The Venetian Renaissance was the declination of Renaissance art developed in Venice between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
First half of the 15th century
After the economic crisis of the fourteenth century the Venetian families had begun to take precautions seeking forms of income safer than trade, as the land rents, so the Republic began an unprecedented breakthrough epoch, starting the expansion into the hinterland. At first the lands were taken towards the Alpine arch and the plains between Adige and Po, until they came to confine themselves to the Visconti, with whom they had repeated clashes. In the seas instead the main enemy remained Genoa, against which two wars were completed .
In painting, sculpture and architecture there was a contemporary grafting of late-Gothic motifs, amalgamated with the Byzantine substratum: the linear and chromatic finesses of the Gothic were in fact very similar to the sumptuous oriental abstractions. The main sites were San Marco and the Doge’s Palace , where he was consecrating a ‘Venetian architectural style “, released by European fashions of the moment, with very dense decorations, tunnels and numerous rhythms of light and shade of lace, which was re-used for centuries . The most important painters of the period, such as Gentile da Fabriano, Pisanello and perhaps Michelino da Besozzo, they worked on the decoration of the Palazzo Ducale between 1409 and 1414, works that today are almost totally lost .
The “courtly” artists were flanked by a local school, inaugurated as early as the fourteenth century by Paolo Veneziano, and by Florentine artists, who since the twenties were engaged in the construction of San Marco and other churches. Among the latter there were Paolo Uccello (in the city from 1425 to 1430) and Andrea del Castagno (1442 – 1443), who showed the first perspectives of Florentine art. Their example, however, was unheard, judging by the slightest following with local artists, and was only received by some artists of nearby Padua, as Andrea Mantegna, which on the other hand had already known the most cutting-edge innovations through the direct example of Donatello .
Second half of the 15th century
Around the middle of the fifteenth century the expansion on the mainland became more substantial, to the detriment of the independent cities of the Veneto and of the current eastern Lombardy. This partly balanced the Venetian losses in the overseas due to the Ottomans, which however did not initially affect the Venetian dominance on the eastern markets: the city remained for a long time the most lively emporium in Europe, where the trades from the North and the East converged., with meetings and exchanges at all levels. The abundance of capital guaranteed high levels of artistic commissions, both at community and private level, with the creation of an intelligent collection and open to novelties, including Flemings . Along theGrand Canal thriving foreign markets and fondachi .
The uniqueness and cultural isolation of Venice thus began to fail in those years, as the city entered with its conquests in the Italian chessboard, favoring closer and continuous relationships with local cultures . The young Venetian patricians began to appreciate the new cultural stimuli, attending the Paduan Studio, the School of Logic and Philosophy at Rialto and that of the Chancellery of San Marco, flourishing in the mid-fifteenth century .
The Venetian humanism proved to be substantially different from the Florentine one, with a concrete character and interested in political and scientific texts (Aristotle, Pliny, etc.), rather than literary and abstractly speculative as in Tuscany. The renaissance arrived in Venice mainly through the mediation of Lombardy as regards architecture and sculpture, and Padua for painting . Scientific progress was also important, culminating with the publication of the Summa de Arithmetica, Geometry and Proportionality by Luca Pacioli (1494), called by the Serenissima shortly after 1470 to teachmathematics.
Painting
The contacts with the Paduan renaissance in painting were repeated and more fruitful than those with Florence. In the middle of the century the Muranese Giovanni d’Alemagna and Antonio Vivarini worked alongside Andrea Mantegna in the Ovetari chapel; Mantegna himself visited Venice, marrying a Venetian woman, daughter of Jacopo Bellini; first-rate squarcioneschi such as Carlo Crivelli, Marco Zoppo and Cosmè Tura were in town, in some cases also keeping a shop for a certain period .
These Paduan influences are found in the two most important Venetian workshops of the period, that of Vivarini and that of Jacopo Bellini .
The first, based in Murano, was started by Antonio, who made discontinuous renaissance attempts, while the Mantegna’s turning point of his younger brother Bartolomeo, who was in Padua and assimilated the news with enthusiasm, but also with limits, was more marked. This is evident in the Polyptych by Ca ‘Morosini (1464), set with solid figures and with a dry mark, paying attention to anatomy and drafts with sharp profiles; however, there is no unitary constructive logic, as we can see in the proportions still climbed between the Virgin in the center and the lateral saints, and in the lack of spatial unification of the backgrounds . Antonio’s son, Alvise, he assimilated the lesson of Antonello da Messina softening the Paduan linearism, but he could not match the luministic magic. An example of this is the Holy Conversation of 1480, with a cold light and bright colors like glazes that enhance the dry contours. The compromises between innovation and tradition of the Vivarini received a widespread diffusion, especially in less educated environments and in the province of the minor centers of the hinterland, sometimes expiring even in perpetuations .
