METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: GALLERIA 607 -- Sixteenth-Century Painting -- VENEZIA

Speranza

Venice may have been in decline as an economic power, but Titian, Veronese, and Jacopo Tintoretto made the sixteenth century a golden age of Venetian painting. Titian's broadly brushed, sensual nudes broke entirely new ground. He became the preferred painter at the courts of Europe and influenced artists down to Rubens, Velázquez, and Delacroix. Veronese's opulent compositions combined striking naturalistic effects with grandeur and brilliant color (the rich palette of Venetian painting owed much to the city's commercial ties with the Middle East, the source of many pigments). Tintoretto infused unprecedented drama into his paintings, wielding his brush like a pen. Jacopo Bassano explored a modern-seeming intensity of expression by embracing an unfinished (non finito) style in his Baptism of Christ and other late works. At the same time, there was room for such idiosyncratic geniuses as Lorenzo Lotto—always unpredictable and sui generis.