Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250-1550 [Hardcover]

Mr. Paul Hills (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1999

From the Middle Ages to this day, the colours of Venice have cast their spell over visitors to the city and inspired artists as diverse as Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Turner, and Monet. This wide-ranging book traces the origin of that enchantment by exploring for the first time Venetian colour in relation to social, cultural, and environmental forces. Italian Renaissance art historian Paul Hills shows how, between 1250 and 1550, the city of Venice and the luxuries manufactured and traded there prompted particular ways of attending to colour. He argues that Venetian colour -- in buildings, table glass, and dress as well as paintings-was the product of a lagoon site and a mercantile culture.

Exquisitely illustrated with over one hundred and fifty works of art and architecture, the book analyzes the colored marbles and mosaics in San Marco, examines the achievements of the Murano glass makers of the fifteenth century, and focuses attention on Giovanni Bellini's pictorial light and colour. Discussion of Renaissance dress and sumptuary regulations illuminates the social dimension of Venetian colour. The author shows, for example, how Titian's portraits responded to new fashions in velvets, satins, and semi-translucent veils. In the final chapter Hills questions the traditional opposition of Florentine line to Venetian colour, suggesting that Titian's bravura handling of the brushstroke was nurtured through his early experience of mosaics and woodcuts.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

While the importance of color to the Venetian pictorial tradition has been almost endlessly observed and discoursed upon, never before has this critical topic received so wide-ranging, perceptive, and original a synthesis. Methodically, but with a sometimes uncanny visual sensitivity, Hills (Warwick Univ., England) reconstructs the range and nuance of the Venetian palette as it manifests itself in the specific materials employed in the city's architectural and urban fabric, mosaics, minor arts, textiles, and painting. The evolving and expanding range of coloristic decisions and innovations that culminate in the masterpieces of Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian are savored within the unique effects of Venice's ambiance. Adeptly integrated with the author's always perceptive analyses is a fascinating array of contemporary documents that lay the foundation for the understanding, reading, and appreciation of color as a social phenomenon. All of this is complemented by a superb selection of some 200 reproductions. A requisite acquisition for academic art history collections.
-Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A provocative examination of colors, and how they have cast their spell on one of the world's most beautiful cities. -- Nicholas A Basbanes, Orlando Sentinel

British art historian Paul Hills (himself a painter) argues that the rich color that is perhaps Venice's main contribution to Renaissance painting was a function of the city's entire visual environment: its decorated buildings, famous glassware, colored silk, even the flickering reflections off the canals and lagoon. He bolsters his case with a generous use of color photographs and a multitude of astute observations. . . . Combining art history, aesthetic theory, technical analysis and the science of perception, this book offers a thoroughly refreshing approach to the study of pictures. -- Eric Gibson, Wall Street Journal

Product Details

• Hardcover: 260 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300081359
• ISBN-13: 978-0300081350
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,071,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable for enriching a trip to Venice, June 30, 2000

By 

Karen Dimit (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250-1550 (Hardcover)

Having spent a month painting in Venice and planning a return painting trip, I began reading Mr. Hills' book and quickly ran to get a note pad (and a dictionary). His evaluations of so many rich aspects of Venice, visually and historically, were illuminating, and his blending of these various fields into one another fantastic. Notes in hand, the return trip was magnificent, as was the city. The language can get a bit dense, but as I looked up unfamiliar words, they were the exact word for what was being described.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Venetian Colour, Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass 1250-, March 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250-1550 (Hardcover)

Extraordinary examination of color, space, the transparent, the luminous, form, shade, shadow and how these interact to form a work of art. As the author states: "Too often art historians write of pictorial space as though it replicated physical space whereas Renaissance painting at its most refined is a process whereby thought becomes incarnate in design: in doing so space becomes luminous, self-evident, revelatory."

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Almost as good as a trip, May 30, 2001

By 

joan a. shelton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250-1550 (Hardcover)

Just back from Venice, how I wish I had owned and studied this volume which re-tells the story of Venetian art and architecture, placing it securely within the development of other Italian art of the periods it covers. The reproductions are delicious and the analysis accessible to anyone who is interested enough to do a little digging. Well worth its price.