The most refined clientele, on the other hand, was mainly aimed at the workshop of Jacopo Bellini, who had a Renaissance turn since the middle of the century, applying the perspective to a series of fantastic views collected in model albums. Perhaps he had learned these innovations in Ferrara, where he could have met Leon Battista Alberti, perhaps with the mediation of Masolino, passing through Hungary, or more probably in Padua, where the local painters had gathered Donatello’s lesson . The real Renaissance breakthrough in painting was due to his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni Belliniwhich, albeit in different ways and measures, collected and put to good use the example of Andrea Mantegna, their brother-in-law, and, after 1474, of Antonello da Messina .
Dear Bellini
Gentile Bellini was involved above all in the painting of ” teleri “, the large canvases that in Venice replaced the frescoes (for obvious climatic reasons) and that decorated the public buildings and the “schools”, ie those powerful Venetian confraternities that gathered thousands of citizens united from the same field of work, from a foreign community or from welfare intentions . His painting was linked to a taste still fairy-tale, late gothic, devoid of a fully organic spatiality. In the Procession in Piazza San Marco(1496) a definite center is missing and the perspective is used yes, but for single fragments. The gaze is thus found to wander between the different groups of characters and for the blocks of the background. The artist’s attention is directed above all to the timely news of the event, with the characters large enough to include precise portraits and linger over the description of gestures and customs. His objective and almost crystallized analysis made him a very sought-after portraitist, who even came to portray the Sultan Muhammad II .
Giovanni Bellini, debut and maturity
Giovanni Bellini, another son of Jacopo, was the most important Venetian painter of his generation, but his style was soon freed from the late-gothic style thanks to the example of Andrea Mantegna. Among the works of his early debut stands out for example the Transfiguration of the Correr Museum, where the line is dry and incisive and the scanning of the planes is emphasized prospectively by a “sott’in su” vision of the superior group of Christ among the prophets. More original is the emphasis placed on light and color, which softens the landscape and immerses the miraculous scene in a sweet vespertine atmosphere, derived from the Flemish example . In the Pietà of the Pinacoteca di Brerathe graphics are still present, as in Giovanni’s hair painted one by one or in the pulsating vein of the arm of Christ, but the light is mixed in the colors softening the representation, thanks to the particular draft of the tempera at very close intervals. The intense patheticism of the group refers to the example of Rogier van der Weyden, and always refers to a Flemish model of the parapet that cuts the figures in half, bringing them closer to the spectator .
The hardness and linear constraints of Mantegna were therefore soon overcome, towards a richer use of color and a softer technique, thanks to the deep assimilation of the lesson of Piero della Francesca, of the Flemish and in the early seventies, by Antonello da Messina. The Sicilian painter in particular was in the city from 1474 until 1476, but it is not excluded that he got to know Bellini a few years earlier in central Italy. These influences are found in the production of Giovanni as the Pala di Pesaro (1475 – 1485), with the expedient of the backdrop of the throne open on the landscape that appears extraordinarily alive: not a simple backdrop, but a presence in which air and light seem to move freely. This is combined with the use of oil painting, which allows to blend the near and far thanks to the particular lighting effects. The perfect harmony between architecture, characters and landscape also contributes to the perspective mastery and the solid monumentality of the figures .
Antonello then showed his singular style, which mediated between the northern European tradition, made of a particular use of light thanks to the oil technique, and the Italian school, with figures of great monumentality inserted in a rationally constructed space, with the fundamental proof of Altarpiece of San Cassiano (1475 – 1476), a true border between old and new in Veneto culture. In it the saints are rhythmically spaced in a semicircle around the high throne of the Virgin that give a greater monumental breath to the whole, but the golden connective of the light that pervades the figures is above all innovative. The perspective virtuosity and the Flemish optical subtleties are then combined with the geometric synthesis of the volumes, obtaining a carefully calibrated balance .
A development of this concept occurred in the San Francesco in the desert of Giovanni Bellini (about 1480), where the traditional crucifix that sends the stigmata to the saint, the painter replaced a divine light that comes from the top left, which floods the saint throwing deep shadows behind him. San Francesco is depicted in the center, slim and surrounded by nature. The particular conception of the relationship between man and landscape here is in many ways opposed to that of Florentine humanism: man is not the ordinator and center of the universe, but rather a wholly fiber with which he lives in harmony, with a permeability between human world and natural world given by the divine breath that animates both.
From the late fifteenth century the representation of the landscape in supreme agreement with human work became an unavoidable achievement of Venetian painting, which saw an uninterrupted development until the first decades of the following century . Bellini remained protagonist of this evolution, as we read in works such as the Transfiguration of Capodimonte (1490-1495), where the sacred scene is set in a profound representation of the Venetian countryside, with a warm and intense light that seems to involve every detail, with its radiant beauty, at the miraculous event .
