Art Eyewitness Book Review How Painting Happens by Martin Gayford

How Painting Happens (and why it matters)

By Martin Gayford

Thames & Hudson/384 pages/$45
 

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Original photos by Anne Lloyd

The greatest compliment which can be paid to the author of an art book is that the book motivates readers to go to their local museum and see actual works of art.

This act of seeing entails more than gazing at a painting or sculpture for 27.2 seconds. Reputedly, this is the viewing time per work of art for the average museum goer at The Met.

Seeing art takes a lot more time and considerably more effort. Seeing art translates into a concerted eye-to-brain process- looking, analysis, perception and - hopefully - enlightenment.

 

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at the Metropolitan Museum, 

showing Van Gogh's Landscape from Saint-Rémy, 1889

The second greatest compliment for the author of an art book is that motivated readers will refer back to his or her book for further reading and reflection. The volume in question may indeed become a trusted companion, perhaps honored with a place on a bed-side book shelf.

Both compliments apply to Martin Gayford’s How Painting Happens (and why it matters), just published by Thames and Hudson.

 

The title of Gayford’s new book states its theme directly and succinctly. Gayford surveys the process of painting from conception to fulfillment, from preliminary sketch to deciding when – or if – the painting is finished.

It is important to note that How Painting Happens is not a technical treatise. True, there are a few “pointers” here for the taking. Gayford describes the novel technique of Gerhard Richter when he wishes to “lose control” of a painting, that is to paint spontaneously. To do that, Richter uses a squeegee rather than a brush.

Gayford states that “these products of interaction between his (Richter’s) eye, mind, hands and arms, and the squashing, blurring power of a piece of plastic, can be overwhelmingly beautiful.”

Intrepid painters may want to give Richter’s squeegee a try. This technique sounds more than a little risky, so I think I’ll stick to magic markers.

Instead of “how to”, the key concept of How Painting Happens is “dialogue.”

David Dawson, Photo (2018)

David Hockney and Martin Gayford in conversation.

Photo from Spring Cannot be Cancelled (Thames & Hudson, 2021)

Gayford is the premier interviewer of the visual arts scene of our times. Spring Cannot be Cancelled, the 2021 book recording Gayford's friendship with David  Hockney over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, is a poignant and powerful testament to the human spirit.

Gayford has over three decades of experience speaking to artists, putting them at ease while encouraging them to discuss their viewpoints, trials, tribulations and achievements. Gayford draws on these interviews to inform the text of this book.

“Inform” is indeed the correct verb form for describing Gayford’s methodology. How Painting Happens is no “cut and paste” reassembling of old newspaper clippings. Rather, the comments and insights of now-legendary figures like Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Paula Rego and Frank Stella are combined with those of contemporary painters to create a “voice” for art.

 

El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586

Moreover, this “voice” resonates with what the Old Masters of painting, from Titian and El Greco to Picasso and Matisse, said and did. They make their presence felt chiefly through the comments of the artists whom Gayford interviewed. This gives depth of insight to How Painting Happens similar to the way that painting in oils builds layer upon layer to create the desired image.

Gayford weaves together the strands of many voices with commentary founded upon his deep-seated knowledge of art history. This produces a sense of continuity and shared purpose which carries through the discussion of the many genres of painting and historical eras surveyed in this remarkable book.

The “voice” we hear in How Painting Happens is the voice of experiences, founded upon a shared conviction and leading to the same, unshakable, conclusion:

Painting matters… Art matters and it has been doing so for a very long time.

In his discussion of the origin and use of color pigments, Gayford alludes to the alchemists. The aim of these Renaissance-era savants was to transform base metals into gold. Painters had beaten them to a comparable goal by many thousands of years.

Ochre, various forms of oxides dug from the soil beneath human feet, was the key component of the first paint. When mixed with fat from animal bone marrow and heated, ochre pigments enabled prehistoric artists to create astonishing masterpieces such as the cave murals at Chauvet and Lascaux. Is there a greater alchemy than this?

 

Aurochs, horses and deer painted on a cave at Lascaux.

Upper Paleolithic era, c. 17,300 years ago. Photo (2006)

The meaning of these cavalcades of painted aurochs, reindeer and wild horses has been much debated. Almost certainly, these scenes related to hunting, either invocations of divine assistance prior to a foray in search of game or to a celebration afterwards. In the case of the stenciled hand-prints at the Cueva de las Manos, located in Patagonia at the southern tip of South America, the statement was direct and unequivocal.

