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Exhibition Review: The Genius of Venice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The Genius of Venice 1500-1600, the grand exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts from November 25, 1983, to March 11, 1984, transformed the London season, as one brochure announced, into “A Venetian Winter.” Notwithstanding the strong competition of the British Museum's exhibition of Raphael drawings, all London seemed filled with enthusiasm for the Queen of the Adriatic, an enthusiasm that manifested itself on every level of culture consumption and tourism: from gondolier shirts, carnival masks, and tins of baicoli to concerts of Venetian music, programs of films set in the lagoon, and public lecture series on topics such as “Venice: Art and Culture” and “Venice and the Victorians“; and, not least important in setting the tone of the occasion, special travel packages guaranteed the presence of large numbers of live Venetians in the British capital (the show was sponsored by the Sea Containers Group and Venice Simplon-Orient-Express Limited).
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References
1 The Genius of Venice 1500-1600, catalogue edited by Jane Martineau and Charles Hope, Royal Academy of Arts (London, 1983; published in association with Weidenfeld and Nicolson).
2 Juergen Schulz, “Jacopo de’ Barbari's View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography Before the Year 1500,” Art Bulletin, 60 (1978), 425-474.
3 As a strictly art-historical footnote, we might observe here that the wooded outcrop at the left of Carpaccio's canvas derives from that in Titian's design for the woodcut of the Sacrifice of Abraham, published by Bernardino Benalio the previous year. Further on this print, which was catalogued but not exhibited at the Royal Academy, below.
4 Panofsky, Erwin, Problems in Titian, Mostly honographic (New York, 1969), p. 171 Google Scholar, n. 85.
5 Robertson's catalogue entry, typifying a prevalent timidity in response to the challenge of interpretation, ends on a peculiarly lame note: “The figure of Midas is sometimes taken as a self-portrait. Neumann and Fehl have probed into the deeper meaning of the picture.” For the most recent critical response to the picture and a vigorous effort to interpret its dimensions of meaning, see S.J. Freedberg, “Titian and Marsyas,” FMR [ = Franco Maria Ricci] (September, 1984), 52-64.
6 At the exhibition, the paperback catalogue cost only £7.90. A hard cover version has now been issued in this country by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., and priced at $37.50— not quite the same bargain.
7 In Burns’ essay, a footnote (p. 28, n. 9) to the statement that “cheaper housing developments of Venice anticipate the housing schemes of modern times” refers to “Schulz 1982.” Unfortunately, no such entry appears in the bibliography. The full citation of this study is: Schulz, Juergen, “The Houses of Titian, Aretino, and Sansovino,” in Titian: His World and His Legacy, ed. David Rosand (New York, 1982), pp. 73–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Jaynie Anderson, “Some New Documents relating to Giorgione's ‘Castelfranco Altarpiece’ and His Patron Tuzio Costanzo,” Arte veneta, 27 (1973), 290-99.
9 Francesco Valcanover, “La pala Pesaro,” Quaderni delta Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici di Venezia, 8 (1979), 57-71 (with technical notes by Lorenzo Lazzarini). This volume of the Quaderni, which publishes the results of many of the restorations sponsored by Save Venice, Inc., is dedicated to the memory of John McAndrew, who was the inspiring force behind so many of those projects.
10 See, e.g., Arthur Lucas and Joyce Plesters, “Titian's ‘Bacchus and Ariadne',” National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 2 (1978), 25-47, and Joyce Plesters, “Tintoretto's Paintings in the National Gallery,” ibid., 3 (1979), 3-24, and 4 (1980), 32-48. Further on Tintoretto: Joyce Plesters and Lorenzo Lazzarini, “Preliminary Observations on the Technique and Materials of Tintoretto,” in Conservation and Restoration of Pictorial Art, ed. N. Brommelle and P. Smith (London, 1976), pp. 7-26, and by the same authors, “The Examination of the Tintorettos,” in Restoring Venice: The Church of the Madonna dell'Orto, ed. Ashley Clarke and Philip Rylands (London, 1977), pp. 84-93.
11 These issues are debated in various contributions to Tiziano e Venezia: Convegno lnternazionale di Studi, Venezia, 1976 (Vicenza, 1980).
12 Subsequently, however, Landau had to modify his selection of “very early impressions,” admitting that the woodcut by Domenico Campagnola Landscape with St. Jerome and Two Lions exhibited in London (cat. no. P43) “was in fact not an original but a nineteenth-century lithographic copy” (Print Quarterly, 1 [1984], p. 123). The connoisseurship of prints, too, is evidently still in an exploratory stage.
13 This political theme has been a major interest of recent discussions of the Red Sea. See, e.g., David Rosand and Michelangelo Muraro, Titian and the Venetian Woodcut (Washington, 1976), cat. no. 4, and, not cited by Landau, Loredana Olivato, “ ‘La Summersione di Pharaone',” in Tiziano e Venezia, pp. 520-37.
14 Rosand-Muraro, Titian and the Venetian Woodcut, fig. I-10.
15 I must confess to a certain bias in the case, since I have defended the integrity and legitimacy of the drawing in question: “Titian Drawings: A Crisis of Connoisseurship?” Master Drawings, 19 (1981), 300-308.