Cima from Conegliano
The main follower of Bellini, as well as a sensitive and original interpreter, was Giovan Battista Cima, known as Cima da Conegliano . In its altarpieces the spatial layout is clearly defined, with monumental figures immersed in a crystalline light, which accentuates a widespread sense of rural peace in the landscapes. This fits in perfectly with the calm of the characters, which reflect the “stillness of the soul” .
Vittore Carpaccio
In this period a particular type of narrative painting was developed in Venice linked to the large series of canvases, different from that developed in other Italian centers for the wealth of descriptive and evocative elements. They were essentially intended to adorn the walls of large rooms, where the frescoes could not be used for problems related to the particular climate of the lagoon, in particular those of the schools, that is, the brotherhoods of lay people who gathered people linked by the same profession or the same nationality or by particular devotions. The canvases were often arranged as long friezes to cover entire walls and their golden moment, with the most original elaboration of narrative schemes, fell in the last decade of the fifteenth century, when the decoration was commissioned a few years later. of the new “Albergo” of the Scuola Grande di San Marco (collective work of various artists including Gentile and Giovanni Bellini), of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista (also a multi-handed operation) and of the Scuola di Sant’Orsola, the latter work by Vittore Carpaccio alonewho had already distinguished himself in the Miracle of the Cross in Rialto for the School of San Giovanni .
Carpaccio created huge canvases full of episodes where however, especially in the initial phase, the view continues to prevail over the narration, according to the example of Gentile Bellini. In his works, however, the perspective construction is rigorous and the luminous connective is now evident, able to link the extremely close and the extremely far with a single suffused and golden light, which gives the atmospheric sensation of air circulation [13 ].
In the Stories of St. Ursula he often gathered more episodes (as in the Arrival of the British ambassadors, 1496-1498), which follow one another on the first floor, which then becomes a stage. This is also emphasized by the figure of the “reveler” a character in the foreground who looks at the viewer by involving him in the representation, taken from the narrator of the sacred representations of the Renaissance theater. The backgrounds are occupied by vast views of cities, seas and countryside, imaginary but with elements taken from the real that make them familiar to the eye accustomed to the sight of Venice and the Venetian hinterland .
In the following cycle for the School of San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, also edited entirely by Carpaccio, the artist simplified the narrative structure of the canvases, concentrating from time to time on a single episode, but emphasizing its evocative power and fascination. In the spectacular San Giorgio and the dragon (1502) the figures create a tense dynamic arc, which makes the furious juxtaposition of combat at best. Some details recall the danger of the beast, such as the macabre human remains that scatter the ground, while others are linked to perspective tricks, such as the shortened row of palm trees near the city, or the natural arch of rock that frames a sailing ship . In San Girolamo and the lion in the convent(1502), the painter incites on the ironic description of the friars who flee from the sight of the saint’s beloved friend, while in the funerals of Saint Jerome everything is linked to an atmosphere of recollection and sadness in the rural setting . The masterpiece of the artist is the Vision of Saint Augustine, where the saint-humanist is represented in his study full of books and objects of intellectual work, with a calm spread of light that symbolizes the miraculous appearance of Saint Jerome to the Bishop of Hippo .
In the following years the artist’s production remained anchored to the fifteenth-century schemes, unable to renew itself to the revolutions put in place by the successive generation of Venetian artists, failing the support of the most cultured and refined circles of the lagoon city. After having dedicated himself to the decoration of other minor schools, he retired to the province, where his late style still found admirers .
Others
Other masters who followed Bellini’s orchestrated harmony of space, light and color were Alvise Vivarini, Bartolomeo Montagna, Benedetto Diana.
Architecture
In the years 1460-1470 there was also a change in architecture in Venice, with the arrival of architects from the hinterland and Lombardy, among which Mauro Codussi distinguished himself. Participant of the Florentine novelties of Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti and Michelozzo, brought a revisited Renaissance style in the lagoon, visible already in his first work, the church of San Michele in Isola (1468-1479). The church has a tripartite façade, loosely based on the Malatesta Temple of Alberti, with two superimposed orders . The upper one has an attic between pilasterswith the oculus and four polychrome marble disks, surmounted by the curvilinear pediment, while the sides are joined by two curved wings, with fine shell-shaped ornaments; at the point where they are connected to the central part there is a protruding cornice that cuts the pilasters in two. The interior of the church is divided into three naves, marked by round-headed arches supported by columns. Each nave is covered by coffered and ends in a semicircular apse, with the last span separated on the sides by walls and covered by a blind dome. On the side of the entrance there is a vestibule separated from the rest of the church by a “barco”, that is a straight choir with arches. Subtracting the space of the vestibule and that of the presbyterywith the domes a perfectly square central body is obtained . An example similar to and before the first work of Codussi (church of San Michele) is in Šibenik in the church of San Giacomo by the architect Giorgio Orsini who had previously worked in Venice in the ducal palace: it was Orsini who used the stone of White Istria cavata to the island of Brac, then used by Codussi. Furthermore this model of church was followed along the Dalmatian coast.