 “I exist.”

 

Mariano Cecowski, Photo (2005)

Hands at the Cueva de las Manos (The Cave of Hands), Argentina

No one knows the exact identity of the ancient painters in Cueva de las Manos. Yet modern-day artists can speak for them because the essential message of art never changes. Acknowledging the insights of the contemporary British painter, Jenny Saville, Gayford notes that the Cueva de las Manos handprints “are an arresting way of proclaiming the same message … that Van Gogh was transmitting with his oils and brushes: I exist.”

 

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at The Met, 

showing Van Gogh's The Starry Night, 1889

Gayford, as noted above, has interviewed an impressive number of painters, discussing with them the steps they took, from blank canvas to gallery wall, to affirm their lives and art. So numerous are the respondents to Gayford’s inquiries that to try and encompass the contributions of all would be foolhardy. Instead, I will focus upon Gayford’s exchanges with two painters in order to convey a sense of the whole extraordinary enterprise.

Sean Scully is a perfect fit for a Gayford interview - and inclusion in How Painting Matters. Artist and author are near contemporaries, both steeped in the theory and practice of art, of the present and the past ... and with an eye to the future.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Sean Scully at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Spring 2022

Scully was born in Dublin in 1945. His family moved to London when he was boy and he was trained to work in the construction industry. Scully related to Gayford that he would spend his thirty-minute lunch break, making a dash to the Tate Gallery on a moped, to commune with his favorite painting. 

Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh's Chair, 1888

Standing in front of Van Gogh's Chair in his splattered overalls, Scully was moved to make a career change. From working with plaster, he chose to become a "worker" in paint. 

Scully's timing was not the most propitious to take-up painting. By the time his career was launched, 1970's Minimalism was in full-swing. Representational art of any kind was "out" and Abstraction held in low repute. After moving to New York, Scully rebelled against "what you see is what you get." And he switched from quick-drying acrylics back to painting in oils.

In a fascinating discussion with Gayford, Scully related that painting with acrylics had enabled his "work to become, let's say, more conceptual." Then, in the 1980's, he was inspired to create work that was "more sensual, more emotional, more romantic, more experiential and less programmatic."

The resulting transition, shifting from acrylics to oil paint, was a near disaster. Scully recounted how:

It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown because oil paint was so unruly. It's like the difference between walking and riding a horse - especially the way I ride a horse, which is clueless. You can't control it. Even now, I don't control it entirely. That's what's so beautiful about it.

The ordeal of recalibrating back to oil paints has enabled Scully to create an impressive oeuvre, "more experiential and less programmatic" over the subsequent years. These include his signature Landline series. One of Scully's Landline paintings is included as a full page illustration in How Painting Happens. This work is entitled Landline Star (2017).

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Gallery view of Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, showing Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014

I had the great, good fortune to meet Sean Scully at the press preview of the magnificent retrospective of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2022.  A Landline painting similar to Landline Star was on view, Landline North Blue (2014). In my review, I described this work as an abstract landscape, in the spirit of Caspar David Friedrich.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Sean Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014

The experience of beholding this powerful painting and discussing it with Scully ranks as one of the most memorable events in my evolving appreciation of art. But it was made even more meaningful by reading the Gayford/Scully dialogue in How Painting Happens. It is truly a case study of the "uses of adversity." 

One of the most vital tasks of a writer involved in cultural commentary and analysis is to make new or unfamiliar art forms intelligible to general readers. With Sean Scully, Gayford was able to find common ground and mutual understanding fairly easily. In his conversation with Korean artist, Lee Ufan, it was Gayford's turn to cope with a bit of adversity.

Andrew Tupalev, Portrait of Lee Ufan, 2014

Lee Ufan, born in 1936, is not only one of the major painters and sculptors of modern Korea, but is a leader of the philosophical movement in Korea and Japan known as Mono-ha. This "school of things" explores the interface of natural and man-made objects. Lee Ufan has been a strong critic of the rapid and heedless Westernization of Asia.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2024)

Lee Ufan's From Line, 1979, displayed at the Metropolitan Museum 

Lee Ufan's signature paintings are known by a common title, From Line. 

These paintings are generally similar: uniform strokes of blue cobalt-cadmium pigment which begin with intense coloration at the top of the canvas, gradually losing saturation in the downward sweep, until only ghostly shadow-like forms remain. 

