Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-80843-9 - Venice and the Veneto Edited by Peter Humfrey Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION S P ETER H UMFREY enaissance venice (figure 1), like flor- certainly existed on the Venetian island of Torcello Rence and ome, was one of the great cities not from as early as the seventh century; and by the elev- just of Italy but of the entire Christian world. Situat- enth century, if not earlier, the long medieval cam- ed at the head of the Adriatic, close to the mouth of paign to cover the interior spaces of the state church the river Po and with easy access to the Alpine passes of San Marco with Byzantine-inspired mosaics was to the north, the city-republic had for centuries ex- already well under way. In the post-enaissance pe- ploited its geographical position to dominate the ma- riod, the rich flowering of all three major arts in the jor trade routes between the Near East and western eighteenth century has usually been interpreted as the Europe. Extraordinarily wealthy through commerce swan song of Venetian art, which is supposed to have and industry,Venice was also an international politi- expired with the epublic itself in 1797. A strong case cal power and the capital of two distinct empires: one can also be made, however, for regarding Venice as a on the Italian mainland, the other overseas.The mar- continuingly vital artistic center throughout the nine- itime empire, originally acquired to safeguard the pas- teenth century, and indeed, up to the present day.2 sage of merchant galleys, comprised a chain of Med- Yet within this time span of well over a millenni- iterranean islands and ports, stretching as far east as um, it is the period covered by the present volume – Cyprus.The terraferma empire extended to the bor- from about 1450 to 1600 – that has always been rec- ders of the Holy oman Empire in the north, and to ognized as Venice’s golden age. Within this century those of Milan in the west (Figure 2). Subject toVen- and a half, many of the most important figures in Ital- ice by the mid-fifteenth century were the prosperous ian enaissance art were active in Venice and on the north Italian cities of Treviso, Padua,Vicenza,Verona, Venetian mainland.These included not just Giovan- Brescia, and Bergamo, together with their surround- ni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Jacopo Sansovino, and ing territories.As significant artistic centers of the e- Palladio, but a host of other, scarcely less creative naissance in their own right, these subject cities have painters, sculptors, and architects. In the exceptional their place in Part III of the present volume. richness and vitality of its artistic culture during the The primary focus of the volume, however, nat- enaissance period,Venice compares favorably with urally falls on the art and architecture of their power- the other leading Italian centers, including Florence ful and wealthy metropolis.1 Venice was already a ma- and ome. jor center of artistic production for several centuries For those who still view the enaissance from before the enaissance period, and it continued to be the Florentine perspective of Giorgio Vasari,Venice’s so for long afterward. It is not easy to disentangle fact achievement may at first sight seem somewhat sur- from myth in defining the beginning of Venice’s ar- prising. Since the city had no classical past, it had no tistic greatness. But architectually ambitious buildings ancient buildings to serve as reminders of a lost glory 1 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-80843-9 - Venice and the Veneto Edited by Peter Humfrey Excerpt More information 2 PETER HUMFREY 1. Jacopo de’ Barbari, Bird’s-Eye View of Venice (1500) (woodcut), Museo Correr,Venice. (Scala/Art esource, NY) to be revived. Nor were Venetians fired by the spirit God had caused the city to come into being on the of individualism that since Jacob Burckhardt has of- Feast of the Annunciation in the year 421 – at the very ten been seen as another defining characteristic of time, in other words, of the collapse of the pagan o- enaissance civilization. The epublic’s oligarchic man Empire – with the express purpose of creating system of government tended to promote rather a a new,Christian empire to take its place.Throughout spirit of collective enterprise and a suspicion of indi- the Middle Ages, Venetians had accumulated frag- vidual ambition or cult of personality. In art, as in ments of ancient architecture and sculpture, incorpo- politics,Venetians tended to be deeply conservative, rating them into their own buildings and displaying with a strong sense of tradition and a dislike of sud- them as trophies, as a way of endowing the city with den change.Throughout the enaissance period, the an antique prestige while also proclaiming the