Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Not Minding Their Manners: Venice's Mannerists
Although art history tends to insist on a division of labour between Venice and Florence -
Venice had the colour, Florence the ideas - the Venetian School had plenty of ideas that
repeatedly got it into trouble. Titian was a hard act to follow, but there's no denying the
impact of Venice's Jacopo Robusti, aka Tintoretto (1518-94) and Paolo Cagliari from Ver-
ona, known as Veronese (1528-88).
A crash course in Tintoretto begins at Chiesa della Madonna dell'Orto, his parish
church and the serene brick backdrop for his action-packed 1546 Last Judgment . True-
blue Venetian that he is, Tintoretto shows the final purge as a teal tidal wave, which lost
souls are vainly trying to hold back, like human Mose barriers. A dive-bombing angel
swoops in to save one last person - a riveting image Tintoretto reprised in the upper floor
of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Tintoretto spent some 15 years creating works for San
Rocco, and his biblical scenes read like a modern graphic novel. Tintoretto sometimes
used special effects to get his point across, enhancing his colours with a widely available
local material: finely crushed glass.
VENETIAN PAINTINGS THAT CHANGED PAINTING
» Feast in the House of Levi (Veronese, Gallerie dell'Accademia)
» Assunta (Titian, I Frari)
» St Mark in Glory (Tintoretto, Scuola Grande di San Rocco)
» La Tempesta (Giorgione, Gallerie dell'Accademia)
» Madonna with Child Between Saints Caterina and Maddalena (Giovanni Bellini, Gallerie dell'Accademia)
Veronese's colours have a luminosity entirely their own, earning him Palazzo Ducale
commissions and room to run riot inside Chiesa di San Sebastian - but his choice of sub-
jects got him into trouble. When Veronese was commissioned to paint the Last Supper (in
Gallerie dell'Accademia) his masterpiece ended up looking suspiciously like a Venetian
party, with apostles in Venetian dress mingling freely with Turkish merchants, Jewish
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