As described by Gayford, Lee's working procedure is like that of Michelangelo in reverse. The canvas is placed on the floor and Lee paints, face down, from "a wooden board set-up, like a bridge, above it."

Ed Voves, (Photo 2024)

Detail of Lee Ufan's From Line, 1979

Prior to reading How Painting Happens, I had never seen a Lee Ufan From Line painting. This made it difficult to follow Gayford's exchange with Lee. 

MOMA has a From Line in its collection but it is not currently on view. Fortunately, The Met's recent exhibition of Korean art, Lineages, displayed a From Line painting similar to the one chosen to illustrate How Painting Happens. I was able to see this painting, confirming its status as a remarkable, hard-to-fathom work of art - at least for a Westerner.

Gayford evidently had a similar reaction and his attempts to draw-out some form of intelligible meaning (again to Westerners) met with a barrage of polite rebuttals from Lee Ufan:

Maybe you don’t really understand what I’m doing. I put some paint on the brush then make one, two, three, four strokes, and as I do so, with each stroke, the paint becomes fainter. Perhaps you imagine I control my breathing just during one stroke, but that’s not the case. With one breath, I make several strokes. That’s very important... Because this is the result of a long, long period of training. It is the same as the way an athlete trains; artists train themselves as well.

After further discussion, Gayford finally grasped that when Lee paints, he is "immersing" himself into the work. 

"I am inside the canvas," Lee says. He is painting, not only with blue cobalt-cadmium paint, but with his breath, his life force, his body.

"The body is crucial, our body does not belong just to us. It creates a relationship with the world. And that relationship is the most interesting thing of all."

These then, are just two of the amazing cast of characters summoned by Martin Gayford to the pages of How Painting Happens. Individually and collectively, they make the case of why art matters. They do so in terms which validate the hand-painters of Cueva de las Manos, ten thousand years ago, and Lee Ufan in the world of today.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at the Metropoitan Museum of Art, 

showing Van Gogh's Country Road in Provence by Night, 1890

Art affirms our existence. Art records the relationship of our body, "which does not belong just to us", with the world.

And so, in the end does Martin Gayford's How Painting Happens. It affirms life and testifies to our relationship with the world.

Gayford's book, a work of art in its own right, has already claimed a place on my bed-side book shelf. It is wedged in beside Christopher De Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts and The Oxford Book of Essays. But How Painting Happens (and why it matters) is not a book to rest on its laurels and it won't be sitting on that shelf, gathering dust, for long.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved.

Original photography, copyright of Ed Voves and Anne Lloyd. Book cover, courtesy of Thames and Hudson.

Introductory Image: Diego Velazquez (Spanish) Self-Portrait, detail from Las Meninas, 1656. Oil on canvas: 318 cm × 276 cm (125.2 in × 108.7 in) Museo del Prado, Madrid. This image comes from the web site of National Gallery, London.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing Van Gogh's  Landscape from Saint-Rémy. 27 3/4 × 34 7/8 in. (70.5 × 88.5 cm) Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

David Dawson, Photo (2018) David Hockney and Martin Gayford in conversation. Photo from Spring Cannot be Cancelled (Thames & Hudson, 2021)

El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586.  Oil on canvas: 480 cm × 360 cm (190 in × 140 in). Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo Spain.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burial_of_the_Count_of_Orgaz#/media/File:El_Greco_-_The_Burial_of_the_Count_of_Orgaz.JPG

Unknown photographer (EU), Photo (2006) Aurochs, horses and deer painted on a cave at Lascaux. Upper Paleolithic era, c. 17,300 years ago. Photo licensed under Creative commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lascaux_painting.jpg

Mariano Cecowski Photo (2005) Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos (The Cave of Hands), 2005. Photo licensed under Creative Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SantaCruz-CuevaManos-P2210651b.jpg

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing Van Gogh's The Starry Night, 1889. Oil on canvas. 29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Spring 2022.

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch,1853-1890) Van Gogh's Chair, 1888. Oil on canvas: 91.8 × 73 cm. National Gallery, London. NG3862

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Gallery view of Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas at Philadelphia Museum of Art, showing Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully’s Landline North Blue, 2014. Oil on Aluminum: 7 feet 1 inches × 6 feet 3 inches (215.9 × 190.5 cm). Forman Family Collection.

