Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-09T02:32:33.039Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Quadro da Portego in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Art*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Monika Schmitter
Monika Schmitter*
Affiliation:
University of Massaschusetts Amherst
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the sixteenth century a symbiotic relationship developed between the form, use, and symbolic associations of the Venetian portego, the central reception and entertainment hall of Venetian palaces, and the paintings that were increasingly commissioned to ornament these spaces. The intended placement of the paintings affected their size, format, composition, subject matter, and contemporary interpretation. At the same time, the works of art themselves reflected upon and helped to define the social meanings of the space and the activities taking place there. Analyzing documentary sources and surviving paintings reveals the degree to which we can speak of the quadro da portego as a distinctive type of Venetian painting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , Fall 2011 , pp. 693 - 751
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Please see the online version of this article for color illustrations.

This study began as a paper delivered at the public symposium held in conjunction with the exhibition Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting (18 June–17 September 2006) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I would like to thank David Alan Brown for inviting me to participate in this stimulating event. I am grateful to Peter Berek, Blake de Maria, Ombretta Frau, Craig Harbison, Chriscinda Henry, Filippo Naitana, Brian Ogilvie, Jutta Sperling, and Adam Zucker for their help and contributions, and especially to Pat Simons, Paul Staiti, and Barbara Schmitter Heisler for their comments and suggestions concerning written versions of this article. Research for the project was funded by grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. All translations are mine except where otherwise noted.

References

Aikema, Bernard. Jacopo Bassano and His Public: Moralizing Pictures in an Age of Reform ca. 1535–1600. Trans., McCormick, Andrew P.. Princeton, 1996.Google Scholar
Aikema, Bernard. “The Lure of the North: Netherlandish Art in Venetian Collections.” In Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Bellini, Dürer, and Titian, ed., Aikema, Bernard and, Brown, Beverly Louise, 83–91. Milan, 1999.Google Scholar
Aikema, Bernard. “Giorgione: Relationships with the North and a New Interpretation of La Vecchia and La Tempesta.” In Giorgione: Myth and Enigma (2004), 85–103.Google Scholar
Ambrosini, Federica. “‘Descrittioni del mondo’ nelle case venete dei secoli XVI e XVII.” Archivio veneto ser. 5, 117 (1981): 67–79.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jaynie. “A Further Inventory of Gabriel Vendramin's Collection.” Burlington Magazine 121 (October 1979): 639–48.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jaynie. Giorgione: The Painter of “Poetic Brevity.” Paris, 1997.Google Scholar
Arasse, Daniel. “Il Sacco di Roma e l'immaginario figurativo.” In Il Sacco di Roma del 1527: e l'immaginario collettivo, ed., Miglio, Massimo, 45–59. Rome, 1986.Google Scholar
Aretino, Pietro. Lettere sull'arte. Ed., Camesasca, E. and, Perile, E.. 3 vols. Milan, 1957–60.Google Scholar
At Home in Renaissance Italy. Ed. Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta and, Dennis, Flora. London, 2006.Google Scholar
Baskins, Cristelle. “(In)Famous Men: The Continence of Scipio and Formations of Masculinity in Fifteenth-Century Tuscan Domestic Painting.” Studies in Iconography 23 (2002): 109–36.Google Scholar
Battilotti, ,, , Donata, and, Teresa Franco, Maria. “Regesti di committenti e dei primi collezionisti di Giorgione.” Antichità Viva 17.4–5 (1978): 58–86.Google Scholar
