Day 40 - Galleria della Academia

Today was a museum day. Venetian painting is kinda a linch pin in the history of painting in relation to the Renaissance. Basically Venice maintained a degree of independance of the years and their art was also able to do the same. Basically they dug canal and had markers for ships to navigate. If they were attacked, they'd pull up these markers so the enemy ships would run a ground not knowing the terrain and would be sitting ducks.

The light in Venice also seemed to inform there colour choices. Thus from an artistic point of view, seeing the environment enables you to see sublties of how it was informed. Basically the other side of the renaissance was all about line and this really shows through in Michangelo's work. It is kinda like drawing an out line and then filling it in with colour.

The Venetian school was basically using colour from the get go so gives the work a different quality (as you can design a composition on the fly giving huge flexibility). The various schools would cross pollinate one another so we don't think too much about it today (at the time there was huge argument about it as the colourists would be criticed for not knowing how to draw).

A couple of years ago I started reading a book on Venetian painting and this museum had most of the important paintings in the book so it was fantastic to see! When you walk into the 2nd room, the sense of colour really does hit you in a way that I haven't come across in other musuems. There were also some other artists that I had vaguelly had heard of who had good representations and added to the list of things to explore when I get a chance.