Main content
Europe 1300 - 1800
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 3
Lesson 4: Northern Italy: Venice, Ferrara, and the Marches- Venetian art, an introduction
- Oil paint in Venice
- Devotional confraternities (scuole) in Renaissance Venice
- Palazzo Ducale
- Ca' d'Oro
- Aldo Manuzio (Aldus Manutius): inventor of the modern book
- Saving Venice
- Gentile Bellini, Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II
- Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini, Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria
- Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis
- Giovanni Bellini, Brera Pietà
- Giovanni Bellini, San Giobbe Altarpiece
- Giovanni Bellini, San Zaccaria Altarpiece
- Giovanni Bellini, San Zaccaria Altarpiece
- Giovanni Bellini and Titian, The Feast of the Gods
- Andrea Mantegna, San Zeno Altarpiece
- Mantegna, Saint Sebastian
- Mantegna, Dormition of the Virgin
- Mantegna, Camera degli Sposi
- Mantegna, Dead Christ
- Pisanello, Leonello d’Este
- Sala dei Mesi at Palazzo Schifanoia
- Vittore Carpaccio, Miracle of the Relic of the Cross at the Rialto Bridge
- Persian carpets, a peacock, and a cucumber, understanding Crivelli's Annunciation
- Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation with Saint Emidius
- Do you speak Renaissance? Carlo Crivelli, Madonna and Child
- Cosmè Tura, Roverella Altarpiece
- Guido Mazzoni, Lamentation in Ferrara
- Guido Mazzoni and Renaissance Emotions
- Guido Mazzoni, Head of a Man
- Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara
- Renaissance Venice in the 1400s
© 2023 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Oil paint in Venice
Artists in the 16th century debated whether drawing or color was more important. Bellini's Madonna and Child painting shows the importance of color, using a technique called glazing. This method, perfected in the north, involved layering oil paint on a white ground. The result was intense, deep colors. The Venetians favored oil over fresco, unlike the Florentines who valued drawing and line. This difference defined the styles of these city states. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- How was oil paint discovered/ initially created?(21 votes)
- Concerning the making/creation of oil paints: The making of oil paint stems from the old technique of mixing powdered pigments together with a liquid substance that makes the pigments spreadable. Oil paints use this basic process. This type of paint is made simply by mixing a colored powder pigment together with a binder of oil - usually linseed. These mixtures can then be thinned by adding a solvent like turpentine to it. This makes films of nearly translucent color, and gives the painting very realistic effects.(7 votes)
- But egg tempera--like oil paint--also requires many thin layers--so how is the application of egg tempera any different than the "glazing" described at? Aside from the speed of drying, is the main difference between tempera and oil the opacity of tempera as opposed to the relative translucence of oil? 0:53(7 votes)
- Yes, oil paint's translucence is the main difference. That may not seem important, but it allows the white canvas underneath the paint to shine through, resulting in brighter, more vivid color, whereas tempera has to rely on its own brightness.(13 votes)
- Atyou mention Venice as a series of islands and not a good atmosphere for fresco work, whereas Florence was more favorable. How can the "atmosphere" in Venice, a cooler more humid area, not be better for work which dries more quickly. I would think the opposite is true. Florence has a landlocked, more southern position making it warmer and drier than Venice. 2:14(3 votes)
- Because, when it comes to humidity, it's not just a question of how long it takes to dry, but how it swells and cracks afterwards. High humidity is bad for all sorts of things, including paintings. And Frescoes are especially vulnerable to cracking.(19 votes)
- Not to sound a little idiotic here, but would the difference between fresco (painting on plaster) and oil painting (painting on canvas) also help with preservation over the years? After all, plaster can peel away, while canvas stays in one piece...(8 votes)
- Yep! The most dramatic example is between Leonardo's heavily damaged and faded Last Supper and a copy made by Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli which just bursts with color.
Leonardo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/%C3%9Altima_Cena_-_Da_Vinci_5.jpg
Copy: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Giampietrino-Last-Supper-ca-1520.jpg(8 votes)
- Why is the Christ child not wearing elaborate clothes? Why is he usually naked?(3 votes)
- As far as I know, there is no generally accepted explanation to this. However, here are some thoughts on this topic you may find useful or interesting.
