Week 2, The Venetian Altarpiece

The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice.

The evolution of the altarpiece in Venice is complex. What complicates matters is that there are lots of different ways of looking at its development in the city. How can one tell the story of the painted altarpiece in Venice? The possibilities are limitless. You could approach the problem chronologically: where does the altarpiece originate in the city’s art world; what is the first real altarpiece in Venice. You could refine this chronological idea by tracking the Venetian altarpiece decade by decade from the age of Lorenzetti to Veronese. There are also many different kinds of altarpieces with varying themes ranging from brutal martyrdoms to quiet holy families gathered together in hushed contemplation. You could compare the different kinds of altarpieces made by different Venetian “firms.” What makes a Bellini product distinctive? How do we distinguish an altarpiece made in the Bellini atelier from one made by a provincial painter like Lotto? In much the same vein you could compare altarpieces commissioned by different religious organisations like the Franciscans and the Dominicans in order to detect any patterns or trends.[1] Finally, you might perform an analysis of colour and light in the Venetian altarpiece in order to show how different painters with different powers handled these qualities. The approach settled on for this session integrates elements of all these methodologies, but with the focus on the role of structure and space in the Venetian altarpiece.

From Polyptych to Sacra Conversazione.

Paolo Veneziano, Polyptych, c. 1350, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, tempera on panel, 167 x 285 cm.

Titian, Polyptych of the Resurrection, 1520-22, Santi Nazaro e Celso, Brescia,  Oil on canvas, 278 x 122 cm.

Palma il Vecchio, Polyptych of St Barbara, 1524-25, Santa Maria Formosa, Venice, Oil on panel.

Giovanni Bellini, Polyptych of San Vincenzo Ferreri, 1464-68, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, tempera on panel

If we start with an altarpiece by Paolo Veneziano painted about 1358 for the Venetian church of Santa Chiara, we encounter the archaic polyptych form (poly= many, ptychē= fold) which was in its death throes by the end of the 15^th century. We see however that the polyptych dies a slow death because the form is retained in Giovanni Bellini’s San Vincenzo Ferreri altarpiece (1464-88); and even as late as 1523 with Palma il Vecchio’s St Barbara polyptych in Santa Maria Formosa; and in between these two, Titian’s dazzling polyptych in Brescia. In the 15^th century Bellini departed from the polyptych format for a commission outside Venice at Pesaro. His Coronation of the Virgin (1471-74) is organised by surrounding a large panel with 14 little scenes usually found on the predella, (lower panel with ancillary images). Bellini may have been influenced in this conception by Piero della Francesca from Urbino, and we must not forget the influence of other Italian schools on the Venetian altarpiece.[2] On returning to Venice, Bellini discovered that the Sicilian artist Antonello da Messina had painted an altarpiece (now only consisting of a fragment in Vienna) which showed the Madonna on a high, central throne; this was used to conceive a more formalized and structured design. We see the influence of Antonello’s S. Cassiano altarpiece on Bellini in his San Giobbe Altarpiece which unites grand, formal majesty with deep introspection. Bellini gave the Venetian altarpiece “the basic form which it was to retain well into the sixteenth-century” (Pignatti, 29) though other painters chose to interpret Bellini’s blueprint in their own way. For example Giorgione’s Castelfranco Altarpiece is manifestly influenced by Bellini, but the inexplicable decision to elevate the Madonna to almost sky level may betray  “factors which are inventions of the mind…conceptualized feeling” (Freedberg, 127) rather than reasons to do with pictorial composition.[3] For an excellent discussion of the Giorgione altarpiece, see the article on the Giorgione scholar, Frank De Stefano's blog

Titian and the Ascent of the Venetian Altarpiece

View of Interior of Chiesa dei Frari, Venice.Add caption

Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, 1518, Chiesa dei Frari, Venice, oil on panel, 690 x 360 cms.

Titian, Madonna of the Pesaro Family (Pesaro Madonna), 1519-26, Chiesa dei Frari, oil on canvas, 478 x 266.5 cm.

Guiseppe Borsarto, Commemoration of Canova in the Meeting Hall of the Scuola Grande della Carità.

