Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters provide the first contemporary single-volume survey of the three arts of Venice -- painting, sculpture, and architecture. They offer an important counterbalance to the traditional orientation toward painting as the city's preeminent art by focusing on architecture as the essential Venetian artistic medium. In the process, they define the distinctly Venetian terms by which the city and culture should be understood. Huse and Wolters begin their study with 1460, when Venice was one of the key powers of Italy, and end their discussion with the death of Tintoretto in 1594, a period of waning international power. Wolfgang Wolters outlines the city's development and present a typological survey of Venetian architecture. A review of sculptors and their works follows. Norbert Huse opens the next section, on painting, by describing the changed situation of painters at the end of the fifteenth century. He explores the different forms and functions of Venetian paintings in three distinct periods. With over three hundred illustrations and an exhaustive bibliography, this volume successfully fills a gap in art historical scholarship. -- From publisher's description.

"A comprehensive and richly illustrated survey of Venetian Renaissance architecture, sculpture, and painting created between 1400 and 1600 addressed to students, travellers, and the general public. The works of art are analysed within Venice's cultural circumstances--political, economic, intellectual, and religious--and in terms of function, style, iconography, patronage, classical sources, gender, art theories, and artist's innovations, rivalries, and social status. The text has been divided into two parts--the fifteenth century and the sixteenth century--each part preceded by an introduction that recounts the history of Venice to 1500 and to 1600 respectively, including the city's founding, ideology, territorial expansion, social classes, governmental structure, economy, and religion. The twenty-six chapters have been organized to lead readers systematically through the major artistic developments within the three principal categories of art--governmental, ecclesiastic, and domestic--and have been arranged sequentially as follows: civic architecture and urbanism, churches, church decoration (ducal tombs and altarpieces), refectories and refectory decoration (section two only), confraternities (architecture and decoration), palaces, palace decoration (devotional works, portraits, secular painting, and halls of state), villas, and villa decoration. The conclusion offers an overview of the major types of Venetian art and architectural patronage and their funding sources"--Provided by publisher.

For patricians in the Republic of Venice, paintings in manuscripts marking their appointment to high office expressed a tension between selfless service and individual ambition. Originally of value in confirming and instructing an elected officer, these unique documents were transformed through art into enduring monuments promoting state ideals, individual status, and family memory. This book introduces the reader to a long-hidden world of beautiful and complex images, and to tales of personal sacrifice, political maneuvering, and family intrigue. Analysis of these small paintings within books opens up new perspectives on canonical works by such artists as Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Veronese, as well as on tomb sculptures and public memorials. Extensive original material on artistic patronage in Venice and its territories abroad encourages an expanded understanding of art in the service of the state and of Venice as empire.

The first definitive biography of the master painter in more than a century, Titian: His Life is being hailed as a "landmark achievement" for critically acclaimed author Sheila Hale (Publishers Weekly). Brilliant in its interpretation of the 16th-century master's paintings, this monumental biography of Titian draws on contemporary accounts and recent art historical research and scholarship, some of it previously unpublished, providing an unparalleled portrait of the artist, as well as a fascinating rendering of Venice as a center of culture, commerce, and power. Sheila Hale's Titian is destined to be this century's authoritative text on the life of greatest painter of the Italian High Renaissance.

This insightful volumes the use of imitation and the modern cult of originality through a consideration of the disparate fates of two Venetian painters - the canonised master Titian and his artistic heir, the little-known Padovanino.