Andrew Tupelvev, Photo (2014) Lee Ufan at the opening of artist's personal exhibition at Gary Tatintsian Gallery, November 13, 2014. Photo licensed under Creative Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lee_Ufan.jpg

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Lee Ufan’s From Line, 1979. Displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oil on canvas: 76 3/16 in. × 8 ft. 5 15/16 in. (193.5 × 259 cm) Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul. #LL.001

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Vincent van Gogh’s County Road in Provence by Night, 1890. Oil on canvas: 35 3/8 x 28 3/8 in. (90.6 x 72 cm) Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

 

Art Eyewitness Book Review: Venice City of Pictures by Martin Gayford

 

Venice, City of Pictures

By Martin Gayford

Thames & Hudson/463 pages/$39.95

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The earliest of the art treasures of Venice is the bronze statue of a winged lion which has served for centuries as the emblem of the maritime city and its bygone republic. Much battered by time, weather and history, the Lion of Venice was created in antiquity, ca. 300 B.C., and brought from Greece or the Middle East by Venetian seafarers. 

Striding atop its column in the Piazzetta San Marco, the Lion of Venice strikes a commanding pose. It would be natural if an author, seeking to relate the fascinating cultural history of Venice, would utilize the leonine symbol of St. Mark to set the theme of his tale.  

Venice, despite the importance of its old, indomitable bronze lion, is not known for its statues. Venice is a "city of pictures" as Martin Gayford affirms. The evidence to prove Gayford's case is his tour de force saga of the lives of Venetian painters and of visiting artists to "La Serenissma", recently published by Thames and Hudson. 

Gayford is a marvelous writer, and, as his insightful conversations on art - and life - with Anthony Gormley and David Hockney prove, a delightful colleague. But in the case of the present book, we should think of Gayford as a worthy successor of the intelligent, urbane diplomats sent abroad by the Republic of Venice during the 1600's and 1700's. 

If you wanted to get to the truth of political matters back then, the "man-in-the-know" was invariably the Venetian ambassador. In terms of art "matters" today, it is Martin Gayford.

In 400-plus pages of scintillating prose (complemented by superlative, full-color illustrations), Gayford tells the story of the "wedding" of Venice with painting - rather than with the sea as celebrated by the annual ceremony officiated by the ruler of Venice, the Doge.

                               Canaletto, The Rialto Bridge from the North, 1725                                   (Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin)

From the Bellini Dynasty of the fifteenth century to Canalleto in the eighteenth and on to the Biennale of today, Venetian art has emphasized painting in oils. This involved Venetian painters in aesthetic competition with other schools of Italian art, chiefly of Florence. Usually, the paragone, as the dispute is formally termed, is represented as disegno vs. colore, drawing vs. painting, Florence vs. Venice. 

This is much too simplistic, of course. The great Venetian masters of the early Renaissance, however, really did embrace painting in oils, much faster than their Florentine rivals.

Geography and topography are destiny - in politics, trade and art. Just as the coastal marshes on which Venice was created impelled Venetians to take to the sea to earn their fortune, so the humid climate of the city and its surrounding region dictated what genres of art would be be suitable in Venice.

A key painting in understanding Venice's early history and art is Domenico Tintoretto's Saint Mark Blessing the Islands of Venice, painted 1587-90. 

St. Mark, one of the disciples of Jesus and author of the first gospel, was reputedly martyred and buried in Egypt. In 828, Mark's "body" was smuggled out of Alexandria and brought to Venice. As Tintoretto's painting shows, Venice was far from a great city at that point. The citizens of Venice are shown living in huts constructed from reeds. These primitive dwellings had been built on the shores of  the Lagoon to which the first Venetians fled to escape Germanic invaders, especially the Lombards, who swarmed over the passes leading through the Alps.

Domenico Tintoretto,

Saint Mark Blessing the Islands of Venice, 1587–90

 (Scuola Grande di San Marco, Venice)

Tintoretto shows St. Mark, accompanied by the Winged Lion, invoking God's grace on the rustic settlements. These, in due course, would rise on the support of hundreds of thousands of tree trunks driven into the marshy soil to form the foundations of a great metropolis. 

St. Mark's blessing could not change the climate. Painting on wet plaster, buon fresco, the chosen art form of ancient and medieval Italy, flourished in Florence and points south. In the moist, salty air of Venice, fresco paintings often would not properly set. Those that did stick to the walls soon faded or flaked. Venetian painting was left hanging, high but not "dry."

