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Transcriber’s Note:
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VENETIAN
SCHOOL OF PAINTING
Giorgione. MADONNA WITH S.LIBERALE AND S. FRANCIS. Castelfranco.
(Photo, Anderson.)
The Venetian
School of Painting
BY
EVELYN MARCH PHILLIPPS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS
FREEPORT, NEW YORK
First Published 1912
Reprinted 1972
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER:
0-8369-6745-3
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:
70-37907
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY
NEW WORLD BOOK MANUFACTURING CO., INC.
HALLANDALE, FLORIDA 33009
PREFACE
Many visits to Venice have brought homethe fact that there exists, in English at least,no work which deals as a whole with theVenetian School and its masters. Biographicalcatalogues there are in plenty, but these, thoughuseful for reference, say little to readers who arenot already acquainted with the painters whosecareer and works are briefly recorded. “Lives”of individual masters abound, but however excellentand essential these may be to an advancedstudy of the school, the volumes containingthem make too large a library to be easilycarried about, and a great deal of reading andassimilation is required to set each painter inhis place in the long story. Crowe and Cavalcaselle’sHistory of Painting in North Italy stillremains our sheet anchor; but it is lengthy, overfull of detail of minor painters, and lacks theinteresting criticism which of late years has collectedround each master. There seems roomfor a portable volume, making an attempt toconsider the Venetian painters, in relation toone another, and to help the visitor not onlyto trace the evolution of the school from itsdawn, through its full splendour and to itsdeclining rays, but to realise what the VenetianSchool was, and what was the philosophy oflife which it represented.
Such a book does not pretend to vie with,much less to supersede, the masterly treatises onthe subject which have from time to timeappeared, or to take the place of exhaustivehistories, such as that of Professor LeonelloVenturi on the Italian primitives. It shouldbut serve to pave the way to deeper and moredetailed reading. It does not aspire to give acomplete and comprehensive list of the painters;some of the minor ones may not even bementioned. The mere inclusion of names, dates,and facts would add unduly to the size of thebook, and, when without real bearing onthe course of Venetian art, would have littlesignificance. What the book does aim at is toenable those who care for art, but m