual art in the creation of the dominant Venetian political and social ideology. Notes that the use of art in civic rituals intensified as Venetian society became more hierarchical and theatrical during the 16th century.
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Nichols, Tom. “Secular Charity, Sacred Poverty: Picturing the Poor in Renaissance Venice.” Art History 30.2 (2007): 139–169.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8365.2007.00536.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Notes the increasing frequency with which the poor were depicted in Venetian art of the 16th century. Relates this new level of visualization to attempts to exclude the poor from the public spaces of the city.
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Rosand, David. Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
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Examines the various myths of Venetian perfection and dominion as revealed in visual art. Vital to Rosand’s study is his recognition that Venetian art does something more than passively illustrate such programmatic ideas. Shows that the persuasiveness of such visual rhetoric is dependent on its innate capacity for open-endedness.
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Schulz, Juergen. “Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map-making, City Views, and Moralized Geography before the Year 1500.” Art Bulletin 60 (1978): 425–474.
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Fascinating study of the cartographic impulse in Venetian visual culture around 1500. Concentrates in particular on Barbari’s enormous panoramic map of Venice and the fine balance between topographic accuracy and moralization that it maintains.
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Art Theory and Historiography

The items listed here should be read alongside the primary material listed under Primary Sources and Collections, especially the early printed books by Ludovico Dolce (Roskill 2000), Carlo Ridolfi (Ridolfi 1914–1924), and Marco Boschini (Boschini 1966). The last author is indeed the subject of Sohm 1991, which effectively establishes the original meaning of the word pittoresco in Boschini’s lexicon and its influence on later writers on Venetian art. Boschini’s defense of Venetian Renaissance painting through such concepts is indicative of how the city’s “school” had been seen since the 16th century. Freedberg 1979, a classic essay, perhaps too passively accepts this early understanding of Venetian art as based on color rather than design or drawing. Rosand 1970 offers a more nuanced view, though the author still reads the spread of the values of disegno (design or drawing) to the city around 1600 as precipitating the end of Venetian Renaissance painting.

Freedberg, Sydney J. “Disegno versus Colore in Florentine and Venetian Painting of the Cinquecento.” In Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations. Vol. 2. Edited by Sergio Bertelli, Nicolai Rubinstein, and Craig Hugh Smyth, 309–322. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979.
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Study by a leading formalist art historian of the later 20th century on the famous aesthetic controversy between Florentine disegno (design or drawing) and Venetian colore (color).
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Rosand, David. “The Crisis of the Venetian Renaissance Tradition.” L’Arte 11–12 (1970): 5–53.
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Analyzes the apparent “crisis” in the Venetian tradition of painting around 1600. Focuses on the drawing manuals published in Venice with illustrations by Odoardo Fialetti and Palma Giovane and the consequent spread of the classical/academic values of central Italy (Florence, Bologna, Rome) to the city.
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Sohm, Philip. Pittoresco: Marco Boschini, His Critics, and Their Critiques of Painterly Brushwork in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
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Lexicographical study of Marco Boschini’s defense of Venetian painterly values in his La carta del navagar pitoresco (see Boschini 1966, cited under Primary Sources and Collections). Suggests that Boschini’s vocabulary owed much to the Baroque poetry of Giambattista Marino in his formulation of the pittoresco aesthetic. Also analyzes Boschini’s impact on later art theorists.
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Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Venetian art of the 17th and 18th centuries is still relatively understudied, at least by comparison with that of the Renaissance centuries. Hopkins 2007 and Loh 2007 have nevertheless increased our knowledge of architecture and painting in the 17th century. Levey 1959, a survey of the resurgence of Venetian painting in the last century of the serenissima (the republic), is still a delightful introduction, even if its methodology (and some of its information) is out-of-date. The brilliant intervention of two of the leading art historians of the late 20th century on the topic of Giambattista Tiepolo’s paintings (Alpers and Baxandall 1994) has opened up many new possibilities for the study of Venetian painting of the Enlightenment period. Readers should also consult the relevant volumes cited under Painting.

Alpers, Svetlana, and Michael Baxandall. Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
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Rescues Giovanni Battista Tiepolo from the charge of being a merely decorative artist by noting the formative qualities of his pictorial intelligence. Particularly illuminating analysis of Tiepolo’s process of invention through drawings and oil sketches. Includes discussion of Tiepolo’s major cycle for the Prince-Bishop’s Residence at Würzburg in addition to Venetian works.
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Hopkins, Andrew. Baldassare Longhena 1597–1682. Milan: Electa, 2007.
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Long-overdue monograph devoted to the leading Baroque architect in Venice. Follows Hopkins’s earlier study of Longhena’s masterpiece, the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, with a full monograph covering all the major Venetian buildings.
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Levey, Michael. Painting in XVIII Century Venice. London: Phaidon, 1959.
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Combining sensuous response with readability, this study still offers a useful introduction to the revival of Venetian painting in the “decadent” last century of the republic. Levey’s frothy aristocratic style, like his emphasis on formal invention, is in harmony with many of the paintings he describes.
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Loh, Maria. Titian Remade: Repetition and the Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007.
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Interesting, if tendentious, contribution to a little-studied or -understood period in Venetian art history, the 17th century. Focusing on the work of Alessandro Varatori (Il Padovanino), Loh uses concepts borrowed from French critical theory (particularly Gilles Deleuze) to argue that such painters “remade” the glorious past in their own image.