VENICE AFTER 1500
In the early 1500s, painting in Venice witnessed a fervour of experimentation, as artists developed distinctive approaches to light and colour, emphasising atmosphere, mood and the sense of physical presence.
Giorgione, and later Titian, were key figures in this development. In Giorgione's Tramonto (the sunset) the setting is dreamlike though the atmospheric effects are observed from nature, while Titian's Noli Me Tangere sets the Biblical story in a misty morning landscape of the kind viewers would recognise from the Venetian mainland.
The interest amongst educated patrons for humanist subjects combining allegorical content and poetic effect grew alongside the ongoing demand for small religious paintings for private prayer. The meticulously painted examples here by Cima and Catena were intended to elicit devotion through close looking.
Greater attention to evoking sensual reality also manifested itself in portraiture, which became more animated and thereby suggestive of the sitter's character and psychological state.