With the installation of the huge Assumption for the high altar of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari on 19^th May, 1518, Titian successfully completed the first stage of his career, as well as revolutionising the form. However, it would be wrong to perceive it as a solely “Venetian” phenomenon since it does owe something to Central Italian art. As the 16^th century critic Ludovico Dolce enthused, the Assunta perfectly united the grandeur of Michelangelo, the grace of Raphael and the colourism of Venetians, a statement that has influenced criticism to this day.[4] It was a difficult birth too because we know that Titian experienced many problems and was criticised by the Franciscans for the size of the apostles; less the monumentality of Michelangelo, more accommodating the pictorial composition to the physical setting and the commission to ecclesiastical prejudice.  During the Napoleonic era it was compared to Raphael’s equally majestic Transfiguration, but fortunately, unlike that painting, it never made the list of works to be sent to Paris. Sadly, today the Assunta’s impact is lessened because the public are not allowed to enter through the main door. You enter through a side door, and on turning right you will see the other great altarpiece of Titian in the Frari- the Pesaro Madonna which was meant to be seen at an oblique angel as you progressed towards the Assunta in the distance. Commissioned by Jacopo Pesaro, a soldier who won victories over the Turks, Titian’s second altarpiece is arranged along a prominent diagonal, though the viewer is drawn into it from the right-hand side where the face of a beautiful youth looks out into the space of the church. There is still debate about whether the picture should be seen as a “window” into a spiritual world; conversely, Titian might have been trying to create a bridge between a painted, fictive space and the setting and architectural design of the Frari itself.[5] The movement of the Virgin to the right, thus emphasising the asymmetrical, should not be seen as innovation since there was a pictorial tradition running from Bellini onwards which used the same device. For example Sebastiano’s San Crisostomo Altarpiece of 1510-11- possibly based on a design by Giorgione (Freedberg) - used “asymmetry and centrality” (Freedberg, 143-144) in order to balance geometry and abstraction.

Venice, Veronese and the Theatre of Religion

Paolo Veronese, Feast in the House of Levi (prev. Last Supper), 1573, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 555 x 1280 cm.

Titian, The Presentation of the Virgin, 1534-38, Accademia, Venice, oil on canvas, 345 x 775 cm.  

Serlio, Scena Tragica. 

Tintoretto, The Washing of the Feet, 1547, Prado, Madrid, oil on canvas, 210 x 533 cm.

As Rosand observes, Veronese has mainly been loved and admired for his colour and sumptuous details, largely due to the 19^th century aesthetic movement which promoted that side of his art. A consequence of this has been that Veronese’s capabilities as an interpreter of religious subjects has been doubted, a tendency strengthened by the story of Veronese’s confrontation with the Inquisition over idiosyncratic features in his Last Supper (later re-titled by the artist Christ in the House of Levi). To appreciate Veronese’s religious pictures it is necessary to place them within the tradition of Venetian narrative painting –teleri or large scale paintings- which usually show a procession or large group against the backdrop of a grand, architectural theatre, like in Veronese’s famed The Family of Darius before Alexander. As Venetian tableau painting evolved it came into contact with theatrical illustration by such architects as Serlio, who entered the “inner circle” of Titian and Aretino when he arrived in Venice about 1528.[6] The influence of Serlio’s scena tragica can be seen in such paintings as Tintoretto’s Carrying of St Mark, Titian’s Presentation in the Temple (Puttfarken, 71-73) and Paris Bordone’s Bathsheba (Rosand). Veronese’s Family of Darius also owes something to Serlio, but it should be placed in the tradition of the narrative paintings of Carpaccio with their overreliance on the picture plane,[7] unlike Tintoretto’s pictures carving out deep space and using aggressive tonality, devices which for some scholars owe more to Giorgione and the idea of Giorgionismo.[8] Carpaccio’s teleri originate in a “pre-Giorgione phase” (Rosand) and are incompatible with Giorgionismo which is traced mainly through the early Titian, the chromatic landscape Holy Families of Paris Bordone, and the later painterly experiments of Tintoretto.

Beholding Tintoretto’s Crucifixion.

View of the Sala dell'Albergo, 1564-67, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, with Tintoretto’s Great Crucifixion.Add caption

Christ (Great Crucifixion)

Tintoretto, The Ascent to Calvary, Sala dell'Albergo, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 1565-67, oil on canvas.

Tintoretto, The Ascent to Calvary, Sala dell'Albergo, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 1565-67, oil on canvas.

 Titian, Crucifixion, 1558, Museo Civico, Ancona, Oil on canvas, 371 x 197 cm.

