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Counterfeiting Nature: Artistic Innovation and Cultural Crisis in Renaissance Venice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Arthur Steinberg  and
Jonathan Wylie
Arthur Steinberg
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jonathan Wylie
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Extract

Venice faced serious political and economic setbacks in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The future of the Eternal Republic seemed bleak when, in 1509, nearly bankrupt, her commercial empire in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean slipping away, Venice's army was routed at Agnadello by the forces of the League of Cambrai. Even the elements seemed to have turned against Venice around this time, visiting the city with earthquake, storm, flood, famine, and the plague. Well might the prominent banker Girolamo Priuli have feared that “great God has permitted and ordered this severe ruin of the Venetian Empire”

Type
The Culture of Politics
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 54 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1990

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References

1 Priuli, Girolamo, I Diarii, Cessi, R., edGoogle Scholar. (Rerum Italicarum Scríptores, 24:4 [Bologna, 1938]), IV, 26Google Scholar; and Sapudo, Marin, La Carà di Venetia, Angela Carraciolo Arico, ed. (Milano, 1980), 39.Google Scholar

2 Priuli, , Diarii, IV, 115Google Scholar; and Sanuto, Mann, I Diarii, Fulin, R. et al., eds. (Venezia, 1879–1902), XII, 80Google Scholar. Further sources are cited in Olivato, L., “‘La Submersione di Pharaone,’” in Tiziano e Venezia (Vicenza, 1980), 529–37, especially 531–34.Google Scholar

3 Priuli, , Diarii, IV, 29–30.Google Scholar Priuli attributed similar divine intervention to Venice's defeat by the Turks in 1501: “God sent these tribulations because of our sins[;] in order to mitigate the divine ire” many reforms were enacted (ibid., II, 195–6). Gilbert, Felix, “Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai,” in Renaissance Venice, Hale, J. R., ed. (London, 1973), 277–8, cites more references to God's intervention in Venice's affairs.Google Scholar

4 Frederick Lane, C., Venice, A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973), 241–8Google Scholar, provides a good overview of what was happening during this time; see Kretschmayr, Heinrich, Geschichte von Venedig (Gotha, 1920, repr. 1986), II, 409–48, for greater detail.Google Scholar

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7 Gilbert, Pope, passim.

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11 For discussion of them, see Gilbert, , “Crisis,” 274–92Google Scholar; and Cozzi, G., “La donna, l'amore e Tiziano,” in Tiziano e Venezia (Vicenza, 1980), 47–63, especially 52–55.Google Scholar

12 S. Maria dei Miracoli was dedicated in 1489; S. Maria Formosa was rebuilt in 1492; and S. Marla Mater Domini was begun in 1510. The Scuola of S. Maria della Misericordia was refurbished in 1493 and the Scuola of S. Maria della Carità in 1496. For a general discussion, see Goffen, Rona, Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice: Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans (New Haven, 1986), 138ff.Google Scholar

13 Sanudo, , Città, 49–52.Google Scholar

14 Priuli, , Diarii, IV, 29Google Scholar, 39; Olivato, L., “‘La Submersion di Pharaone,'” 533, quoting the merchant Martino Merlini.Google Scholar

15 Muir, Edward, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981), 167–73Google Scholar, 223, 231, 250; Gilbert, , “Crisis,” 276Google Scholar; Muraro, M. T., “La festa a Venezia,” in Storia della cultura veneta, Arnaldi, G. and Sterchi, M. P., eds. (Vicenza, 1981), vol. 3, sec. 3, 315–41.Google Scholar

16 Venetian historiography (and mythography) is a vast topic to which we can only allude here. The much-discussed “myth of Venice” was greatly embellished and amplified in the period under discussion. The Donation of Alexander III, which allegedly took place in 1177, was recorded in the Commemoriali, a kind of official chronicle, in 1483 (Branca, V., ed., Storis della civiltà venezianà [Firenze, 1979] II, 363.Google Scholar). Bernardo Giustiniani's book on the whereabouts of St. Mark's relics appeared in 1493, as did his idealizing history of Venice (Labalme, Patricia H., Bernardo Giustiniani: A Venetian of the Quattrocento [Rome, 1969], 247–309)Google Scholar. In the same year. Sanudo described the city and its complex government in La Città di Venetia. Perhaps the greatest of the documents glorifying Venice's history and constitution, Gasparo Contarini's De magistratsbus et republica venetorum, was written at the end of the crisis years, in approximately 1525. On the genesis of this work, see Gilbert, Felix, “Date of the Composition of Contai-ini's and Gianotti's Books on Venice,” Studies in the Renaissance, 14 (1967), 172–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for an extensive treatment of the contents, see Bouwsma, William, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (Berkeley, 1968Google Scholar). For trends in the histonography of this period, see Gilbert, Felix, “Biondo, Sabellíco and the Beginnings of Venetian Offical Historiography,” in Florilegium Historiale, Rowe, J. G. and Stokdale, W. H., eds. (Toronto, 1971), 276–93Google Scholar; Brown, Patricia Fortini, “Painting and History in Renaissance Venice,” Art History, 7:3 (09, 1984), 263–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Libby, Lester J., Jr., “Venetian History and Political Thought after 1509,” Studies in the Renaissance, 20:1(1973), 7–45. The enormous literature on the “myth of Venice” is well summarized by A. Ventura, “Scrittori politici”; and by F. Gaeta, “L'Idea dí Venezia,” in Arnaldi and Stocchi, eds., Cultura veneta, vol. 3, sec. 3, 513–63, 565–641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, deals extensively with these great civic works of art, unfortunately lost to fire in 1577.Google Scholar

