Venetian Colour

From the Middle Ages to this day, the colours of Venice have cast their spell over visitors to the city and inspired artists as diverse as Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Turner, and Monet. This book traces the origin of that enchantment by exploring for the first time Venetian colour in relation to social, cultural, and environmental forces. Italian Renaissance art historian Paul Hills shows how, between 1250 and 1550, the city of Venice and the luxuries manufactured and traded there prompted particular ways of attending to colour. He argues that Venetian colour - in buildings, table glass, and dress as well as paintings - was the product of a lagoon site and a mercantile culture. Illustrated with over one hundred and fifty works of art and architecture, the book analyzes the colored marbles and mosaics in San Marco, examines the achievements of the Murano glass makers of the fifteenth century, and focuses attention on Giovanni Bellini’s pictorial light and colour. Discussion of Renaissance dress and sumptuary regulations illuminates the social dimension of Venetian colour. The author shows, for example, how Titian’s portraits responded to new fashions in velvets, satins, and semi-translucent veils. In the final chapter Hills questions the traditional opposition of Florentine line to Venetian colour, suggesting that Titian’s bravura handling of the brushstroke was nurtured through his early experience of mosaics and woodcuts.