Baxandall, Michael. “A Dialogue on Art from the Court of Leonello d'Este: Angelo Decembrio's De Politia Litteraria Pars LXVIII.” Journal of the Warburg and the Courtauld Institutes 26 (1963): 304–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botticelli and Filippino: Passion and Grace in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting. Exh. Cat. Musée du Luxembourg. Milan, 2004.Google Scholar
Brown, Patricia Fortini. Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past. New Haven, 1996.Google Scholar
Brown, Patricia Fortini. “Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites.” In Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed., Martin, John and, Romano, Dennis, 295–338. Baltimore, 2000.Google Scholar
Brown, Patricia Fortini. Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family. New Haven, 2004.Google Scholar
Brown, Patricia Fortini. “The Venetian Casa.” In At Home in Renaissance Italy (2006), 50–65.Google Scholar
Cassegrain, Guillaume. “‘Ces choses ont été des figures de ce qui nous concerne.’ Une lecture de la Conversion de St. Paul du Tintoret.” Venezia Cinquecento 4.12 (1996): 55–85.Google Scholar
Cetto, Anna Maria. Der Berner Traian- und Herkinbald Teppich. Bern, 1966.Google Scholar
Chubb, Thomas Caldecot. The Letters of Pietro Aretino. [Hamden, CT], 1967.Google Scholar
Cicogna, Emmanuele Antonio. Delle inscrizioni veneziane. 6 vols. 1824–53. Reprint, Bologna, 1969.Google Scholar
Cocke, Richard. Paolo Veronese: Piety and Display in an Age of Religious Reform. Aldershot, 2001.Google Scholar
Cohen, Charles E. The Art of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone: Between Dialect and Language. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1996.Google Scholar
Cole, Bruce. “The Interior Decoration of the Palazzo Datini in Prato.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 13 (1967): 61–82.Google Scholar
Coli, Barbara. “Lorenzo Lotto e il ritratto cittadino: Andrea Odoni.” In Il ritratto e la memoria: Materiali I, ed., Gentile, Augusto, 183–204. Rome, 1989.Google Scholar
Concina, Ennio. “Fra Oriente e Occidente: gli Zen, un palazzo e il mito di Trebisonda.” In “Renovatio Urbis.” Venezia nell'età di Andrea Gritti (1523–1538), ed., Tafuri, Manfredo. Rome, 1984.Google Scholar
Contadini, Anna. “Middle-Eastern Objects.” In At Home in Renaissance Italy (2006), 308–21.Google Scholar
Cosgrove, Denis. “Mapping New Worlds: Culture and Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice.” Imago Mundi 44 (1992): 65–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cottrell, Philip. “Bonifacio's Enterprise: Bonifacio de’ Pitati and Venetian Painting,” PhD diss., University of St Andrews, 2000.Google Scholar
Cottrell, Philip. “Vice, Vagrancy and Villa Culture: Bonifacio de’ Pitati's in its Venetian Context.” Artibus et Historiae 51 (2005): 131–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crouzet-Pavan, Elisabeth. “Sopra le acque salse.” Espaces, pouvoir et société à Venise à la fin du Moyen Âge. 2 vols. Rome, 1992.Google Scholar
Currie, Elizabeth. Inside the Renaissance House. London, 2006.Google Scholar
dal Pozzolo, Enrico Maria. “Appunti su Catena.” Venezia Cinquecento 16.31 (2006): 5–104.Google Scholar
de Jongh, Eddy. Questions of Meaning: Theme and Motif in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Painting. Ed. and trans., Hoyle, Michael. Leiden, 2000.Google Scholar
Delogu, Giuseppe. Veronese: The Supper in the House of Levi. Milan, [1950?].Google Scholar
de Maria, Blake. “The Merchants of Venice: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Cittadino Patronage.” 2 vols. PhD diss., Princeton University, 2003.Google Scholar
de Maria, Blake. Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice. New Haven, 2010.Google Scholar
Dunkerton, ,, , Jill,, Foister, Susan, and, Penny, Nicholas. Dürer to Veronese: Sixteenth-Century Painting in the National Gallery. New Haven, 1999.Google Scholar
Erasmus, . Collected Works of Erasmus. Vol. 39. Colloquies . Ed. and trans., Thompson, Craig R.. Toronto, 1997.Google Scholar
Falomir, ,, , Miguel, ed. Tintoretto. Madrid, 2007.Google Scholar
Fehl, Philipp P. “Tintoretto's Homage to Titian and Pietro Aretino.” In Fehl, Decorum and Wit: The Poetry of Venetian Painting, 167–80. Vienna, 1992.Google Scholar
