Venetian Early Renaissance – As an eyewitness in the dragon world

Glass manufacturers are bitchy customers. At least on Murano, the small group of islands in the Venice lagoon where the most exquisite crystal products in the world have been fired, blown and cut for centuries. In 1507, Tommaso Dragan, owner of such a luxury company, wanted an altarpiece for the family’s private burial place. He hired one of the most renowned painters of the time: Vittore Carpaccio. He tries his best to please Dragan. As an allusion to the client’s first name, the artist places the church doctor Thomas Aquinas at the center of the composition, adds a son of Dragan as a donor figure and finally paints a tracery of slug panes into the arched end to honor the glass industry. But for a Dragan, whose crystal goblets find elite buyers all over Europe, bottle bottom windows are far too ordinary. Carpaccio has to go up the ladder again. Gritting his teeth, he lets the slugs disappear behind clouds and little angels: whoever gives the money controls. Where would this rule have applied more consistently than in the early capitalist lagoon city that dominated trade with the eastern Mediterranean.

Employees at the Stuttgart State Gallery recently brought the original condition of the “Pala Dragan” to light. So it’s logical that the Swabians have now reserved a place of honor for the monumental altarpiece in their current special show. “Carpaccio, Bellini and the Early Renaissance in Venice” is the name of the preciously quiet exhibition, for which items from top international collections were flown in. Using the example of Carpaccio and Giovanni Bellini, who are joined by Lorenzo Lotto and others, curator Annette Hojer illustrates how Venetian art emerged into modern times.

There is no question that, compared to Florence, the Serenissima was late in the Renaissance, but the lagoon inhabitants left their own mark on humanist culture. While on the Arno people relied on theory, on Plato, mathematics and an emphatically graphic conceptualism, up on the Adriatic an era of the senses began, the renaissance of the fullness of existence.

It is certainly no coincidence that carpaccio’s juicy red tones inspired a modern restaurateur to name a thinly sliced ​​beef appetizer after the artist, and that Bellini is the godfather of a peach and Prosecco cocktail. At Venice’s docks, where ships from the Levant unloaded their cargo, there was not only much to see, but also to feel, taste and smell. Sweet wines, spices and dried fruits, elegant textiles. Some flattering soft silk or brocade fabrics recur in the robes depicting saints. The Anatolian carpet in the interior of Carpaccio’s “Birth of Mary” (1502/03) also probably comes from the product range of Venetian importers.

Last but not least, the raw materials of painting, the pigments, determined the face of the Venetian Renaissance. For example, lapis lazuli weighed in gold, which produced the magical blue ultramarine, was used much more lavishly than in other regions of Italy thanks to trade relations with the Orient. And sometimes business travelers from the north also had a good idea with them. For example, oil painting, which allowed for more subtle color and lighting effects than the traditional tempera technique.

You can experience all of this in Stuttgart, despite a methodological indecision regarding the exhibition format: Is the whole thing an overview of the era, a monographic exhibition on the 500th anniversary of Carpaccio’s death, or a comparison of Bellini and Carpaccio plus their companions?

But whatever. The course on which the museum takes visitors through the thematically structured rooms guarantees variety and stimulation. Sometimes you think you are attending a diplomatic reception on St. Mark’s Square, sometimes you feel like you have been transported to the intimate chambers of the noble palaces.

Venice’s creative, innovative strength is condensed in the Madonna portraits. They are interfaces between the sacred and profane worlds. Around 1470, the practice of placing Mary behind a parapet developed in Giovanni Bellini’s circle. Little Jesus often stands at the front of the wall. It’s as if he wanted to step out of the sphere of the painting into the viewer’s reality. Carpaccio’s “Reading Maria” also conducts a dialogue with the here and now. Devotion to reading and contemporary clothing identify the devotional image as an identification offer for upper-class ladies. It’s no longer about exalting the saints, but about finding yourself in them.

Carpaccio’s “Cycle on the Life of St. Ursula” (1490/95), which is unfortunately only shown as a reproduction, stages the martyr’s work as a lively everyday report. “Something’s going on here!” shouts from the crowd of people. Everyone came. Sailors and merchants, church representatives and state dignitaries. Stretched wide, the architectural backdrops with their arcades, bridges and churches are deliberately reminiscent of Venice. Waving flags create the feeling of a fresh breeze blowing into the Doge City from the open sea outside.

In Venice, painting becomes sensitive to the weather. Of all places, the city in which hardly a tree grew 500 years ago is discovering the landscape as a mood driver. The green hills, the deserted bays that stretch to the horizon behind many a Mother of God – they offered contemplative moments that were rare on the Grand Canal with its pompous facades. The chaos of the galleys arriving and departing on the Riva degli Schiavoni, on the other hand, had something of the overtourism of the present: hectic, noise and dirt.

For the so-called eyewitness style, of which Carpaccio and Co. are considered to be the originators, beauty and horror go hand in hand. In his altarpiece “Saint George defeats the dragon” (1516), Carpaccio is not content with simply describing the knight’s lance battle against the lizard monster. The body parts of the mangled victims scattered on the ground are also an element of the visual drama. The blood-dripping detailed realism is supposed to authenticate the legend from the medieval dragon world and reinforce the moral message. Eyewitnesses never look away.

“Carpaccio, Bellini and the Early Renaissance in Venice”, until March 2, 2025, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

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