Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces
On exhibit Fall 2006 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
D.C.'s National Gallery groups this exhibit by theme (religious subjects, pastoral landscapes, portraits, nudes) to show the innovative treatments by Venetian artists.
Indeed, the single most intriguing element of the show is how the paintings were selected for their innovative treatments.
As a gallery visitor walks into the exhibition "The Renaissance of Venetian Painting" [recently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.], she first notices the intense oranges, pinks, and reds of the Virgin Mary's robes.
Paintings of the Holy Family are a regular theme at this time of the early 1500s in Renaissance Italy. But in these featured paintings, Mary and the baby are portrayed as real flesh-and-blood people. Instead of stiffly "presenting" baby Jesus to the viewers as is typically done in medieval paintings, Mary protectively or playfully holds the baby as a real mother does. The baby Jesus twists and pulls the front of Mary's dress or turns away from her to gaze at Saint Catherine or other subjects nearby as any real baby would. Not only this, the artists experimented with a new format, turning the portraits on their sides in a horizontal view, adding landscape scenery or placing the figures off-center. These touches show the innovativeness of the artists of Venice in this timeframe of the Renaissance.
Pastoral landscapes are featured because they have become a quintessential form of Venetian painting. A pastoral landscape depicts an idealized scene of beauty and harmony in nature. As the Renaissance progressed in Italy, the people became more and more interested in reviving ancient Greek and Roman mythology. The pastoral was an imaginary world that served as a model and backdrop for displaying the myths: shepherds, musicians, nymphs, and satyrs frolic in shady groves and rolling hills. Titian's "Pastoral Concert" is the epitome of this new genre; it depicts the dichotomy between city and country, or between the cultured and the rustic, that is the basis of this new art form. In addition, Titian shows the lute player as a contemporary young man, supposedly in an innovative move to encourage the buyer to personally identify with the painting or place himself in the imaginary world of the painting.
Portraits at this time take on new meaning as well. Portraits of semi-clad women or reclining nudes may have been influenced by a simplistic yet arresting woodcut called "The Sleeping Nymph" of a partially-nude sleeping woman accosted by a lustful satyr in "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili," one of the most popular books of the time in Venice. Paintings of sleeping half-clothed or nude women, which are now so common as to be a cliché for art itself, were new for this time and must have really surprised the people of the day.
Even the male portraits are new and dramatic. The men are displayed in idealized roles, as lovers, poets, musicians, or soldiers, in what are known as "action" portraits. They are shown with their emblems or symbols that display their private selves or personal interests.
Ultimately the brilliance and range of colors are what most strike the viewer and remain in the mind's eye as the most unforgettable part of this exhibition. The exhibit remained on display until September 17, 2006, when it moved on to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Source:
Brown, David A. Venetian Painting and the Invention of Art. National Gallery of Art Exhibitions. 2006.
