Venetian School (painting)

The Venetian school refers to a particular style of Renaissance arts, architecture, and music that flourished during the second half of the sixteenth century. During the medieval and Renaissance eras, Venice was an outstanding economic and political power, famous for its network of commercial and maritime relationships with faraway cultures, especially in Asia. The international relations developed by Venice during this period sparked an influx of art, textiles, and decorative objects, exotic spices and scientific advances. The Venetian School of Music, rooted in the Byzantine church, developed during the same period. It was known for its polychoral style and cori spezzati techniques. Among many composers influenced by the Venetian School are Giovanni Palestrina, Claudio Monteverdi, Johann Sebastian Bach, and during the nineteenth century, Ludwig van Beethoven, Hector Berlioz, and Gustav Mahler.

Brief History

The Venetian school is a Renaissance style applied to the arts, architecture and music. In the area of painting, the Venetian School appeared in an environment in which the mannerist style prevailed. In Italy and other European countries, the arts were so dominated by master painters, that young painters with novel ideas had no place to develop and were reduced to imitating figures already in vogue, that is, copying "the manner" of style of already established master painters. Other experts argue that the mannerist school was a rebellion against the more naturalistic and temperate Renaissance focus and its passion for the human form. Eventually, however, mannerism led to a deformation of reality and arbitrary use of color. An example can be appreciated in the abnormally enlarged figures painted by Francesco Mazzola, known as Parmigianino (1503–1540).

The Venetian school, on the other hand, managed to remain independent from the artifices and worst excesses of the mannerist style, which prevailed in the rest of Italy. There were several social and cultural reasons for this; among them, Rome had lost its dominant role as a leader of the arts, opening spaces for other regional art schools to develop independently, including Venice. Moreover, Venice, because of its commercial prosperity, remained splendid and powerful in spite of the economic and social problems affecting the rest of Italy. Among its most famous painters are Giorgio Barbarelli Castelfranco, known as Giorgione (1477–1510), Jacopo Comin, known as Tintoretto (1518–1594), Tiziano Vecelli (circa 1477–1576), and Paolo Veronese (1528–1588).

The Venetian school privileged the use of color and the careful depiction of detail. It preferred anecdotic themes as well as scenes of opulence and grandeur, but allowed generous latitude of artistic expression. For example, while Tiziano Vecelli emphasized rich warm colors, Paolo Veronese preferred colder tones in silvers and blues. His vast architectural representations were a precursor of the baroque style, and are of invaluable historic and artistic value.

Overview

During the fourteenth century, a surge in prosperity fueled new intellectual and arts currents arrived in Italy, in a movement known as the Quattrocento, which refers to the 1400s. This, movement, according to some experts, was the catalyst for the flourishing of the Venetian school. In the fifteenth century, the Venetian government decided to engage in a full renovation of the city, in which predominated the Gothic style, a unique polychrome Gothic style with painted ceramics and colored marbles. Some Gothic elements were incorporated, mostly in geometric frames and elements from the architectural style known as grotesque –from the French term for grotto—such as fantastic leaves, shells, animal figures, and twisted, intertwined human shapes.

In painting, the influence of the Byzantine Empire can be perceived in the heavy and overwrought forms typical of the Venetian school style. Urban scenes with characters dressed in exotic Mediterranean attire, or double portraits with Muslim sultans and Venetian rulers, laden with rich ornaments and clothes, were very popular. The work of the painter Giovanni Bellini (1430–1516) is an appropriate example of this style.

The Venetian style is characterized by light and color and a strong preference for sensuality, in contrast to other Renaissance styles, which preferred more rational depictions and a privileging of line and drawing as opposed to color and light. Some artists combined elements from both tendencies, for example, Antonello da Messina (1430–1479), some of whose work is considered by experts a perfect example of the combination of both styles.

The Venetian school was among the first to represent landscapes for the sake of scenery. They were also among the first to represent it in a natural form, although rather than taking it directly from the source, it was meant to represent an ideal Arcadia, a popular vision of pastoral harmony and utopian nature. The religious paintings of the Venetian school, however, were not as innovative, and like most of the art from its era, they privileged large panels and church canvases, with edifying or Biblical themes.

Patronage in Venice was not limited, as in other cities, to the aristocracy. Venice became famous for its Scuole or Scuole Grandi, edifices for nonprofit guilds and confraternities that formed in order to support orphanages, schools, hospitals, and similar charity institutions. These guilds were usually formed by tradesmen or professionals and often joined efforts with a church. The Venetian scuoles were known as great art patrons. They often commissioned art pieces from the best artists to decorate their institutions with frescos and portraits. These scuole played an important role in the dissemination of the Venetian school style.

The scuole also played an important role in the creation of the Venetian School of Music. The music school was located in the Cathedral of St. Mark, and peaked in fame approximately from 1550 to 1610. It flourished under the direction of Adrian Willaert (1490–1562), a Netherlandish composer, and the Italian Andrea Gabrieli (1532–1585). Giovanni Gabrieli (1554–1612), a Venetian organist related to Andrea Gabrieli, became one of its most famous representatives. The influence of the music school expanded far and wide, and endured for centuries. In an era when church choirs expanded and court musicians flourished, the Venetian school became most famous for its polychoral style; that is, for the excellence of its multiple choir compositions and virtuoso accompaniment by musical instruments.

Bibliography

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Brilliant, Virginia, Frederick Ilchman. Paolo Veronese: A Master and His Workshop in Renaissance Venice. London: Scala Arts, 2013. Print.

Cotton, William. Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Notes and Observations on Pictures: Chiefly the Venetian School. Ulan, 2012. Print.

Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, Lynn Federle Orr, eds. Masters of Venice: Renaissance Painters of Passion and Power. London: Prestel, 2011. Print.

Hazlitt, Carew W. The Venetian Republic: Its Rise, Its Growth, and Its Fall. 409–1797. Oxford: Pergamum, 2014. Print.

Howard, Deborah. Venice Disputed: Marc’Antonio Barbaro and Venetian Architecture, 1550–1600. New Haven: Yale UP, 2011. Print.

Phillips, Evelyn March. The Venetian School of Painting. Rochester: Scholars Choice, 2015. Print.

Zeri, Federico, and Elizabeth G. Gardner. Italian Paintings, Venetian School: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. Print.