art in venice, 1400–1600 801
the messages contained therein include the viewers themselves, who are
gazing upward.
A comparably eccentric observer’s viewpoint is required by most of
the horizontal format paintings that adorn or once adorned the sidewalls
of the chapels or of the choir as quadri laterali. As one example among
many, tintoretto convincingly composed his Washing of the Feet (Madrid,
Prado) for S. Marcuola from the point of view of an observer near the
choir gate in respect to the course of the narrative and the weighting of
the protagonists. When viewed head-on, this painting and its narrative
fall apart into disconnected pieces. the same goes for tintoretto’s Last
Supper in the choir of S. Giorgio Maggiore or Veronese’s pictures from
the life of the titular saint in the choir of San Sebastiano. From this close
connection with their respective locations, complications result regard-
ing the hanging of such works in museums as well as in respect to their
interpretation.
Wherever an opportunity for a portrait presented itself, the Venetians
were ready to take advantage of it. they dressed themselves in foreign
robes both frequently and eagerly. in a painted portrait, it is difficult to
differentiate and find the balance between the expectations of the cus-
tomer and the artistic methods of the painters. thereby, the choice of
an established type of portrait (kneeling piece, seated on a chair, simply
standing with or without significant objects or companions, frontal or in
profile, with or without movement, in front of a neutral ground or in an
interior space) could readily impart something of the self image of the
portrayed and/or those whom the portrait was addressing. However, these
portraits say relatively little about the artistic achievement of the painter.
citing these, however, remains a central object of art history.
Around the middle of the 16th century in Venice, a specifically Venetian
theory of painting was formulated as a reaction to debates going on in cen-
tral italy. in contrast to disegno (i.e., the definition of form through line),
which had been decreed essential for the quality of art in central italy,
in Venice one saw, in colore and colorito, the definition of form through
color as essential. that Vasari had undertaken a conceptual expansion of
disegno as concetto and idea indicates that there was a desire to overcome
merely formal criteria in this debate. thus, the combination of disegno
and colorito in Venice was considered an outstanding achievement.
Art literature of the counter-reformation reflects on the sacral histori-
cal painting as well as on the profane “historical event painting” (each of
which were referred to generally as “histories” in the 16th century) and