Venetian Art could be described as…
Painterly. Soft edges and strong mark making approach with impasto paint and a flurry of brushwork. The softer fluffier brushwork became known as ‘poesie’ or visual poetry & grew more popular in the Baroque & Rococo periods that followed.
Roman & Florentine Painting could be characterized by the use of…
precise contours & separated delineated elements and techniques like Diseno, as employed by Michelangelo.
The themes and thinking behind Roman & Florentine Painting focused mainly
on intellectual matters, mathematical and philosophical perspectives on Art.
Venetian Art focused mainly on
nature- capturing light and ‘painterly’ approaches
Roman & Florentine art often had compositions
based on architectural shapes
While Venetian Art was set in
more outdoor & rural (pastoral) settings, less architectural composition
Roman & Florentine Art was heavily influenced by
Brunelleschi’s invention of perspective & the writings of Vitruvius & Alberti on the correct classical proportions of buildings & figures
Venetian art was more influenced by Northern Rennaissance’s technical innovations
They used oil paint more used & the camera obscura to observe the scene & project the light. The venetians, however invented canvas which better suited the damper climate than fresco.
Venetian art had a greater pan-European influence on later developments in art e.g. Impressionism and the focus on capturing the effects of light & mark making
Venetians painted on canvas which was portable & could be traded or looted e.g. Napoleon brought many masterpieces to France when he invaded Northern Italy. The many Northern Italian artworks displayed in The Louvre proved to be very influential on French 19th & 20th century painting
Roman & Florentine Early Renaissance Art employed stony and pietra serena colors in figure painting, sculpture & architecture. Later in the High Renaissance artists like Raphael used complimentary colors e.g. red and green and orange and blue in Madonna of The Meadow
Venetian painters like Titian painted from dark to light on dark backgrounds, using warm red, orange and yellow tones on darker backgrounds to create depth and drama.
Venetian painters also juxtaposed nude female figures with clothed figures in the same scene e.g. Venus of Urbino by Titian. This, & the indoor contemporary setting renders the nudity less innocent & more erotic.
This would later be copied by artists in France in the 19th & 20th centuries. Manet mocked this voyeurism in his painting Dejuner sur l’Herbe (1862,1863) which outraged those who first saw it in the Salon des Refusees. It is now seen as the first work of art about art.