supe- two great medieval buildings at the religious and po- riority of their own civilization.3 Then, in the e- litical heart of the city – the Byzantine basilica of San naissance period, imported classical forms continued Marco (see Plate I), and the Gothic Doge’s Palace to be adapted to Venice’s own political ideology and (see Plate III) – continued to be regarded with deep artistic traditions. Nowhere is this more vividly illus- veneration. trated than by the long campaign of restructuring the Yet the intense pride that Venetians took in their Piazza San Marco undertaken by the native Flor- city and state – what they termed the Most Serene entine Sansovino after 1530.4 Sansovino’s brief was epublic (Serenissima) – also acted as a source of cre- to impose a new order on this medieval piazza, and ative inspiration.This meant that while Venetians liked to introduce new, heroically classical buildings that to claim that their political, social, and religious insti- would reflect Venice’s claims to be a New ome.With tutions were God-given and unchanging, they con- his recent experience in High enaissance ome he stantly sought new visual means for expressing the succeeeded triumphantly in this; yet he was no less venerability and sanctity of their city.Moreover, cen- successful in integrating his designs and materials with tral to the Venetian sense of history was a belief that their Venetian surroundings, and in particular with made a virtue of Venice’s lack of the physical remnants San Marco and the Doge’s Palace.The message was of classical antiquity.According to Venetian historians, thatVenice was indeed a New ome, but also a New © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-80843-9 - Venice and the Veneto Edited by Peter Humfrey Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION 3 until the 1460s such experiments were restricted to works on a small scale and for intimate viewing, and in the large-scale, public context of actual buildings and statues, elements of the Gothic style survived for much longer. Only by about 1475, in the mature work of Giovanni Bellini, Antonio izzo, Pietro Lombardo, and Mauro Codussi, did Venetian art reach a new stylistic synthesis that can unambiguously be called enaissance. Yet for reasons already outlined, the length of this phase of stylistic transition should not be interpreted in terms of any slowness byVene- tian artists and their patrons to grasp the stylistic prin- ciples of the Florentine enaissance and of classical antiquity.For fifteenth-century Venetians,the Floren- tine enaissance represented not a new language to be systematically learned but the source of new ideas with which further to enrich their own long artistic tradition.They were accordingly no less interested in visual ideas from other directions, such as Flanders and Germany. Indeed, the close trade contacts that had long existed with northern Europe made Flemish 2. Map of enaissance Italy, with Venetian mainland em- and German art much more accessible than art from pire. beyond the Apennines. The closing date of the present volume is as fluid as the starting date, but it has been chosen for less positive reasons. Arguably the first manifestations of Constantinople and a New Jerusalem and, above all, the dominant style of the seventeenth century, the a constantly renascent Venice. baroque, did not appear in Venice until after 1620, As will be seen in the historical introduction in with the arrival in the city of the painters Johann Liss Chapter 1, the dates given for the present volume ap- from Germany and Bernardo Strozzi from Genoa, proximately correspond, at the beginning, to the Fall and the beginning of the career of the architect Bal- of Constantinople of 1453 and the Peace of Lodi of dassare Longhena.The leading figures of the first two 1454, and, at the end, to the papal Interdict of 1605. decades of the century, such as Palma Giovane in By contrast, the opening and closing dates do not co- painting, Girolamo Campagna in sculpture, and Vin- incide with any similarly momentous artistic event or cenzo Scamozzi in architecture, were all pupils or turning point. Although Giotto had painted his fres- close followers of the great protagonists of the Vene- coes in the Scrovegni Chapel in nearby Padua as ear- tian cinquecento, and their work still really belongs ly as the first decade of the fourteenth century (see in the enaissance tradition.There can be little doubt, Figure 143), the dominant style in all three major arts however, that by 1600 this tradition was locally in se- in mid-fifteenth-centuryVenice remained a vigorous rious decline, and that its true heirs had already be- and exuberant late Gothic. Perhaps the earliest local gun to emerge in artistic centers elesewhere: in Bo- response to the artistic revolution that had taken place logna, ome, and Antwerp.