Mosaics in the Byzantine tradition featured prominently in the decoration of Venice's medieval churches, including its great cathedral of San Marco. This sacred art would, over the centuries form the setting for countless religious processions, troops of gawking tourists and painters, both native-born and Romantic-era foreigners, drawn by architecture which often seems more celestial than made by the hand of man.

John Wharlton Bunney, Facade of San Marco, 1876-82

(Collection of the Guild of St George, Museums Sheffield)

Venetian paintings on wood, small in scale, incorporated gold leaf backgrounds, another carryover from Byzantine art. But when news of the oil painting innovations taking place in the Netherlands reached Venice during the last decades of the 1400's, the leading artists in the city, the Bellini brothers, Giovanni and Gentile, quickly embraced the new medium.

For all of the innovative skill of the Bellini brothers, oil painting in Venice really came into its own with the emergence of the long-lived Titian (ca. 1490-1576). Gayford devotes three chapters to Titian. This is only fitting. Titian - Tiziano Vecellio - was the perfect artist for Venice. The ruling class paid well for art, but demanded masterpieces for their money and timely completion as stipulated by contract. Titian delivered on both counts.

"Your Servant from Cadore", as Titian called himself, referring to the small Alpine town of his birth, was a savvy businessman and supreme master of painting in oils. 

Titian's early altarpiece, the Assunta, painted 1516-18, for the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, established his career as the preeminent painter of Venice. Gayford devotes considerable attention to this masterful work.

Titian, Assunta, c.1516–18 

(The Yorck Project, 2002) 

Gayford's analysis of the Assunta is based on many visits to the church where it still hangs, an astonishing backdrop to the glittering main altar. Gayford's thoughtful analysis enables readers, who have never had an opportunity to view this depiction of the heaven-bound Mary, mother of Jesus, to experience this compelling painting as if they had seen it at first hand.

Brilliantly dissecting the composition of the Assunta, Gayford also conveys the sense of ineffable mystery surrounding the Assumption, the event in Christian history which the painting records. As a result, we are enabled to see Titian's Assunta for what it is: a "moving" picture. It is an absorbing narrative work, truly cinematic in scope and effect, even if the Virgin Mary and the band of Apostles never flex a muscle.

Titian's "your servant from Cadore" statement was partly a pose and a bit of a ploy. He was certainly no sycophant, content with his wages and anonymity, as had been the case with artists during the Middle Ages. Titian was adept at making the ruling elite of Venice feel completely in charge, while he steered his own artistic course. Interestingly, God the Father in the Assunta looks a Venetian doge and later, during the 1540's, Titian painted Doge Andrea Gritti looking like God.

Titian, Portrait of Andrea Gritti, c.1546–50 

(Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

Titian was wise to flatter Gritti. Doge from 1525-1538, Gritti was ruthless and resolute during years when Venice faced seemingly impossible odds in the endless Italian wars of the 1500s. Gayford mercifully spares his readers details of these interminable conflicts. But he relates, with relish and the elan of a born story-teller, just how "no-nonsense" Venetian leaders could be when they did not get what they paid for.

In 1545, the Florentine-born architect, Jacopo Sansovino, was thrown into prison. His crime?  Part of the roof collapsed of the library he designed to house a collection of rare manuscripts, brought from Constantinople to Venice. An early ice storm struck before the concrete could set and a protective coat of lead laid down. Sansovino was released from jail but he was held personally accountable for the reconstruction costs. The result was a masterpiece, the Biblioteca Marciana, but it it took Sansovino twenty years to pay-off the bill.

The Biblioteca Marciana, with one of the two columns in the 

Piazzetta San Marco on the left. (Photo rudiernst/123rf.com)

Venice survived the perils of the Italian Wars and collapsing library roofs. However, over the course of the long and tormented sixteenth century, a new threat appeared, which no artist or writer in Venice could ignore: the Inquisition.

Venice, though it had many economic ties with Northern Europe, did not renounce Papal authority during the Protestant Reformation. While successful in preserving its political independence, the Venetian Republic reluctantly formed a local branch of the heresy-hunting Inquisition in 1547. Skillfully limiting Papal interference in local affairs, the Venetian Inquisition dealt with Protestants, free-thinkers and other troublemakers on its own initiative. It was nothing to be trifled with.

