CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The End of Venetian Painting: A Very Short Story

In an earlier essay, “Relics/Icons/Paintings: A Very Short History of Venetian Painting,” I traced the origins of Venetian painting. Here, continuing the story, I take that account into the present, offering a brief explanation of how this visual tradition developed and, also, why it died. In the prior account, I argued that the demand for fuller visibility of the sacred figures led from relics to icons and then on to paintings. In Venice, this pictorial tradition can be understood as providing a support for prayer. What believers wanted was not just to be in the presence of the relic or to be accompanied by an icon, but to have a visual representation of the sacred figure. Hence, the creation of naturalistic sacred paintings.

Giandomenico Tiepolo Hawk Swooping onto the Flock of Sparrows in Flight

Now, extending that narrative, I show how, in a dialectical fashion, this development of sacred subjects meant to accompany prayer had a truly unexpected consequence: the creation in Venice of modernist secular visual art. Once believers gathered relics, it was natural—so I have suggested—that they make icons and then paintings, seeking to support their religious activities. But what was surprising, then, was that once these sacred pictures were made, the aim became to create images of naturalistic subjects. The Venetian Republic required these subjects to support its communal religious life. That development is, of course, the story told in the very many familiar histories of painting in Venice from the Bellinis to Tiepolo. And this search for more realistic sacred images led to art with secular subjects, to what I would call modernism. This came about because when figurative art was developed in Venice, it turned out that it need not contain sacred subjects. As I have indicated in an earlier essay, Aretino’s fascination with the aesthetic pleasure of appearances, viewing Venice as if the city were an artwork, marks this........

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