Titian’s Assunta is the crowning glory of his earlier career, but Tintoretto’s great Crucifixion marks the summit of an entire oeuvre. This is the large composition that struck Ruskin with awe in the 19^th century, and Tintoretto fully intended it to overwhelm in his own time while demoralising the competition in renaissance Venice.  Panoramic in scope, enormous in scale, and brooding in mood, this huge canvas is presided over by a Christ who is silhouetted against the dark sky like a witness to the events.[9] However, how was the external viewer meant to witness it? How was he meant to “read” it?  Standing in the Scuola Grande beholding this gigantic picture, the eyes take in the vast sweep of the narrative though inevitably our vision settles on Christ whose presence is accentuated by a nimbus of light. The figure of the Saviour, arms outstretched emphasises the horizontality of the canvas (Rosand, 145) as well as forming the apex of a pyramid whose base is the group of mourners at the foot of the Cross. This is one of a series of geometrical shapes such as the recessed converging diagonal accents which “converge forward” like a plough” towards the spectator, (Freedberg, 526).Yet the length of the canvas encourages “horizontal scansion” (Rosand, 148) or reading across the picture, but that is impeded by the abundance of detail which forces an editing, selective response since it is impossible to attend to all these units while “reading” across the whole pictorial field. Reading is “cumulative” (Rosand, 146) though where the eye should “enter” the picture, or what direction the eye should travel is not entirely clear.[10] There are no directional clues like the zigzag path of the crosses in the Carrying of the Cross on the other side of the room. Use of the crosses in the Crucifixion is more complex; Tintoretto suggests the process of raising Christ’s one cross by showing the separate positions of the three different crucifixions, one on the ground, one rising, and one anchored firmly. In some respects, this Crucifixion far surpasses Titian’s altarpieces because despite his undisputed genius, Titian operated within defined pictorial conventions of Venetian art; Tintoretto by contrast seems to be a complete innovator intent on re-defining religious art and providing a completely new model that is a renewal of previous altarpiece traditions, as well as the appropriation of genres such as narrative painting in the vein of Carpaccio. In Tintoretto’s stupendous Crucifixion, it might be argued that with the possible exception of Titian’s late religious works such as his Ancona Crucifixion, Tintoretto produced Christian painting that in its elevated style aspires to the “tragic” in art.[11]

Slides

1. )      Paolo Veneziano, Polyptych, c. 1350, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, tempera on panel, 167 x 285 cm.[12]
2. 2)      Giovanni Bellini, Polyptych of San Vincenzo Ferreri, 1464-68, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, tempera on panel.
3. 3)      Palma il Vecchio, Polyptych of St Barbara, 1524-25, Santa Maria Formosa, Venice, Oil on panel.
4. 4)      Titian, Polyptych of the Resurrection, 1520-22, Santi Nazaro e Celso, Brescia,  Oil on canvas, 278 x 122 cm.
5. 5)      After Titian, St Roch, 1516, British Museum, woodcut, 563 mm x 404 mm.[13]
6. 6)      Antonello da Messina, San Cassiano Altarpiece, 1475-76, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Left side: Saint Nicholas and Saint Maddalena, 56 x 35 cm; Center: Madonna, 115 x 65 cm; Right side: Saint Ursula and Saint Dominique, 56,8 x 35,6 cm.
7. 7)      Giovanni Bellini, The Pesaro Altarpiece (and details), 1471-74, Musei Civici, Pesaro, Oil on wood.
8. 8)      Giovanni Bellini, San Giobbe Altarpiece (orig, San Giobbe), c. 1487, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Oil on panel, 471 x 258 cm.
9. 9)      Cima da Conegliano, Incredulity of St Thomas with Bishop Magno, c. 1505, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice Tempera and oil on panel, 215 x 151 cm.
10. 10)  Marco Basaiti, The Agony in the Garden, 1510-16, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice oil on panel, 371 x 224 cm.
11. 11)  Giorgione, Castelfranco Altarpiece, Madonna and Child Enthroned between St Francis and St Liberalis, c. 1505, Duomo, Castelfranco Veneto, oil on canvas, Oil on panel, 200 x 152 cm.
12. 12)  Sebastiano dal Piombo, San Giovanni Crisostomo Altarpiece, 1510-11, San Cristoforo, Oil on canvas, 200 x 156 cm.
13. 13)  View of Interior of Chiesa dei Frari, Venice.
14. 14)  Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, 1518, Chiesa dei Frari, Venice, oil on panel, 690 x 360 cms.
15. 15)  Guiseppe Borsarto, Commemoration of Canova in the Meeting Hall of the Scuola Grande della Carita.
16. 16)  Titian, Madonna of the Pesaro Family (Pesaro Madonna), 1519-26, Chiesa dei Frari, oil on canvas, 478 x 266.5 cm.
17. 17)  Paris Bordone, Rest on the Flight into Egypt with St Catherine and Angels, 1527-3, Private Collection, Oil on canvas, 155 x 235 cm.
18. 18)  Paolo Veronese, Feast in the House of Levi (and details), 1573, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 555 x 1280 cm.
19. 19)  Paolo Veronese, The Family of Darius before Alexander, 1565-70, London, National Gallery, Oil on canvas, 236 x 475 cm.
20. 20)  Tintoretto, The Stealing of the Body of St Mark, 1562-66, Accademia, Venice, oil on canvas, 398 x 315 cm.  
21. 21)  View of the Accademia (formerly Scuola Carità) with Titian’s Presentation and Vivarini’s Coronation in place. 
22. 22)  Titian, The Presentation of the Virgin and details, 1534-38, Accademia, Venice, oil on canvas, 345 x 775 cm.  
23. 23)  Serlio, Scena Tragica. 
24. 24)  Tintoretto, The Presentation of the Virgin, 1553-56, Madonna dell ‘Orto, Venice, Oil on canvas, 429 x 480 cm.
25. 25)  Paris Bordone, Bathsheba at the Bath, Cologne, 1549, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Oil on canvas, 234 x 217 cm.
26. 26)  Tintoretto, The Washing of the Feet, 1547, Prado, Madrid, oil on canvas, 210 x 533 cm.
27. 27)  View of the Sala dell'Albergo, 1564-67, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, with Tintoretto’s Great Crucifixion.
28. 28)  Tintoretto, The Great Crucifixion (and details), 1565, Sala dell'Albergo, Scuola Grande di San Rocco oil on canvas, 536 x 1224 cms.
29. 29)  View of the Sala dell'Albergo with other paintings by Tintoretto.
30. 30)  Tintoretto, The Ascent to Calvary, Sala dell'Albergo, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 1565-67, oil on canvas. 
31. 31)  Titian, Crucifixion, 1558, Museo Civico, Ancona, Oil on canvas, 371 x 197 cm.