18 Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, England, 1983).Google Scholar

19 Gilbert, , Pope, 115–16.Google Scholar

20 See Robertson, Giles, Giovanni Bellini (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar; Pallucchini, R., Giovanni Bellini (Milano, 1959)Google Scholar; Wilde, Johannes, Venetian Art from Bellini to Titian (Oxford, 1974);Google Scholar and Goffen, Rona, Giovanni Bellini (Yale University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

We refer to Bellini's paintings by the number assigned to them as they are catalogued by Pignatti, Teresio, L'Opera completa di Giovanni Bellini (Milano, 1969).Google Scholar

21 See Goldfarb, Hilliard, The Early Stylistic Development of Titian in the Venetian Cultural Milieu: 1500–1516 (Ph.D. Disser., Department of Fine Arts, Harvard University, 1980)Google Scholar, 37ff; and Rosand, David, Painting in Cinquecento Venice (New Haven, 1982), 6–14.Google Scholar

22 There may have been an exclusionary, monopolistic tendency among established botteghe. On the one hand, the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina may have been welcomed in Bellini's shop in 1475 (Ridolfi, Carlo, La Maraviglie dell'Arte, Hadeln, D. von, ed. [Berlin, 1914], 64Google Scholar), and Albrecht Dürer painted for the German community in Venice, although not for Venetian patrons (Panofsky, Erwin, The Life and Art of Albrecht Purer [Princeton, 1955], 107–31). In general, however, foreigners were apparently less welcome in painting than in such other crafts as architecture and building, sculpture, printing, book publishing, and music composition. Venetians evidently held painting in some special regard, so that in practice, if not in law there were strict limitations on those who might work as painters in the city. Painters, especially painters of religious scenes, were Venetians or at least from the Veneto. Giorgione, Titian, and Cima came from the hill country of the terraferma; the Bellinis, Carpaccio, the Vivarinis, and Cariani were all native Venetians.Google Scholar

23 The following observations are based in part on a study of Bellini's and Titian's output. We have categorized their paintings as: (1) portraits; (2) private devotional works (religious scenes evidently intended for devotional use in private homes or chapels); (3) public devotional works (religious scenes for public or semipublic display in ecclesiastical institutions, for example altarpieces); (4) civic works (secular or, occasionally, religious scenes for public or semipublic display in secular institutions, generally commissioned by the state or by the scuole); (5) mythological/classical works (scenes from classical mythology or history generally for private patrons); and (6) allegories (generally rather cryptic works allegedly depicting such things as “sacred and profane love” or “prudence”).

In a paper of this length, we cannot deal with the intricate question of attributions and dating. For convenience and consistency's sake, the statistical parts of the following discussion simply accept all of the attributions and datings of Pignatti, Bellini; and of Valcanover, F., L'Opera completa di Tiziano (Milano, 1969Google Scholar). Nor can we deal with the equally vexed question of the survival rates of paintings by Bellini and Titian. This question is especially important statistically in the case of the decorations done by Bellini and his co-workers for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, which were lost in the disastrous fire of 1577. These works were repainted, however, in the late sixteenth century, supposedly by artists copying the lost works. For statistical purposes, we have therefore: (1) assumed that the dimensions of the later works are fair approximations of the dimensions of those of Bellini; (2) assigned his seven reasonably certain works for this project to the period 1480–1516; and (3) divided their total area (193.5 square meters) evenly between the periods 1480–89, 1490–99, 1500–09, and 1510–16. For discussion of these works and their attribution, see Franzoi, Umberto, Storie e leggende del Palazzo Ducale di Venezia (Venezia, 1982), vi-xi, 224Google Scholar, 235, 250–4; and Huse, Norbert, Studien zu Giovanni Bellini (Berlin, 1972), 56–71.Google Scholar

Valcanover lists nineteen works by Titian from the period up to 1529 that are no longer extant (14.3 percent of his total known works from this period), although their subject matter is known. We have included these in Table 2A, but not in Table 2B. The most serious loss, from a statistical point of view, is of Titian's frescoes on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. We have used all of the surviving fragments attributed to Titian by Valcanover, amounting to 26.6 square meters and classified them as “civic” works. Judging from the size of the building, this procedure surely leads to an underestimation of Titian's production in these early years.

24 Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, deals with the works of the Bellini brothers, Carpaccio, Mansueti and their followers, which were commissioned by the scuole (religious confraternities) to refurbish their chapter houses in the period 1480–1520. The scuole were dominated by cittadini rather than patricians. The style in which the scuole were decorated was rather conservative compared to natural painting and went out of fashion by about 1520. We suspect that these narrative paintings are yet another (cittadino-centered) form of symbolic response to Venice's crisis.Google Scholar

25 On Giorgione, see Vasari, Giorgio, “Giorgione,” in Le víte de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori a architetti, Battarini, R., ed. (Firenze, 1976), IV, 41–48.Google Scholar The bibliography on his painting is enormous but especially see Pignatt, Teresioí, Giorgione, 2d ed. (Venezia, 1978)Google Scholar; Ruggieri, A. A.et al., Giorgione a Venezia, the catalogue of a show at the Accademia, Venezia, 1978 (Milano, 1978)Google Scholar; R. Pallucchini, ed., Giorgione a 1'umanesimo veneziano (Civiltà veneziana, no. 27, 1981); and J. Wilde, Venetian Art. On Giorgione's move to Castelfranco, see Anderson, Jaynie, “Some New Documents Relating to Giorgione's ‘Castelfranco Altarpiece’ and his Patron Tuzio Costanzo,” Arte Veneta, 27 (1973), 290–9.Google Scholar For a lengthy discussion of his engimatic works, see Settis, Salvatore, La Tempesta interpretata (Torino, 1978).Google Scholar

