The Potted Tree: Essays in Venetian Art

The essays in this book, each dealing primarily with a single work of art, form a history of Venetian painting from the international Gothic style in the early 15th century to that of the Venetian baroque in the 18th. The essays are united by their concern with one or two topics, and sometimes with both: colerito , the naturalistic imitation of nature, customarily identified as a salient feature of Venetian art, and fantasia , not perceived as a consistently significant aspect of Venetian painting, except by Giorgio Vasari in the second edition of his famous Lives the Artists (1568). Over and above these topics the essays are united by a concern for the ends of art. Indeed, together they constitute an outline of the history of the criticism of Venetian painting from the Renaissance to the present day. Topics addressed include Giorgione’s Tempest ; the early 15th-century painter and mosaicist Michele Giambono; iconographical interpretation; Nicolas Poussin (discussed in this context because of his debt to Venetian colouring); ekphrastic description - art criticism evoking certain qualities of a work of art as it was understood in the Renaissance and 17th century; Paolo Veronese; and Lorenzo Lotto.