The Arts - Venice and the Veneto - page 581

Antonio's brother, Bartolomeo Vivarini (c 1432-99), created a delightful altarpiece in I
Frari showing a baby Jesus wriggling out of the arms of the Madonna, squarely seated on
her marble Renaissance throne.
Venice's Red-Hot Renaissance
Jacopo Bellini's sons used a new medium that would revolutionise Venetian painting: oil
paints. The 1500 Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo by Gentile Bellini
(1429-1507) at the Accademia shows the religious figure not high on a throne or adrift in
the heavens, but floating in the Grand Canal, with crowds of bystanders stopped in their
tracks in astonishment. Giovanni Bellini (c 1430-1516) takes an entirely different ap-
proach to his Accademia Annunciation , using glowing reds and oranges to focus attention
on the solitary figure of the kneeling Madonna awed by an angel arriving in a swish of
rumpled drapery.
From Venice's guild of house painters emerged some of art history's greatest names,
starting with Giovanni Bellini's apt pupils: Giorgione (1477-1510) and Titian (c
1488-1576). The two worked together on the frescoes that once covered the Fondaco dei
Tedeschi (only a few fragments remain in the Ca' d'Oro), with teenage Titian following
Giorgione's lead. Giorgione was a Renaissance man who wrote poetry and music, is cred-
ited with inventing the easel, and preferred to paint from inspiration without sketching out
his subject first, as in his enigmatic, Leonardo da Vinci-style 1508 La Tempesta (The
Storm) at Gallerie dell'Accademia.
When Giorgione died at 33, probably of the plague, Titian finished some of his works -
but young Titian soon set himself apart with brushstrokes that brought his subjects to life,
while taking on a life of their own. At Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute, you'll notice
Titian started out a measured, methodical painter in his 1510 St Marco Enthroned . After
seeing Michelangelo's expressive Last Judgment, Titian let it rip: in his final 1576 Pietà
he smeared paint onto canvas with his bare hands.
But even for a man of many masterpieces, Titian's 1518 Assunta (Ascension) at I Frari
is a radiant altarpiece that mysteriously lights up the cavernous room. Vittore Carpaccio
(1460-1526) rivalled Titian's reds with his own sanguine hues - hence the dish of bloody
beef cheekily named in his honour by Harry's Bar - but it was Titian's Assunta that ce-
mented Venice's reputation for glowing, glorious colour.