Presents a survey of sixty Venetian Renaissance paintings of the calibre of Bellini and Titian's "Feast of the Gods" in Washington and Giorgione's "Laura and Three Philosophers" in Vienna.
The Renaissance was a golden age in the long history of Venetian painting, and the art that came from Venice during that era includes some of the most visually exciting works in the whole of western art. This attractive book - a comprehensive account of painting in Venice from Bellini to Titian to Tintoretto - is an accessible introduction to the paintings of this period. Peter Humfrey surveys the development of a distinctly Venetian artistic tradition from the middle years of the fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century. He discusses the work of Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto as well as the paintings of those less well known - such as the three Vivarini, Cima, Carpaccio, Palma Vecchio, Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Bassano. Humfrey analyses these painters' works in terms of their pictorial style, technique, subject matter, patronage and function. He also sets the art against the background of the political, social and religious conditions of Renaissance Venice, as outlined in his Introduction. The book includes an appendix that provides brief biographies of thirty-six of the most important painters active in Renaissance Venice.
This up-to-date, well-illustrated, and thoughtful introduction to the life and works of one of the giants of Western Painting also surveys the golden age of Venetian Painting from Giovanni Bellini to Veronese and its place in the history of Western art. Bruce Cole, Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts at Indiana University and author of numerous books on Italian Renaissance art, begins with the life and work of Giovanni Bellini, the principal founder of Venetian Renaissance painting. He continues with the paintings of Giorgione and the young Titian whose work embodied the new Venetian style. Cole discusses and explains all of Titian's major works--portraits, religious paintings, and nudes--from various points of view and shows how Venetian painting of this period differed from painting in Florence and elsewhere in Italy and became a distinct and fully-developed style of its own.
Titian is best known for paintings that embodied the tradition of the Venetian Renaissance—but how Venetian was the artist himself? In this study, Tom Nichols probes the tensions between the individualism of Titian’s work and the conservative mores of the city, showing how his art undermined the traditional self-suppressing approach to painting in Venice and reflected his engagement with the individualistic cultures emerging in the courts of early modern Europe. Ranging widely across Titian’s long career and varied works, Titian and the End of the Venetian Renaissance outlines his radical innovations to the traditional Venetian altarpiece; his transformation of portraits into artistic creations; and his meteoric breakout from the confines of artistic culture in Venice. Nichols explores how Titian challenged the city’s communal values with his competitive professional identity, contending that his intensely personalized way of painting resulted in a departure that effectively brought an end to the Renaissance tradition of painting. Packed with 170 illustrations, this groundbreaking book will change the way people look at Titian and Venetian art history.
"In the Age of Giorgione assembles many of the works attributed to Giorgione, along with masterpieces by Titian, Lorenzo Lotto, Sebastiano del Piombo and Giovanni Cariani, among others. This volume includes landscapes, portraits and devotional works, all exemplars of the exceptional richness of colour and mood that were to become the hallmark of the Golden Age of Venetian painting." -- Publisher's description
An accessible guide to the foremost figure in Venetian Renaissance painting, tracing Bellini's personal artistic development within historical context Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini (c. 1435/40-1516) is considered the most important practitioner of Venetian painting in the latter half of the 15th century. Born into a family of painters, Bellini began studying art at a young age, painting primarily in the prevailing Gothic style of the early Renaissance. As time passed and he evolved as an artist, Bellini's wide-reaching influence came to inform the maniera modernainherited by Giorgione and Titian. His unparalleled ability to both harness the expressive power of light and recreate the poetry of natural landscapes became the foundational tenets of the Venetian school of painting for centuries to come. This volume provides an accessible guide to Bellini's work and the lasting influence of his career on Western European painting. Organized chronologically, the book maps the development of Bellini's own craft alongside the greater technical experimentation of the Quattrocento, detailing the artist's abandonment of traditional egg tempera technique for oil on canvas and taking into account the influence of contemporaries Andrea Mantegna and Antonello da Messina. Concise and up-to-date, this publication effectively conveys the magnitude of Bellini's contributions to Western European painting in the wider context of the era.
Praised by Albrecht Dürer as being “the best in painting,” Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1430– 1516) is unquestionably the supreme Venetian painter of the quattrocento and one of the greatest Italian artists of all time. His landscapes assume a prominence unseen in Western art since classical antiquity. Drawing from a selection of masterpieces that span Bellini's long and successful career, this exhibition catalogue focuses on the main function of landscape in his oeuvre: to enhance the meditational nature of paintings intended for the private devotion of intellectually sophisticated, elite patrons. The subtle doctrinal content of Bellini’s work—the isolated crucifix in a landscape, the “sacred conversation,” the image of Saint Jerome in the wilderness—is always infused with his instinct for natural representation, resulting in extremely personal interpretations of religious subjects immersed in landscapes where the real and the symbolic are inextricably intertwined. This volume includes a biography of the artist, essays by leading authorities in the field explicating the themes of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s exhibition, and detailed discussions and glorious reproductions of the twelve works in the show, including their history and provenance, function, iconography, chronology, and style.
Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1435–1516), widely considered the greatest Venetian artist of his time, was born into the most influential artistic family in Venice. He received his training in the studio of his father, Jacopo, along with his brother, Gentile, and through a long and fruitful career played a leading role in defining the Renaissance style in Venice. His workshop, one of the most important of the period, counted Giorgione and Titian among its pupils. The first account of his life, by Giorgio Vasari, also portrays the family artistic enterprise; it appeared in Vasari’s seminal Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550 and revised and expanded in 1568. A century later Carlo Ridolfi, who sought to rectify Vasari’s emphasis on Florentine painters, provides a fuller portrayal of Bellini in his 1648 work The Marvels of Art, or the Lives of the Famous Painters of Venice and Its State. These two narratives are complemented in this book by Marco Boschini’s poetic homage to the artist and by correspondence between the renowned Renaissance patron of the arts Isabella d'Este, Bellini, and others regarding the commission of a painting for her celebrated studiolo in Mantua. Ridolfi’s biography, Boschini’s poem, and the Isabella d’Este correspondence appear here in English for the first time. Full-page color illustrations throughout the book represent the full sweep of Bellini’s career.
The great Venetian sculptors of the High Renaissance, led by Tullio Lombardo (c. 1455-1532), explored a poetic and nostalgic approach to classical antiquity in their work. Their expression shares much with Mantegna, Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian in these painters' imaginative evocations of ancient history, mythology, philosophy, and poetry. Featuring a range of Tullio's work, including his sensuous and dramatic double-portrait reliefs, this book introduces the romantic qualities and beautiful craftsmanship of the sculptor and his closest followers, including his brother Antonio Lombardo, Simone Bianco, Antonio Minello, and Giammaria Mosca. Essays examine Tullio's innovations and the Venetian cultural setting where he developed them in dialogue with the northern Italian masters of Renaissance painting. Twelve works, carefully selected from this milieu, exemplify the creative approach and influence of Tullio and the Lombardo workshop. Published in association with the National Gallery, Washington Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (7/4/09 - 10/31/09)