The infant Christ was shown in clothes until the 14th century. Starting from that point, more and more paintings featuring naked Christ appeared. Some people think that it may be simply because of greater interest in realism and human body (but I personally feel that it is too simple; Jesus Christ is just too important person to 'experiment' on like this). Leo Steinberg believes that genitals of Christ were a proof that he had chosen to be wholly human. It is still a shaky logic, because there is a small chance that any believer needs to be reminded that Christ was a man. You can read more about L. Steinberg's opinion and its critique here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n21/charles-hope/ostentatio-genitalium(10 votes)
- Right now im asking myself, if you are deducting all of this, or if it is just all by memory like just knowledge.(1 vote)
- Our content is based on current research broadly accepted by specialists in the field. When we conjecture, we do our best to make that quite apparent.(9 votes)
- At, you show the intermediate steps in a canvas being glazed with blue oil paint. 1:09
What would an actual painting of a figure or a landscape or the like look like in the intermediate steps?(3 votes)- It would depend on what the painter was painting. For instance, if there was more light exposure in the painting, the paint would be in the 1-4 steps. If it was a shadow or a darker part, it would near the end of the spectrum.(4 votes)
- How is the lapis lazuli made into paint? Is it just ground with other things added to it or is it more elaborate than that?(2 votes)
- I remembered watching something about this and I was going to explain it to you but I figured you would probably want to watch the video as well, so I went through a bunch of videos to find it (I couldn't remember which one it was) and this is it. This link explains it all and goes into a little depth on the subject of the lapis lazuli paint https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/special-topics-art-history/creating-conserving/painting-materials-techniques/v/tempera-paint
I hope that helps and answers all of your questions about this beautifully rich blue paint! :)(3 votes)
- Rather than just being painted onto a white ground, wasn't the colour glazing done over a monochrome underpainting?(2 votes)
- Is there any extra material that I can read about how the different processes in tempera, oil, and fresco?(1 vote)
- I recommend looking at conservation literature for more on material technology.(3 votes)
Video transcript
(jazz music) Dr. Zucker: Drawing or color,
which is most important? Dr. Harris: This was a
burning question for artists and art critics in the 16th century. Dr. Zucker: And helped
to divine the styles of entire city states. Dr. Harris: We're here
in the Academia in Venice looking at Bellini's Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and Saint. Looking at this painting, I would say Bellini would have said that
color was more important. The reds and the blues
and the greens just glow. Dr. Zucker: They're spectacular
and that's of course because Bellini is using a new technique which had been perfected in the north, known as glazing. Dr. Harris: That's right. Taking their cue from the artists of the northern Renaissance,
artists like Jan Van Eyck, and the way that they painted
was to apply oil paint on a white ground in layers
or what artists called glazes. You would paint a thin layer of color, the oil would dry, and you
would paint another thin layer and each of these layers were translucent and reflected the white ground underneath, creating intensity and depth to the color that was unprecedented in
Italian painting before this where tempera and fresco
were the main media that artists used. Dr. Zucker: Oil was so different. Not only did it allow for
glazing, but it also stayed wet and that meant that you
could rework the surface. Tempera dries very quickly and of course, fresco is staining a patch
of wet plaster and also has to be done quite quickly
and cannot be reworked. Dr. Harris: Tempera is opaque. In other words you can't see through it. That, plus the fact that
it dries quickly, meant that when an artist wanted
to show the modeling of form, the movement from light to dark, they had to use lines, a
kind of hatching technique. Dr. Zucker: And oil allows
for the very soft modulation of light and shadow. Look, for instance, at the
Christ child's left leg. The light moves from a
brilliance at the knee that helps it project forward,
to the shadows of the top of the thigh that help
it move back in space. Dr. Harris: This is
because oil paint stays wet and it can be blended. It's an oily substance. Dr. Zucker: The Venetians
essentially gave up fresco in the late 15th century
because Venice is a series of islands and it was really
a bad atmosphere for fresco. So you have this division between the Florentine tradition
and the Venetian tradition. Dr. Harris: Right, the
Florentine tradition is one where drawing is the most important. That is line, not color. That has to do, in part,
with the Florentine interest in fresco. In a fresco painting,
you need a final drawing, because fresco dries
quickly and you need to know what you're going to do
before you start painting. What happens in the 1500s
is that this early technique of glazing that we see in
the art of Bellini changes when we look at Titian and
Veronese and Tintoretto later in the 1500s and they
really exploit what oil can do and the way that oil can allow
for a very different kind of process. Dr. Zucker: That process
allows artists to change things on the fly, freeing them from being slaves to the original drawings. A good example of that
might be Giorgione's Tempest where we know that the figure on the left was once a seated female figure. Dr. Harris: And this idea
of the artistic process on the canvas itself. Dr. Zucker: Directly on the canvas. Dr. Harris: And working out your ideas, having them evolve
right in that same place where the finished
painting will eventually be is something that's unique to
the possibilities of oil paint and something really exploited
by the artist Titian. Let's go have a look at
a late painting by Titian where we can really see
this different approach to oil paint. (jazz music)