Attributions for Giorgione are even more problematic than for Bellini and Titian. We refer throughout this paper to his paintings by the numbers assigned to them as listed in Zampetti, Pietro, L'Opera completa di Giorgione (Milano, 1968).Google Scholar

26 On Titian, see Vasari, Giorgio, “Tiziano,” in Le vite, Ragghianti, C. L., ed. (Milano, 1945), III, 561–88Google Scholar; for documents, see Crowe, J. A. and Cavalcaselle, G. B., The Life and Times of Titian, 2nd impression (London, 1881).Google Scholar The bibliography for Titian is immense. We single out Wethey, Harold, The Paintings of Titian, 3 vols. (London, 1969–1975)Google Scholar; Hope, C., Titian (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Rosand, D., Titian, His World and His Legacy (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Wilde, Venetian Art; and the collection Tiziano e Venezia. On the Fondaco frescoes, see Vasari, , “Giorgione,” Battarini, , ed., IV, 46Google Scholar; and Ballavin, A., “Tiziano prima del Fondaco dei Tedeschi,” in Tiziano e Venezia, 493–9Google Scholar. On his request for a stipend, see Crowe, and Cavalcaselle, , Titian, I, 153–4Google Scholar; Fabbro, Celso, Tiziano: Le Lettere, (Pieve di Cadore, 1977) 5–6Google Scholar; Hope, Charles, “Titian's Role as Official Painter to the Venetian Republic,” in Tiziano e Venezia, 301–5.Google Scholar

Our references to individual paintings by Titian are by the numbers assigned by F. Valcaover, L'Opera completa di Tiziano. For convenience and consistency's sake we have used Valcanover's attributions and dates.

27 Portraiture probably provided the principal means of support for Giorgione and Titian. The great lifelikeness of their portraits was highly praised by both Venetian and non-Venetian critics (Speroní, S., Dialogo d'amore (Venice, 1543)Google Scholar, quoted in Rosand, D., “Critical Tradition,” 37Google Scholar, n. 22; and Vasari, , “Tiziano,” Ragghianti, , ed., III, 561–88Google Scholar, passim). Unfortunately, space does not permit a discussion of portraiture in this paper. See Rosand, D., “Alcuni pensieri sul ritratto e la morte,” in Pallucchini, R., ed., Giorgione, 293–308.Google Scholar

28 Rosand, D., Cinquecento Venice, 52–54 and notes; note 11 concerns the alleged rejection of the “Assunta” by the Fran friars.Google Scholar

29 A full description of the technique may be found in Cennino Cennini's Libro dell'Arte, allegedly of 1437, D. V. Thompson, Jr., trans. (New Haven, 1933); for a modern description based on Cennini, see Thompson, D. V., Jr., The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting (New York, 1956).Google Scholar

30 We resist the idea that the appearance of a feature in one painter's work before it appears in another's necessarily indicates “influence” of the earlier painter on the later. We think, rather, that the development of Giorgione's and Titian's style is a peculiarly Venetian one, even if one or another detail may have been picked up elsewhere. We consider the important features of these painters' developments to be the working out of an idea in a local idiom, in response to local ideological as well as market needs. Direr and Leonardo are both reported to have visited Venice in the early 1500s, and it is known that Dürer, at least, had contact with Bellini; but who “influenced” whom, and whether that is important to Venetian painting is a moot point. On Leonardo's visit and alleged influence, see Smyth, Craig Hugh, “Venice and the Emergence of the High Renaissance in Florence: Observations and Questions,” in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations, Bertelli, S. et al., eds. (Fiesole, Italy: Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 1979–1980), I, 209–49.Google Scholar

31 Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, Maclehose, L. S., trans. (New York, 1960), 226–30Google Scholar. The best description of this technique is still Paul Coremans et al., “L'Agneau mystique au laboratoire,” in Les Primitifs flamands (Anvers, 1953), 69–76Google Scholar, 96–97. See also Coremans, P. et al., “La technique des primitifs flamands,” Studies in Conservation, no. 1 (1952), 1–26Google Scholar; Boer, J. R. J. van Asperen de, “Notes on van Eyck's technique,” Studies in Conservation, 18:1 (1973), 9395CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “A Scientific Re-examination of the Ghent Altarpiece,” Oud Holland, 93 (1979), 141–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kockaert, L., “Note sur les émulsions des primitifs flamands,” Bulletin de l'Institut Royale de Patrimoine Ancien, 14 (1973/1974), 133–9Google Scholar; and Périer-D'Ietereri, C., “La Technique picturale de la peinture flamande du XVe siècle,” in La Pittura nel XIV e XV sècolo: íl contributo dell'analisi tecnica alla storia dell'arte, Os, H. Van and Boer, J. R. J. van Asperen de, eds. (Comité internationale d'histoire de l'art, Bologna, 1979), 7–71.Google Scholar

Procedures for preparing the oil medium appear in the mid-fifteenth-century Strassburg Manuscript, in Eastlake, Charles, Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters (New York, 1960), I, 130–1Google Scholar; and in Ernst, Berger, Reitrdge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Maltechnik (München, 1912), III, 183.Google Scholar