Feil, Silke. “Der Gemäldezyklus von Paolo Veronese in Dresden und die Familie Cucina.” Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden 26 (1996): 77–86.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Jennifer. “Marcantonio Michiel: His Friends and Collection.” Burlington Magazine 123.941 (1981): 453–67.Google Scholar
Freedman, Luba. Titian's Portraits through Aretino's Lens . University Park, 1995.Google Scholar
Gallo, Andrea. “Alla cena della gloria.” In La Cena in Emmaus di San Salvador, ed., Merkel, Ettore, 45–57. Milan, 1999.Google Scholar
Gentili, Augusto. “Tiziano e Aretino tra politica e religione.” In Pietro Aretino nel cinquecentenario della nascita: Atti del convegno di Roma-Viterbo-Arezzo (28 settembre–1 ottobre 1992), Toronto (23–24 ottobre 1992), Los Angeles (27–29 ottobre 1992), 1:275–96. Rome, 1995.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Creighton E. The Works of Girolamo Savoldo. The 1955 Dissertation, with a Review of Research, 1955–1985. New York, 1986.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Felix. “Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai.” In Renaissance Venice, ed., Hale, J. R., 274–92. London, 1973.Google Scholar
Giorgione: Myth and Enigma. Ed. Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia and, Neri Scirè, Giovanna. Milan, 2004.Google Scholar
Goffen, Rona. Giovanni Bellini. New Haven, 1989.Google Scholar
Goldthwaite, Richard A. Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300–1600. Baltimore, 1993.Google Scholar
Grasman, Edward. “On Closer Inspection — The Interrogation of Paolo Veronese.” Artibus et Historiae 59 (2009): 125–34.Google Scholar
Gronau, Georg, ed. “Beiträge zum Anonymus Morellianus.” In Archivalische Beiträge zur Geschichte der venezianischen Kunst aus dem nachlass Gustav Ludwigs, ed., Bode, W., et al., 53–84. Berlin, 1911.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “The ‘West Indian’ Front Room.” In The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home, ed., McMillan, Michael, 16–23. London, 2009.Google Scholar
Henry, Chriscinda. “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans: Low Painting and Entertainment Culture in Renaissance Venice.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009.Google Scholar
Hirst, Michael. Sebastiano del Piombo. Oxford, 1981.Google Scholar
Hood, William E. “Titian's Narrative Art: Some Religious Paintings for Venetian Patrons, 1518–1545.” PhD diss., New York University, 1977.Google Scholar
Howard, Deborah. Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100–1500. New Haven, 2000.Google Scholar
Humfrey, Peter. Titian: The Complete Paintings. Bruges, 2007.Google Scholar
Humfrey, Peter,, et al.. The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections. Edinburgh, 2004.Google Scholar
de Voragine, Jacobus. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Trans., Granger Ryan, William. 2 vols. Princeton, 1993.Google Scholar
Joannides, Paul. Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius. New Haven, 2001.Google Scholar
Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. “Les noces feintes: Sur quelques lectures de deux thèmes iconographiques dans les cassoni florentins.” I Tatti Studies 6 (1995): 11–30.Google Scholar
Knox, George. “The Camerino of Francesco Corner.” Arte Veneta 32 (1978): 79–84.Google Scholar
Labalme, Patricia H., and, Sanguineti White, Laura, eds. Venice, Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo. Trans., Carroll, Linda L.. Baltimore, 2008.Google Scholar
Landau, David, and, Parshall, Peter. The Renaissance Print 1470–1550. New Haven, 1994.Google Scholar
Lauber, Rosella. “‘Et è il nudo che ho io in pittura de l'istesso Zorzi’: Per Giorgione e Marcantonio Michiel.” Arte Veneta 59 (2002): 99–115.Google Scholar
Lauber, Rosella. “‘Opera perfettissima’: Marcantonio Michiel e La notizia d'opere di disegno.” In Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima, ed., Aikema, Bernard,, Lauber, Rosella, and, Seidel, Max, 77–116. Venice, 2005.Google Scholar
Livy, with an English Translation in Fourteen Volumes. Vol. 7. Trans. Moore, Frank Gardner. Cambridge, MA, 1963.Google Scholar
