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Fourteenth-century Venice, with a population of 100,000, was not only one of Europe’s largest cities, but also a wealthy maritime trading hub and a cultural center where the aesthetics of mainland Italy, Europe to the north, and exotic Byzantium [present-day Istanbul] to the immediate east all thrived. It was in this fortuitously rich and cosmopolitan environment that the painter Paolo Veneziano (c. 1295-1362) lived and worked.
That the exhibition "Paolo Veneziano; Art & Devotion in 14th-century Venice" -- small by art-historical blockbuster standard, but deceptively magnificent -- has happened at all is something of a miracle. Seven-hundred-year-old altarpieces that were superseded in style by the Renaissance (relative flatness obsolesced by more convincing three-dimensionality) were first relegated to storage and then cannibalized for their parts. Unscrupulous middlemen sold them off in pieces and scattered the individual panels to the winds. This, plus contemporary museological difficulties -- logistical, administrative and, most recently, Covid-19 related -- in bringing some of those parts back together, is the reason that "Art & Devotion" is, astonishingly, the first exhibition dedicated solely to the Venetian artist.
Contained in a single forest green gallery at the Getty Center (the color reinforces the art's beauty and significance without making it look precious), the show consists of two altarpieces and several individual panels (some of which had been part of other altarpieces) by Veneziano, along with some contextual objets-d'art (including intricately patterned textile fragments and a simply stupefying small carved ivory telling a complete altarpiece story). The modest room has an impact, albeit gradual rather than instant, equal to if not greater than a museum gallery filled with bigger, more recent, and more bombastic Old Master Paintings.
Paolo Veneziano came from a family whose business was painting. His father, brother and three sons also plied the trade. He ran a sizable workshop that included carpenters, woodcarvers and gilders. It ran on commissions from civic and religious organizations (although, in those days, the two were intertwined). In the words of the exhibition's lovely but somewhat scholarly and dense catalog, Veneziano "responded to the needs of an elite clientele with technical advancements, reimagined typological forms, bold pictorial design, and an intense engagement with the visual stimuli of his native city." Altarpieces were a major part of the workshop's business and it may well be, says the Getty's senior painting curator Davide Gasparotto, that Veneziano himself invented the triptych that has closeable outside panels.
If a single work could be said to be the feature of the show, it would be "The Coronation of the Virgin" (1358), which Paolo painted with his son, Giovanni, and is his last work. The 43-by-27-inch panel is owned by the Frick Collection in New York. The Frick was to have been the the second venue for 'Art & Devotion" (it published the [exhibition] catalog), but was forced to drop out because of complications from Covid-19.
* * * If I do have a favorite [in the exhibition] -- as any attentive viewer will -- it's "The Generosity of Saint Nicholas" (1340s). St Nicholas achieved canonization partly by giving away his inherited wealth to the poor. Imn this panel, he passed three balls of gold into the house of an impoverished judge to ensure a future for the judge's three daughters. It's not so much the narrative (which is probably not immediately apparent to contemporary American viewers) as the lovingly rendered anomalies of architectural space that make the painting so compelling.
"Paolo is a forerunner of the great masters of the Venetian Renaissance, Giovanni Vellini and Titian," the catalog tells us, and that's certainly true. * * *
During the 1860 suppression of Italian religious orders by Giuseppe Garibaldi, a Veneziono panel (not in the exhibition) depicting 14 saints survived because it was hidden , disguised asa bedroom screen, in the home of a peasant. The necessity of such small favors of fate make [sic; should nbe makes] it a wonder that exhibitions such as this happen at all. "Art & Devotion" won't ever be repeated, so a visit to the Getty is for lovers of Venetian art a bit of a last chance.
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发表于 9-25-2021 12:20:19
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