The Renaissance in Venice: c. 1400-1585

Petrarch called Venice a “mundus alter”—another world. Here Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian made art as brilliant as the light that plays off the city’s canals. Venetian painters pursued innovative compositional approaches and introduced new subjects, such as landscape and the female nude. In the Late Renaissance, Titian’s mastery was rivaled by Tintoretto and Veronese. Each attempted to out-paint the other with increasingly dynamic and sensual subjects for local churches and international patrons.