Lotto, Lorenzo. Il “Libro di spese diverse” con aggiunta di lettere e d'altri documenti. Ed., Zampetti, Pietro. Venice, 1969.Google Scholar
Lucco, Mauro. Rev. of Palma Vecchio by Philip Rylands. Burlington Magazine 136 (1994): 32–33.Google Scholar
Lucco, Mauro. “Sacred Stories.” In Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, ed., Alan Brown, David and, Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, 99–145. Washington, DC, 2006.Google Scholar
Luchs, Alison. Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Venice, 1490–1530. Cambridge, 1995.Google Scholar
Ludwig, Gustav. “Archivalische Beiträge zur Geschichte der venezianischen Malerei.” Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen 24 Beiheft (1903): 1–109.Google Scholar
Lydecker, John Kent. “The Domestic Setting of the Arts in Renaissance Florence.” PhD diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1987.Google Scholar
Mallett, M. E., and, Hale, J. R.. The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice c. 1400–1617. Cambridge, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manno, ,, , Antonio, with, Romanelli, Giandomencio, and, Tigler, Guido. Il poema del tempo. I capitelli del Palazzo Ducale di Venezia: storia e iconografia. Venice, 1999.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew John. “‘Amica e un alberto di virtuosi’: La casa e la collezione di Andrea Odoni.” Venezia Cinquecento 10.19 (2000): 153–70.Google Scholar
Meller, Peter. “I ‘Tre Filosofi’ di Giorgione.” In Giorgione e l'umanesimo veneziano, ed., Pallucchini, Rodolfo, 1:227–56. Florence, 1981.Google Scholar
Michiel, Marcantonio. Der Anonimo Morelliano (Marcanton Michiel's Notizia d'opere del disegno). Ed., Frimmel, Theodor. Vienna, 1896.Google Scholar
Morse, Margaret A. “Creating Sacred Space: The Religious Visual Culture of the Renaissance Venetian casa.” In Approaching the Italian Renaissance Interior: Sources, Methodologies, Debates, ed., Ajmar Wollheim, Marta,, Dennis, Flora, and, Matchette, Ann, 95–128. Oxford, 2007.Google Scholar
Moschini Marconi, Sandra. Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia. Opere d'arte del secolo XVI. Rome, 1962.Google Scholar
Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. Art, Marriage, and Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace. New Haven, 2008.Google Scholar
Newhouse, Victoria. Art and the Power of Placement. New York, 2005.Google Scholar
Nova, Alessandro. “Giorgione's Inferno with Aeneas and Anchises for Taddeo Contarini.” In Dosso's Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy, ed., Ciammitti, Luisa,, Ostrow, Steven F., and, Settis, Salvatore, 41–62. Los Angeles, 1998.Google Scholar
Oberthaler, Elke. “On Technique, Condition and Interpretation of Five Paintings by Giorgione and his Circle.” In Giorgione: Myth and Enigma (2004), 267–71.Google Scholar
Onians, John. Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Princeton, 1988.Google Scholar
Palumbo-Fossati, Isabella. “L'interno della casa dell'artigiano e dell'artista nella Venezia del Cinquecento.” Studi Veneziani, n.s., 8 (1984): 109–53.Google Scholar
Palumbo-Fossati, Isabella. “La casa veneziana.” In Da Bellini a Veronese: Temi di Arte Veneta, ed., Toscano, Gennaro and, Valcanover, Francesco, 443–91. Venice, 2004.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin. “Jean Hey's ‘Ecce Homo’: Speculations about its Author, its Donor and its Iconography.” Bulletin Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 5 (1956): 95–138.Google Scholar
Penny, Nicholas. The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings . Vol. 1, Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona. National Gallery Catalogues. London, 2004.Google Scholar
Penny, Nicholas. “Introduction: Toothpicks and Green Hangings.” In The Biography of the Object in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed., Olson, Roberta J M.,, Reilly, Patricia L., and, Shepherd, Rupert, 1–10. London, 2006.Google Scholar
Penny, Nicholas. The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings . Vol. 2, Venice 1540–1600. National Gallery Catalogues. London, 2008.Google Scholar