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[1] The Dominican altarpiece- which parallels the development of the altarpiece in Venice- is analysed by Patricia Meilman, Titian and the Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice. (CUP, 2000),

[2] Terisio Pignatti, “Altarpieces” in The Genius of Venice 1500-1600, (1984, 29-31, 29).

[3] S. J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600, (Pelican History of Art, Yale 1971, rep. 1993), 127.

[4] Dolce cited in Titian: Price of Painters, exh cat. Washington and Venice, 1990-91, no. 11

[5] David Rosand, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, (CUP, 1997), 45-51.

[6] Thomas Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting: Aristotle’s Poetics and the Rise of the Modern Artist, (Yale University Press, 2005), 99. See also Tom Nicholls who notes the comic, “low” elements in Tintoretto’s Washing of the Feet, an emphasis to be picked by the less elevated poligrafi (writers) in Venice, Tintoretto: Tradition and Identity, (London, 1980), 126. The most celebrated use of Serlio's scena tragica is, of course, in Poussin's Plague at Ashdod of 1630-31.

[7] A placeholder will be left here for my observations on this debate after I have visited the Veronese exhibition in London in June. A review of the show will also appear in the Melbourne Art Journal.

[8] Rosand, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice, 110. On Giorgione’s style and Giorgionismo, see Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 124f. Giorgionismo is a difficult style to isolate, but it might be defined as an optical kind of painting relying  on sensuous effects which parallel literary genres such as poetry; a style which achieves pictorial unity but not at the expense of a complete subordination of painting to form and structure.  

[9] Rosand notes that real witnesses (men from the Scuola) to theological history are at the rear of the painting.

[10] Rosand (149) says that entry can be made from either side, but “the major and more urgent penetration” is from the left since there is an opening.

[11] Most attempts to link tragedy with Venetian art concentrate on Titian rather than Tintoretto. Apart from Puttfarken who links tragedy with debates in Venice on Aristotle’s Poetics, see the discussion of “Christian Tragedy” in Una Roman D’Elia’s The Poetics of Titian’s Religious Paintings (CUP, 2005). Freedberg points out that in the mid 1560s Titian goes in search of a sensuousness fed by his humanist leanings. For him to summon up the powers of painting that will help him express the moods in his art, melancholic, “tragic”, he has to resort to the poetics of paganism which can never be entirely reconciled with Christian doctrine. Tragedy as Freedberg defines it seems to be more bound up with debates about Titian’s psychology and late style, which is something that Puttfarken went out of his way to avoid and which he would have pursued had he not died in 2005. One issue that Puttfarken didn't address is: who is the most “tragic” of the two painters? Tragedy in the context of Aristotle is also relevant to Tintoretto since he made a distinction between different genres when he painted the Massacre of the Innocents and the Nativity as separate subjects, the former an example of “Christian tragedy” and the latter comedy.  According to D’Elia (59) the writer Teofilo Folengo said the tragedy of the Massacre of the Innocents followed the comedy of the Nativity.

[12] Venice, Accademia Guide, 1985, no. 198.

[13] The British Museum website states “Lisa Pon found a document recording the commissioning of this print in 1516 by the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice ('Print Quarterly', XIX 2002, pp.275-7). It was to be given to pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, to put 'all'Altar in la loro Galera, over Nave' as a protection on their journey. This explains the devotional text, and the arms of the Scuola in the bottom corners. In return the pilgrims were expected to donate alms generously (the collecting box is at the foot of the design). Titian was a member of the confraternity. For a discussion of the print and its context see Matthias Wivel (Print Quarterly XXIX, 2012, pp.131-41) who notes that the print was made to raise funds for the building of the new Scuola de San Rocco that commenced in 1517.”