For a reexamination of Antonello's role, see Wright, Joanne, “Antonello da Messina,” Art History, 3:1 (1980), 41–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Vasan, (“Tiziano,” Ragghianti, , ed., III, 561–2) claims that the shift to oils occurred in 1507. We suspect that it began earlier, probably pioneered in Bellini's workshop and developed to the point where it appears as a new technique by about 1507.Google Scholar

We clearly disagree with recent judgments like those of William Hood, who asserts that the Venetians were not responsible for this dramatic and important change, especially since his references do not support his point: “State of Research in Italian Renaissance Art,” Art Bulletin, 69:2 (06, 1987), 171–86, especially 178, in which he cites an equivocal statement by Rosand.Google Scholar

33 Recent scholarship has shown that in fact there may have been more sketches for Venetian paintings than we imply, and we do not wish to suggest that Giorgione and Titian did not do any preliminary drawing. Nonetheless, in contrast with both tempera painting and Flemish oil painting, the act of painting itself was largely accomplished with very little previous drawing on the canvas. See, for example, Rosand, Cinquecento Venice; Martineau, Jane and Hope, Charles, The Genius of Venice 1500–1600 (London, 1983), 243–302Google Scholar; Furlan, C., “Aspetti del disgeno in Tiziano e Pordenone,” in Tiziano e Venezia, 425–31Google Scholar; R. Maschio, “La Sinopia di Tiziano alla scuola del Santo a Padova,” in ibid., 441–5; Konrad Oberhuber, “Titian Woodcuts and Drawings: Some Problems,” in ibid., 523–8; Oberhuber, Konrad, ed., Disegni di Tiziano e della sua cerchia (Vicenza, 1976Google Scholar); and Wethey, Harold, Titian and His Drawings (Princeton, 1987). Giorgione eschewed drawing as much as Vasari admired it (Vasari, “Tiziano,” Ragghianti, ed., III, 561–2, and 574; and “Giorgione,” Battarini, ed., IV, 42, 44).Google Scholar

On Vasari's distinction between colorito (coloration) and disgeno (drawing), see section 6 below of this article entitled, “The Meaning of Natura.”

34 Gettens, R. J. and Stout, G. L., Painting Materials (New York, 1966), s.v. lead white and other pigments mentioned here.Google Scholar

35 Paint thinners such as turpentine surely played an important role in allowing painters to experiment with new techniques, but we know little about when these elusive materials were introduced to Venice. Surely some thinner must have been available for cleaning brushes, palettes, and so forth; and so also for laying on thinned-down paints. See Gettens and Stout, Painting Materials, s.v. Solvents, Diluents, and Detergents.

36 Descriptions of painting techniques are given by Boschini, quoted in Hope, Charles, Titian, 163–4;Google Scholar and by Vasari, , “Tiziano,” Ragghianti, , ed., III, 577.Google Scholar

37 For discussion of these terms, see the section below entitled, “The Meaning of Natura.”

38 We think it likely that these landscapes are evidence of a new fascination with the natural world and the terraferma. Realistically rendered landscapes (paisaggi) were considered “natural” in mid-sixteenth-century critical usage: Dolce, Lodovico, L'Aretino o Dialogo della pittura (Venezia, 1557),Google Scholar in Dolce's “Aretino” and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento, Roskill, Mark W., ed., trans. (New York, 1968), 7–8Google Scholar, 15, 17, 31, 36; and Pino, Paolo, Dialogo della pittura (Venezia, 1547)Google Scholar in Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento, Barrochi, P., ed. (Ban, 1960), 113Google Scholar, 133. Turner, A. Richard, The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar, and Clark, Kenneth, Landscape into Art (new ed., London, 1976Google Scholar), both fail to make this point Cosgrove, properly. D., Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Totowa, N. J., 1984), 102–26, seems also to miss the importance of this portrayal of a “natural” world.Google Scholar

39 He had used similar devices earlier, for example in one of the very few early paintings containing a landscape (Pignatti no. 19). Instead of a cloth of honor, a garland hangs above the pair, who also sport prominent, plate-like halos. Two other Madonna and Child paintings from the 1480s and 1490s likewise have a landscape but lack a cloth of honor (Pignatti nos. 105, 119).

In them, as well as in Pignatti no. 116, Bellini has relegated the central pair to a world of their own, as it were, by having them look at each other. Such interlocking glances occur in only two other Madonna and Child paintings from this period (Pignatti nos. 108, 112).

40 Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, 105.Google Scholar

41 See analyses by Mills, John and White, Raymond, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 1 (1977), 57–59. Extensive conservation was required some years ago, when the painted surface came loose from the gesso ground, but this did not alter the painting's basic compositional features. The painting's dilapidation may indicate that Bellini was experimenting with his materials, perhaps mixing oil and egg-based paints.Google Scholar

42 Two other paintings of Mary and Jesus from the period after 1500 deserve comparison in this light. In the Madonna col Bambino Benedicente (Pignatti no. 194) and the Brera Madonna (Pignatti no. 194), both of 1510, Bellini has attempted a visually smoother transition between the background and a less symbolically loaded middle ground-at the cost, however, of reintroducing the cloth of honor and leaving Mary and Jesus completely insulated from their setting. In both cases, the cloth of honor serves to ensure the pair's divinity.

