IN

Revelationen. Steuerung des Sehens im Venedig der Renaissance

Autore: Roland Krischel
In: Venetiana. 22
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Abstract

Before the construction of a railroad connection to the terraferma and the filling up of many rio, gliding on the water in various kinds of boats represented the predominant form of locomotion in Venice. It encouraged a “staging” of the cityscape for moving spectators, e.g. incoming foreign ambassadors, to whom the Piazzetta was slowly revealed through a continuous shift of perspective. Similar strategies can be observed in Venetian Renaissance painting: by the use of elaborate compositional devices, painters such as Carpaccio, Titian and Tintoretto guided the public through the decorated spaces of churches or scuole. Certain depictions of female nudes, like Titian’s Venus of Urbino or his Mellon Venus, seem to have been literally revealed with the aid of curtains. In contrast to Alberti’s window metaphor, which suggests a pictorial unity ideally conceivable at a glance, painting in Renaissance Venice privileges a processual (and potentially endless) proto-cinematic perception. The simultaneous emergence of the oil-sketch and the term “schizzo” in Venice around 1550 testifies to a local aesthetics of transition and fluidity.