Genius of Venice

The Genius of Venice (1500-1600) is an ambitious exhibition - a scholarly and magnificent survey of Venetian painting and its sister arts: sculpture, drawing and print-marking, at the time of their greatest and most profoundly influential achievements during the sixteenth century. If for many people Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese are amongst the greatest of all painters, it is in part due to the genius of the city in which they lived and worked. Venice was the centre of a great commercial empire situated between East and West, possessing a model constitution to which other states looked with envy and admiration. Its unique, extravagant beauty stimulated artists to adopt and entirely original approach to painting.