By Carl Daher Delnero
RUTLAND HERALD
Paolo Veneziano lived in 14th-century Venice, a time when the Bubonic Plague, the so-called “Black Death,” decimated one-third of the European population. During this dire period, the already devout Roman Catholic faithful were in a state of heightened spirituality, and found hope and solace in religion.
In this environment, religious art became one of the most — if not the most — powerful bridge of faith alone, between men, women and the divine — alleviating their constant fear of death.
Veneziano’s career coincided with one of the most prosperous periods in Venice history, as it was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages. The propensity to consume religious art, together with the financial ability to purchase it, made for big commissions for complex altarpieces for churches and monasteries.
Individuals and families benefited from an invention by Veneziano and his workshop: religious diptychs — two small paintings on two hinged wooden panels that can close like a book for personal devotion. Their practicality and affordable price made them a great success.
Veneziano’s style of painting belonged to the Italo-Byzantine school, a term mostly used for Medieval paintings produced in Italy under the influence of Byzantine art from the Middle Ages until the 15th century. That school was concerned with religious expression and, more specifically, the impersonal translation of carefully controlled church theology into artistic terms.
The Byzantine style had a group of icons, symbolic conventions, including: standardized facial expressions, flatness of form, static figures without a sense of perspective, elongated proportions of human forms, and emphasis upon frontal focus. Vestments were depicted in blue and backgrounds in gold — both scarce and expensive colors reserved for worship and associated with eternity and divine power.
The Italian side of the equation was present in the artists’ growing interest in the expression of emotion and human relationships. Veneziano, the last of the Italo-Byzantine painters, took baby steps toward modernity, depicting “rounder” (as opposed to the Byzantine flat) and more human-looking figures in his works.
The exhibition, “Paolo Veneziano: Art & Devotion in 14th-Century Venice” at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles through Oct. 3, is the first show dedicated to the artist in the United States. It brings together several painted works produced by Veneziano and his workshop, and explores his participation in the sophisticated artistic culture continually developing around him.
Veneziano’s work is seldom discussed outside Italy, yet he was showered with praise by his fellow Italians, who called him: “the premier painter in late Medieval Venice”; “the foremost Venetian painter of the 14th century”; “the official painter of the Venetian Republic”; and last but not least, “the father of the Venetian school of painting.”
The cornerstone of the exhibition is a large and sumptuous triptych with the large painting, “Coronation of the Virgin” (1324), in the center, on loan from the Frick Collection in New York. The theme is based on a Marian mystery, loosely following Revelation 12:1: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars.” The topic was venerated since the 12th century in the West and it was popular in Italy from the 13th to the 17th centuries. Veneziano’s rendition of the “Coronation” may be the first time that the subject appeared in Venetian art.
Venezian’s paintings represent the apex of Italo-Byzantine art, although remaining more Medieval than Renaissance, allow us to enjoy the end of an era, and appreciate more the ones that followed. Most of all, the reconstruction of the triptych brings us back to the experience that 14th century Venetians felt 700 years ago — and that is not small feat.
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