Venice was a major center of art in the Renaissance: the city where the medium of oil on canvas became the norm. The achievements of the Bellini brothers, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese are a key part of this story. Nowhere else has been depicted by so many great painters in so many diverse styles and moods. Venetian views were a speciality of native artists such as Canaletto and Guardi, but the city has also been represented by outsiders: J. M. W. Turner, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, Howard Hodgkin, and many more.
Then there are those who came to look at and write about art. The reactions of Henry James, George Eliot, Richard Wagner, and others enrich this tale. Nor is the story over. Since the advent of the Venice Biennale in the 1890s, and the arrival of pioneering modern art collector Peggy Guggenheim in the late 1940s, the city has become a shop window for the contemporary art of the whole world, and it remains the site of important artistic events.
In this elegant volume, Gayford—who has visited Venice countless times since the 1970s, covered every Biennale since 1990, and even had portraits of himself exhibited there on several occasions—takes us on a visual journey through the past five centuries of the city known “La Serenissima,” the Most Serene. It is a unique and compelling portrait of Venice that will delight lovers of the city and lovers of its art.
Reviews
[A] tour de force saga of the lives of Venetian painters and of visiting artists … Gayford is a marvelous writer.
— Art Eyewitness
Taken in hand by an amiable and well-informed guide, the reader is given a tour of [Martin] Gayford's favorite things in the 'bizarre and unique' city of Venice, Italy … Gayford has digested large swatches of the scholarly literature and summarizes them for readers in tasty tidbits. He adds another volume to the growing literature on Venice, this one written with a light touch and an unabashedly personal point of view.
— Choice
From its rich history as a maritime power and magnet for diverse cultures to the central role it played during the Renaissance, Venice continues to enchant, fascinate, and lure hordes of eager tourists each year. Gayford takes readers on a visual journey through the past five centuries.
— Artnet News
Contributors
Martin Gayford
Author
Martin Gayford is a writer and art critic. His books include Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud; Modernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London Painters; A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen and Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy, both with David Hockney; Shaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now, with Antony Gormley; Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939–1954, with David Dawson; Venice: City of Pictures; and How Painting Happens (and why it matters).