Religiously inclined painters like Lorenzo Lotto had to worry that their fervent depictions of sacred events accorded with the critical scrutiny of the Venetian Inquisitors. Other artists had to contend with charges of impiety. Paolo Veronese, a master of grandiose spectacle, was summoned to testify for including "buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarfs and other such scurrilities" in a painting featuring Jesus and his disciples. 

The Venetians carefully navigated their way through the dangers of the Reformation and ensuing Wars of Religion. But the political and economic power of the Republic was largely eclipsed by the early 1700's due to the shift of commerce to nations with ready access to the Atlantic trade routes. It was then that Venetian art emerged as an international force in its own right. Venice's navy no longer ruled the Mediterranean Sea but a Venetian "state of mind" intrigued and influenced artists from all over Europe and, ultimately, the world.  

Gayford writes of the visit of Johann Wolfgang Goethe to Venice in 1786. The lyrical, almost hypnotic, prose of the following quotation is indicative of Gayford's ability to summon the past to life:

After leaving the Palazzo Pisani Moretta, Goethe had an artistic epiphany. As he 'glided over the lagoons in the brilliant sunshine' he perceived everything in terms of light, shadow, and colour. He noticed gondoliers silhouetted against the blue sky as they rowed with easy strokes across the light-green surface of the water... 'Everything was painted clearly on a clear background. It only needed the sparkle of a white-crested wave to put the dot on the i.' 

Gayford continues his evocative commentary by noting that Goethe could well have been describing a scene painted a century later, by Claude Monet or John Singer Sargent during their sojourns in Venice. 

 

 Claude Monet, Palazzo da Mula, 1908 (National Gallery of Art, Wash., D.C.)

Gayford concludes this passage by noting that Venice "can seem outmoded, quaintly irrelevant to the modern world. Then, suddenly, you realize that it is not."

Art lovers, once they look beyond the rhetoric about the "inevitable" decay of Venice have been coming to the same conclusion as Gayford's for a long time. As a result, Venice, a city supposedly sinking back into the marshes, has played a major role in the rise of modern art. J.M.W. Turner, John Ruskin, Édouard Manet, Walter Sickert, Serge Diaghilev and Peggy Guggenheim have all been touched by "La Serenissma" and they, in turn, have shared their experience of Venice with the world.

The same is true for Martin Gayford. St. Mark's Winged Lion has reached down from his column to touch Gayford on the shoulder. Gayford has responded with a  book about Venice, of such perfection that it only needs the merest flight of fancy to imagine the sound of a gondolier's oar, the sight of the sun glinting on the facade of San Marco and "the sparkle of a white-crested wave" on the waters of the Venetian Lagoon.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved. 

Cover art for Venice: City  of Picture, Courtesy of Thames & Hudson. Illustrations from the book were provided by Thames & Hudson, courtesy of the institutions or web sites, noted below. The image of Titian's Assunta, courtesy of the Yorck Project, 2002.                                                                                      

Introductory Image: Cover art of Venice: City of Pictures (2023), courtesy of Thames & Hudson.

Canaletto (Italian, 1697-1768) The Rialto Bridge from the North, 1725. Oil on canvas, 91.4 × 135.8 (36 × 53 1⁄2). Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin.

Domenico Tintoretto (Italian, 1560-1635) St. Mark Blessing the Islands of Venice, 1587-90. Oil on canvas, 319 × 392 (125 5⁄8 × 154 3⁄8). Scuola Grande di San Marco, Venice

John Sharpton Bunny (British, 1828-1882) Facade of San Marco, 1876-1882. Oil on canvas, 144.7 × 226 (57 × 89). Collection of the Guild of St George, Museums Sheffield.

Titian (Italian,  ca. 1490-1576) Assunta, 1516-1518. Oil on panel: 690 x 360 cm. (270 x 140 in.) Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei

Titian (Italian, ca. 1490-1576) Portrait of Andrea Gritti, 1546-1550. Oil on canvas, 133.6 × 103.2 (52 5⁄8 × 40 11/16). Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C

Photo of the  Biblioteca Marciana, with one of the two columns in the Piazzetta San Marco on the left. Photo rudiernst/123rf.com

Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926) Palazzo de Mula, 1908. Oil on canvas, 61.4 × 80.5 (24 3/16 × 31 11/16). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.