43 On Marian doctrine in Venice, see Goffen, , Piety and Patronage, 138–54Google Scholar, as well as Fleming, John V., From Bonaventure to Bellini: An Essay in Franciscan Exegesis (Princeton, 1982)Google Scholar. Pope Sixtus IV, a Franciscan, proclaimed Mary's divinity and immaculate conception in 1484. For a provocative anthropological interpretation of the Virgin Mary, see Leach, Edmund, “Why Did Moses Have a Sisterri” in Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth, Leach, E. and Aycock, D. A., eds. (Cambridge, 1983),33–66.Google Scholar

44 It is hard to avoid the impression that Bellini's obvious difficulties in attempting a realistic portrayal of the Madonna and Child have produced a far less successful icon than in his earlier, more hieratic works. He experimented more boldly, and perhaps more successfully, with secular or clearly secularized subjects, like the Nude with a Mirror (Pignatti no. 210) and the Drunkenness of Noah (Pignatti no. 211), both dated to 1515. With the unfinished late altarpiece, The Deposition from the Cross (Pigantti no. 209), he and/or his followers were apparently on the verge of being able to use the new, natural style for religious subjects.

45 Creating an integrated depth of field in this manner had been pioneered by Bellini in nonMarian works like the St. Francis in Ecstasy (Pignatti no. 89) and the Transfiguration (Pignatti no. 100); see Goffen, Giovanni Bellini.

46 The “meaning” of the “Tempesta” is obscure and probably unrecoverable. Settis, La Tempesta interpretara, may well be correct in considering it a complexly encrypted devotional scene.

47 Vasari relates that early in his career Titian invited German painters to his house to teach him techniques of landscape painting (Vasari, , “Tiziano,” Ragghianti, , ed., III, 563). The anecdote suggests that Titian actively sought out a new technique and style not available among his Venetian colleagues in order to accomplish his compositional purposes.Google Scholar

48 Bellini in the 1490s and 1500s, Giorgione throughout his short career, and Titian, as noted, painted works which are—to us—of uncertain subject matter that are usually referred to as “allegories.” Settis, La Tempesta interpretata, treats them sensibly, we think.

49 A related device, adapted by Titian from earlier conventions, is the inclusion of the patron as an observer of the scene in the foreground of the painting. The viewer sees him from behind and below, which adds yet another dimension to the scene's space-time. See the Capitoline Baptism of Christ (Valcanover no. 43) and the Gozzi altarpiece in Ancona (Valcanover no. 100).

50 Valcanover nos. 46, 47, 48, 74, 75, 77, 81, 87 and perhaps also 24. See Wilde, Venetian Art; and Steer, J., A Concise History of Venetian Painting (London, 1970Google Scholar), on this genre. This genre goes back to the mid-1470s in Venice, where it was allegedly pioneered by the enigmatic Antonello for altarpieces; however, its great popularity as private devotional painting apparently dates from roughly 1500–20. Until then the Madonna and Child had been the preferred private devotional genre (see our discussion of Bellini above; compare Humfrey, Peter, Cima da Conegliano [Cambridge, England, 1983]).Google Scholar

51 On the Noli Me Tangere, see ‘Gould, Cecil, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools, (London: National Gallery Catalogues, 1975), 275–8Google Scholar; Rawlins, Ian, From the National Gallery Laboratory (London, 1940), 14–15;Google Scholar and Gilardoni, Arturoet al., X-Rays in Art (Mandello Lario, 1977), 158–9Google Scholar. On the Tempesta, see Ruggieri, A. A.et al., Giorgione e Venezia, 99–109.Google Scholar To this list we might also add the Metropolitan Museum's Madonna and Child (Valcanover no. 20), in which infrared reflectography revealed that the position of the Child was altered twice (A. Steinberg, personal observation, 24 April 1984). For x-radiography of other Giorgione paintings, see Wilde, Johannes, “Röntgenaufnahmen der ri Philosophen and Zigeunermadonna Tízians,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien (Neue Folge), no. 6 (1932), 141–54Google Scholar; and Mucchi, Ludovico, Caratteri radiograjici della pittura di Giorgione, Vol. IIIGoogle Scholar of I Tempi di Giorgione, Puppi, L. et al., eds. (Firenze, 1978). A. A. Ruggieri et al., Giorgione e Venezia, show many pentimenti through x-radiography and infrared reflectography. For a general discussion of changes, see S. Settís, “Giorgione e i suoi committenti,” in Giorgione, R. Pallucchini, ed., 394.Google Scholar

52 These works are apparently private and, perhaps, experimental in content as well as technique; in any case it is a genre in which desacralization seems not to have been a problem, so that the painters could experiment with composition, space, and time more radically than elsewhere. It is interesting that this genre seems to have gone out of fashion after 1520, when many of the compositional problems that we discuss had been largely solved.

53 The Turk represents the losing side in the naval battle at Santa Maura in 1502, in which Pesaro commanded a papal fleet. Goffen, , Piety and Patronage, 105–37Google Scholar; and Rosand, , Cínquecento Venice, 58–69Google Scholar, have extensive discussions of this painting's background. On its condition and stages of production, see Valcanover, F., “La pala Pesaro,” Quaderni della Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici, 8 (1979), 57–71.Google Scholar

54 As we remarked above, Giorgione uses a broken column in a similar fashion in the middle of the Tempesta.

55 The attribution to Bellini has recently been questioned, as has the exact subject matter. Similar comparisons may be drawn between Bellini's Resurrection (Pignatti no. 95) and Titian's Averoldi Altarpiece (Valcanover no. 105).