Polignano, Flavia. “I ritratti dei volti et i regristi dei fatti: L’Ecce Homo di Tiziano per Giovanni d'Anna.” Venezia Cinquecento 4 (1992): 7–54.Google Scholar
Porzio, Francesco. Pitture ridicole: Scene di genere e tradizione populare. Milan, 2008.Google Scholar
Reid, Jane Davidson, with, Rohmann, Chris. The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300–1990s. 2 vols. Oxford, 1993.Google Scholar
Ridolfi, Carlo. Le Maraviglie dell'arte. Ed., von Hadeln, Detlev. 2 vols. Berlin, 1914.Google Scholar
Romano, Serena. Ritratto di fanciullo di Girolamo Mocetto. Modena, 1985.Google Scholar
Rosand, David. Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Rev. ed., Cambridge, 1997.Google Scholar
Rylands, Philip. Palma Vecchio. Cambridge, 1988.Google Scholar
Sale, J. Russell. Filippino Lippi's Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella. New York, 1979.Google Scholar
Sansovino, Francesco. Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare. Venice, 1581. Reprint, Bergamo, 2002.Google Scholar
Santore, Cathy. “Julia Lombardo, ‘Somtuosa Meretrize’: A Portrait by Property.” Renaissance Quarterly 41.1 (1988): 44–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanudo, Marin. I Diarii. Ed., Fulin, Rinaldo, et al. 59 vols. 1879–1902. Reprint, Bologna, 1969–70.Google Scholar
Scamozzi, Vincenzo. L'idea della architettura universale. Venice, 1615. Reprint, Bologna, 1982.Google Scholar
Schmitter, Monika. “The Display of Distinction: Art Colleting and Social Status in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1997.Google Scholar
Schmitter, Monika. “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in Early-Sixteenth-Century Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly 57.3 (2004): 908–69.Google Scholar
Schmitter, Monika. “Odoni's Facade: The House as Portrait in Renaissance Venice.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 66.3 (2007): 292–315.Google Scholar
Schulz, Juergen. “The Houses of Titian, Aretino, and Sansovino.” In Titian: His World and His Legacy, ed., Rosand, David, 73–118. New York, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schulz, Juergen. The New Palaces of Medieval Venice . University Park, 2004.Google Scholar
Schweikhart, Gunter. Fassadenmalerei in Verona vom 14. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Munich, 1973.Google Scholar
Settis, Salvatore. Giorgione's Tempest: Interpreting the Hidden Subject. Trans., Bianchini, Ellen. Chicago, 1990.
Settis, Salvatore. “Traiano a Hearst Castle: Due cassoni estensi.” I Tatti Studies 6 (1995): 31–82.Google Scholar
Seznec, Jean. “Diderot and the Justice of Trajan.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957): 106–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shearman, John. Raphael's Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel. London, 1972.Google Scholar
Tafuri, Manfredo. “Il pubblico e il privato: Architettura e committenza a Venezia.” In Storia di Venezia dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima. Ed., Cozzi, Gaetano and, Prodi, Paolo, 6:367–447. Rome, 1994.Google Scholar
Tafuri, Manfredo. Venice and the Renaissance. Trans., Levine, Jessica. Cambridge, MA, 1995.Google Scholar
Thornton, Peter. The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400–1600. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio. Le opere di Giorgio Vasari. Ed., Milanesi, Gaetano. 9 vols. Florence, 1906.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Ed., Ekserdjian, David. Trans., de Vere, Gaston du C.. 2 vols. New York, 1996.Google Scholar
Vescovo, Piermario. “Preliminari Giorgioneschi II: Taddeo Contarini e i Tre filosofi.” Wolfenbütteler Renaissance-Mitteilungen 24 (2000): 109–24.Google Scholar
Waddington, Raymond B. “Aretino, Titian, and ‘La Humanità di Cristo.’” In Forms of Faith in Sixteenth-Century Italy, ed., Brundin, Abigail and, Treherne, Matthew, 171–98. Aldershot, 2009.Google Scholar
Wethey, Harold E. The Paintings of Titian. 3 vols. London, 1969.Google Scholar
Wilson, Carolyn. Rev. of Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius, New Haven, 2001; Titian, exh. cat. National Gallery, London, 2003. Cross Ref DOI: 10.3203/caa.reviews-2004.2 (January 2004).Google Scholar