Art and architecture have always been central to Venice but in the
Renaissance period, between c.1440 and 1600, they reached a kind of
apotheosis when many of the city's new buildings, sculpture, and
paintings took on distinctive and original qualities. The spread of
Renaissance values provided leading artists such as Gentile and Giovanni
Bellini, Giorgione, Palladio, Titian, and Tintoretto with a licence for
artistic invention. This inventiveness however also needs to be
understood in relation to the artists and artworks that still conformed
to the more traditional, corporate, and public values of Venetianness'
(Venezianità).
By adopting a chronological approach, with each chapter covering a
successive twenty-five year period, and focusing attention on the
artists, Tom Nichols presents a vivid and easily navigable study of
Venetian Renaissance art. Through close visual analyses of specific
works from architecture to illuminated manuscripts, he puts the
formative power of art back at the heart of this remarkable story.