56 Rosand, , Cinquecento Venice, 52–54.Google Scholar

57 We cite principally Pino, Paolo, Dialogo della Pittura (Venezia, 1547)Google Scholar, in Trattati d'arte del Cinquencento, Barrochi, P., ed. (Ban, 1960)Google Scholar; and Dolce, L., L'Aretino o Dialogo sulla Pittura (Venezia, 1557)Google Scholar, in Dolce's “Aretino” and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento, Roskill, Mark W., ed., trans. (New York, 1968), 84–217Google Scholar. Roskill discusses extensively the relations of the critical terms of Venetian art to their antecedents. Like so much else written on Venetian painting, his discussion is more concerned with showing that the terms are borrowed than that they are attempts at expressing the originality of Venetian painting by using “foreign” terms. The most vocal of these foreigners was Pietro Aretino, who fled Rome in 1527 and became an early and enthuisastic supporter of Titian and the new natural painting. Much of the terminology used later by Dolce, Pino and even Vasan is said to derive from him. We have admittedly failed to study Aretino's rather diffuse works as carefully as those of the other critics that we cite. See Pertile, F. and Camesasca, E., eds., Lettere sull'arte di Pietro Aretino, 3 vols. (Milano, 1957–1960)Google Scholar; Rosand, D., “Titian and the Critical Tradition,” in his Titian: His World and His Legacy (New York, 1982), 1–39;Google Scholar and Palladino, Lora Anne, Pietro Aretino: Orator and Art Theorist (Ph.D. Disser., Department of Fine Arts, Yale University, 1982).Google Scholar Others have argued that Aretino's language can be traced back to fifteenth-century sources such as Alberti, L. B., On Painting, Spencer, John, trans. (New Haven, 1966)Google Scholar; and Vinci, Leonardo da, Treatise on Painting, Richter, J. P., trans. and ed. (London, 1883; repr. New York, 1970); see, for example, Roskill, Dolce's “Aretino.” We would argue that the language is probably being reshaped to express new concepts.Google Scholar

58 This is not the place to discuss Giorgio Vasari, painter and “father of modern art history,” except to note that between the first edition of his Vite in 1550 and the second in 1568, his judgement of Titian and Venetian painting became far more negative and bitter, perhaps because Dolce championed it. Vasari may have met Titian when he visited Venice in 1541 and interviewed him in his studio in 1566. Vasari introduced Titian to Michelangelo on a visit to Rome, which lends a certain immediacy (and venom!) to his remarks. See Rosand, “Critical Tradition,” 5–16. For recent discussions of the disegno-colorito controversy, see S. Freedberg, “Disegno versus Colore in Florentine and Venetian Painting of the Cinquecento,” in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations“ Bertelli, S.et al., eds. II, 309–22;Google Scholar and Rosand, D., Cinquecento Venice, 15–26.Google Scholar

59 Vasan, , “Tiziano,” Ragghiati, , ed., III, 561–2.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., 567, 563. The same language is used about Giorgione's manner of painting: life-like, painted from nature or natural things, counterfeiting nature, soft, shadowy, and so forth. See Vasari, , “Giorgione,” Battarini, , ed., IV, 41–48.Google Scholar

61 Vasari, , “Tiziano,” Ragghianti, , ed., III, 574.Google Scholar

62 Dolce, , L'Aretino, 8. The following references to this work cite the original page numbers as given in Roskill's modern edition.Google Scholar

Kris, E. and Kurz, O., Legend, Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist (New Haven, 1979), claim that the concept of realism as a goal in painting derives from Greek commentators of the fourth century B.C. and then passes on to the Renaissance via Pliny—in other words, that it is merely a topos taken up by Vasavi, Pino and others. It seems to us, however, that the specific characteristics praised by Dolce, Pino, et al., are particularly relevant to sixteenth-century Venetian painting and distinguish it from its antecedents and from other painting of the time.Google Scholar

63 Dolce, , L'Aretino, 35.Google Scholar

64 Pino, , Dialogo, 120Google Scholar, echoed in Vasari's comments on Giorgione's new technique (Vasari, , “Giorgione,” Battarini, , ed., IV, 42Google Scholar, 44; and “Tiziano,” Ragghianti, , ed., III, 561–2).Google Scholar

65 On glass, textiles, and so forth, see Dolce, , L'Aretino, 34Google Scholar, 36; and Pino, , Dialogo, 114Google Scholar. On highlights and shadows, see Dolce, , L'Aretino, 31Google Scholar, 35; and Pino, , Dialogo, 116–8Google Scholar. On rilievo, see Dolce, , L'Aretino, 35Google Scholar, 53; and Pino, , Dialogo, 114Google Scholar, 118, 129. On movimento, see Dolce, , L'Aretino, 7Google Scholar, 35, 53; Pino, , Dialogo, 114Google Scholar, 123–4, 128, 132; and Vasari, , “Tiziano,” Ragghianti, , ed., III, 561Google Scholar. On blending colors, see Pino, , Dialogo, 120Google Scholar. The critics do not say so in so many words, but lead white was clearly a crucial ingredient in achieving these effects, especially in rendering flesh so realistically that it seemed not to be made of paint at all (Dolce, L'Aretino, 30Google Scholar, 51, 54; Pino, , Dialogo, 128).Google Scholar

66 Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, 217Google Scholar, cites Kemp, Martin, “From 'Mimesis' to ‘Fantasia,’” Viator, 8:3 (1977), 347–98, for an extensive discussion of Leonardo's use of the concept fingere.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Pino, , Dialogo, 98Google Scholar; Dolce, , L'Aretino, 7, 8, 15.Google Scholar