The inclusion of Latin writing on the façade is new. The first higher: “Domus mea domus orationis” (Gospel of Matthew 21.13) Translation: “My house (will be called) house of prayer.” The second lowest: “Hoc in templo summe deus exoratus adveni et clemen. bon. pr. vo. Suscipe “(text with abbreviations on the facade) “Hoc in templo summe deus exoratus adveni et clementi bonitate precum vota suscipe”(complete original text of the song “in dedicatione ecclesiae”). Translation: “O God implored in this temple, come and kindly welcome the vows of prayers”.
The modern elaboration of the Venetian tradition can also be seen in the interior of the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where the Brunelleschi themes of the gray stone architectural elements that stand out on the white plasterwork are resumed . Di Codussi also included the design of the Procuratie Vecchie and the Torre dell’Orologio, but it was above all with the Corner-Spinelli and Vendramin-Calergi buildings that redefined the model of the Venetian Renaissance patrician house . The second above all appears as a local interpretation of the Palazzo Rucellai of the Albertian, with the facade divided into three floors by straight cornices of semi-columns with superimposed orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. Large two-light windows, with an uneven rhythm (three side by side, two more isolated on the sides), enliven the façade, giving it the appearance of a two-story loggia, which is also reflected on the ground floor, where instead of the central window is the portal. The architectural frame dominates the façade, subordinating the sober polychrome inlays and decorative elements .
Along with rigorous and modern Codussi, other architects worked in the city, with a more ornate taste, such as Antonio Rizzo and Pietro Lombardo. The first was formed at the Certosa di Pavia site and was responsible for about fifteen years of reconstruction and expansion of the Palazzo Ducale. The second, of Ticinese origin, was the architect of some works where the use of classical orders was fused with an exuberant Lombard decoration and with the lagoon taste of covering the walls of precious marble, such as Palazzo Dario and the church of Santa Maria. of the Miracles.
Sculpture
In the second half of the fifteenth century the sculptors active in Venice were mainly the same architects or figures, however, linked to their construction sites, which were formed in their shops. For example, it was the case of the two sons of Pietro Lombardo, Tullio and Antonio, who received commissions for grandiose funeral monuments of the doges, statues and sculptural complexes. The addresses expressed by the sculpture of that period were not homogeneous and ranged from the vigorous and expressive realism of Antonio Rizzo (statues of Adam and Eve in the Arco Foscari), to the mature classicism of Tullio Lombardo (Bacco and Arianna) .
The Tullio Lombardo workshop in particular was entrusted with some state memorials, which represent some of the most complete examples of this type. The funeral monument to doge Pietro Mocenigo (about 1477-1480) has a series of statues and reliefs linked to the figure of “captain da mar”, in the celebration of his victory, albeit modest, against the Ottomans in the Aegean. The monument was designed as the bestowal of a triumph, recalling from the ancient some symbolic myths, such as that of the labors of Hercules .
Even more related to ancient models was the funeral monument to the doge Andrea Vendramin (1493-1499), with an architectural structure derived from the Arch of Constantine, which was amplified in the following years. The deceased is represented in the center, lying on the sarcophagus, which is decorated by personifications of Virtue, of Hellenistic flavor. In the lunette the doge is portrayed on a bas-relief, while he adores the Virgin who resembles a classical goddess. Even the plinth, where the elegant inscription in Roman lapidary is found, is rich in symbolic reliefs in style that imitates the antique, even when it represents biblical characters such asJudith. In the lateral niches there were originally ancient statues, today in the Bode Museum (Paggi reggiscudo), in the Metropolitan Museum (Adamo) and in Palazzo Vendramin Calergi (Eva), replaced centuries later by works by other artists .
Typography and printing
In 1469 Giovanni di Spira founded the first printing press in Venice. The activity was so successful that at the end of the fifteenth century the active printers were already almost two hundred, guaranteeing the city a hegemony on the technical, cultural and artistic level . From 1490 Aldo Manuzio published magnificent editions of classical and contemporary works of great quality. The masterpiece of the typographic art of the time was the allegorical novel of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna, published by Manuzio in 1499: in it the characters of the text are harmoniously linked to the woodcut illustrationsand to the ornamental motifs of delicate classical inspiration .
Source from Wikipedia