68 Pino, , Dialogo, 113Google Scholar; Dolce, , L'Aretino, 17, 31.Google Scholar

69 Pino, , Dialogo, 122Google Scholar, 123, 125–7, 132, 136–7; and compare Dolce, , L'Aretino, 38–39, 50, 52, 56. These passages refer to the divinity and God-inspired quality of painters and suggest that the very profession is especially blessed by God.Google Scholar

70 Dolce, , L'Aretino, 15Google Scholar; Pino, , Dialogo, , 105Google Scholar, 106, 122. Though Leonardo had already written about natura in the 1490s, he did not imbue it with the same religious sense as did the Venetians; see Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, 217, citing Kemp, “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasìa.’”Google Scholar

71 Speroni, S., Dialogo d'amore (Venice, 1543)Google Scholar, quoted in Rosand, D., “Critical Tradition,” 37, n. 22. This exceptionally florid passage makes God more passive than in Pino's or Dolce's view and evinces a somewhat more extreme championing of Titian.Google Scholar

72 Dolce, , L'Aretino, 15Google Scholar, 37. On the symbolic efficacy of painting, see Vasari, , “Giorgione,” Battaríni, , ed., IV, 44–46, in which he discusses the healing quality of a Giorgione painting (The Mocking of Christ, in the Scuola dí San Rocco, Venice; Zampetti no. 27), the imbuing of his paintings with spirit, and the fact that the Fondaco frescoes are efficacious for business. All of his examples suggest that he considers these works as ritual objects.Google Scholar

Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, 233, cites some interesting examples of painters of historical narrative scenes announcing their own religious devotion on little labels held in the hands of their self-portraits.Google Scholar

73 Goffen, , Piety and Patronage, 120–1.Google Scholar

74 Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, 135, 137.Google Scholar

75 Sanudo, , Città, 13.Google Scholar

76 Priuli, , Diarii, IV, 270Google Scholar, 282, stresses Venice's role as defender of the faith. Olivato, , ‘“La Submersions di Pharaone,’ ” 533, cites Merlini in June of 1509: “We have always been, as everyone knows, the shield and defender of the church and of all Christianity.” Gilbert, “Crisis,” 287, cites additional examples of Venetians' views of their city as the champion of Christianity.Google Scholar

77 Muir, , Civic Ritual, 119–34.Google Scholar

78 Muir, , Civic Ritual, 108Google Scholar, 118. This event is a crucial element in the “myth of Venice” and requires an analysis along anthropological lines that we will attempt in another paper. In about 1176, Alexander III had apparently proposed a reorganization of the dioceses of northeastern Italy under a patriarchate of Venice that only came into effect in 1451. His papacy was clearly crucial to the image of Venetian hegemony, see New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV (1967), s.v. Venice.Google Scholar

79 See Bernardo Giustiniani in Labalme, , Bernardo Giustiniani, 303,Google Scholar 311–2, et passim; Ermolao Barbari in Ross, J. B., “Gasparo Contarini and His Friends,” Studies in the Renaissance, 17 (1970), 200,CrossRefGoogle Scholaret passim; Gilbert, Felix, “Humanism in Venice” in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations, Bertelli, S. et al., eds., I, 13–26Google Scholar; King, Margaret, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cozzi, G., “La Donna, l'amore, e Tiziano,” 49–55Google Scholar. On a north Euroupen religious ethic also promoting economic growth, see Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958)Google Scholar. For a recent debate on Weber's thesis, see Cohen, J., “Rational Capitalism in Renaissance Italy,” American Journal of Sociology, 85:6 (1980), 1340–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holton, R. J., “Max Weber, ‘Rational Capitalism,’ and Renaissance Italy: A Critique of Cohen,” American Journal of Sociology, 89:1(1983), 166CrossRefGoogle Scholar–80; and J. Cohen, “Reply to Holton,” ibid., 181–7.

80 Priuli, , Diarii, IV, 29–30Google Scholar. Libby, Lester J., Jr., “Venetian History and Political Thought after 1509,”Google Scholar shows that many of Priuli's views were shared by the more highbrow humanists, historians, and writers on the constitution. Priuli, , Diarii, II, 195–6Google Scholar, attributes similar divine intervention to the defeat by the Turks in 1501. Gilbert, , “Crisis”, 277–8, cites more references to God's intervention in Venice's affairs.Google Scholar

81 Priuli, , Diarii, IV, 16–17, 49–52.Google Scholar

82 See Lane, , Venice, 237–9, on the mainland economy in general.Google Scholar

83 The “middle” class of cittadini took over much of what the Venetians called merchating business, while they continued to fill various bureaucratic offices in the government such as secretaries and notaries. One of the chief outlets for cittadino civic responsibility was the running and decorating of the scuole. See Pullan, Brain, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; and Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, passim, especially 223–34.Google Scholar

84 Saudo, , Città, 30.Google Scholar

85 Priuli, Diarií, IV, 113.Google Scholar He rails also against their cowardice, immorality, and venality, ibid., IV, 24ff.

86 Branca, V., ed., Civilid veneziana, II, 366, 368.Google Scholar

87 Lane, F. C., “Venetian Bankers,” in his Venice and History (Baltimore, 1966),80.Google Scholar

88 On the political situation and the men involved in it, see Gilbert, , The Pope, 43–4Google Scholar and notes; Gilbert, , “Crisis,” 287–8Google Scholar; and Lane, , Venice, 251–73Google Scholar. Treating outstanding statesmen harshly was common. See Lane, , Venice, 190–6, 265, on the treatment of Carlo Zeno and Vettor Pisani and on the ousting of a large part of the Senate in 1500 and 1509 in reaction to military losses.Google Scholar

89 Tomaso Giustiniani in 1512, quoted by Ross, J. B., “Gasparo Contarini,‘ 196.Google Scholar

90 Contarini, Gasparo, De Magistratibus et republica Venetorum (Basel, 1547)Google Scholar; for some of the extensive bibliography on this important work, see note 16, above. For a fine treatment of Contarini's philosophy, see Gilbert, F., ”Religion and Politics in the Thought of Gasparo Contarini,“ in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of E. H. Harbison, Rabb, Theodore K. and Seigel, Jerrold E., eds. (Princeton, 1969), 90–116.Google Scholar

Ironically, Contarini was removed from civic activity by being appointed cardinal in 1534. He then became one of the leading conciliators of the Lutherans at the Council of Trent in 1545. His monastic friends had already written to Pope Leo X about much-needed church reform in 1513; see Cozzi, , ”La Donna, l'amore, e Tiziano,“ 55.Google Scholar On church reform in Venice, see Martin, , ”Salvation and Society in Sixteenth Century Venice,“ 205 –33.Google Scholar

91 For extensive treatment of the sources for this commission, see Golfen, Piety and Patronage, 105ff On donor portraits in Venice more generally, see Moulton, Susan, Titian and the Evolution of Donor Portraiture in Venice (Ph.D. Disser., Department of Fine Arts, Stanford University, 1977)Google Scholar. For the text of the will and funerary inscription, see Golfen, , Piety and Patronage, 120–1.Google Scholar

Brown, P. F., Venetian Narrative Painting, 223, cites a document from the Scuola di San Marco of 1508 in which worldly prosperity, eternal life, and patronage of the Scuola's new istoria cycle are also equated.Google Scholar

92 Such an approach ís common in anthropology. Employing a variety of theories, many studies have illustrated the revival or elaboration of traditional practices and the importance of gaining fresh access to the supernatural during times of social, economic, or political disarray. For an impressive series of Spanish examples, see Christian, William A. Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, 1981)Google Scholar, Local Religion in 16th Century Spain (Princeton, 1981)Google Scholar, and “Tapping and Defining New Power: The First Month of Visions at Ezquioga, July, 1931,” American Ethnologist, 14:1 (02, 1987), 140–166CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Despite some notable exceptions (for example, Wallace, Anthony F. C., The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca [New York, 1972])Google Scholar, few scholars consider cultural innovation; and fewer still consider high-cultural innovation. The coincidence of cultural elaboration and economic and political decline was, however, suggested some years ago by Parkinson, C. Northcote, Parkinson's Law and Other Studies in Administration (Cambridge, MA, 1956)Google Scholar, ch. 6; and it forms a major theme in the work of David Cannadine, for example, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition,’ c. 1820–1977,” in The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., eds., 101–64Google Scholar; and Lords and Landlords: The Aristocracy and the Towns, 1774–1967(Leicester, 1980).Google Scholar

93 By “high-cultural artifacts,” we mean items of material culture produced by specialists in a complex, stratified society for an “audience” of socioeconomically prominent individuals or institutions, not all of whom are members of that society. By “high culture” we mean both these artifacts and, more generally, the norms and values associated with their production and their aesthetic and monetary evaluation.

94 Gilbert, F., “Biondo, Sabellíco,” 276. Compare Lane, Venice, 77: “[M]yths enthrall the imagination and defy trial by documentation. Some myths have even been makers of reality and moulded Venice's history.”Google Scholar

95 Brown, P. F., “Painting and History in Renaissance Venice,” 284Google Scholar; and her Venetian Narrative Painting, 91–97. Gilbert, , “Biondo, Sabellico,” 286, dates the appointment to 1512. Bemardo Giustiniani's idealizing history of Venice appeared in 1493, as did that of Marcantonio Sariellico; both wrote in the humanistic rather than the chronicle mode of historiography.Google Scholar

96 Brown, Donald E., Hierarchy, History, and Hunwn Nature: The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness (Tucson, 1988), 286–303Google Scholar, proposes that the mythic character of Venetian Renaissance historiography reflects the city's relatively static, highly stratified sociopolitical structure. Grubb, James S., “When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Hístoriogriaphy,” Journal of Modern History, 58:1 (03, 1986), 43–94,CrossRefGoogle Scholar treats the role of Venetian historiography in more modern times. Wylie, Jonathan, The Faroe Islands: Interpretations of History (Lexington, KY, 1987), 41–64, discusses the importance of distortions and inventions of fact in another society's legendary history.Google Scholar

97 Harrison, Simon, “Cultural Efflorescence and Political Evolution on the Sepik River,” American Ethnologist, 14:3 (08, 1987), 491–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

98 We are playing here on Redfield's famous characterization of a peasantry as a “partsociety.” He notes that one often finds “a developed larger social system in which there are two cultures within one culture, one social system composed of upper and lower halves” (“Peasant Sri?iety and Culture,” 39, in The Little Community and Peasant Society and Culture [Chicago, 1960]). We are suggesting that in such a social system high culture may be thought of as a “part-culture” of the system's elite and that this elite shares a restricted version, or segment, of its high culture with the elites of other social systems.Google Scholar

99 Painters were generally considered to be a species of artisan until the early sixteenth century. Now, however, they were increasingly regarded as individuals endowed with special, almost preternatural gifts. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian were the paradigms of the new conception of the artist.

100 For an incisive account of how standards of aesthetic and monetary evaluation become established and are used, see Wiseman, Frederick Matthew, “Folk Art and Antiques: A Different View,” Maine Antique Digest, 04 and 05, 1987.Google Scholar