The Venetian Birth of Modernism

Consider a short list of the defining qualities, the necessary and sufficient conditions of European modernism, in contrast or opposition to old master sacred tradition. Modernism involves secular rather than sacred subjects. Compare Impressionist landscapes with High Renaissance altarpieces. Modernism requires a system in which art is made to be sold in the marketplace rather than commissioned in a top down system of patronage controlled by a privileged elite. Contrast Bernini or Nicolas Poussin with the Abstract Expressionists. This modernist art market requires art critics who judge the art and dealers who sell it in this marketplace. Hence the importance of Charles Baudelaire, Roger Fry and Clement Greenberg. And modernism is part and parcel of an art world within a culture employing industrial production. Hence the significance of Andy Warhol and the minimalists.

In modernism which arises after the end of the old regime, all of these changes are linked together. Modernists work for the marketplace, where their art is promoted by critics and purchased by collectors. The simultaneous presence of all of these conditions in the French art world of Courbet, Manet and the impressionists is what defines the origin of modernism. Further developed in New York in the early twentieth-century, that tradition is responsible for the practical flourishing of American-style Abstract Expressionism and their more recent successors.

Canaletto’s The Doge visiting the Church and Scuola di S. Rocco (1725), which Is in the National Gallery, London, shows a scene from the public life of old regime Venice. No one would immediately identify it as a modernist painting. Consider, however, its context. Annually on August 16 the doge attended mass in this church. Here he is accompanied by a crowd of well dressed figures, including the French ambassador and a representative of the Pope. And while this looks behind them like a realistic images of the building that you can see still today, the perspective has been tweaked by the artist. The Scuola, a charitable institution, contains numerous works by Tintoretto, and so is much visited today by tourists.

Let’s look a little closer at this picture, and consider the Venetian art world circa 1725. On the facade are set temporarily paintings, some for sale, by contemporary artists, including, on the far right, what seems to be a view of the Grand Canal by Canaletto. We don’t know the fate of that painting, but we do have full records of Canaletto’s career. Thanks to his energetic supporter Joseph Smith, an English art dealer resident in Venice, who was a highly effective agent, Canaletto was commercially successful. Just as nowadays tourists take home souvenirs of their travels, so English gentleman on the Grand Tour took home a Canaletto. Indeed, only a very few of his paintings remain in Venice. After all, if you lived in Venice, then you had no need for such a memento, a realistic record of its appearance. Nowadays tourists take home photographs.

It’s clear that Canaletto’s eighteenth-century Venetian art world satisfies all of our defining conditions of modernism. There are his secular subjects, the cityscape; an art market, art dealers like Smith and various art critics, and a vigorous mercantile culture. And the famous Venetian Arsenal, where ships were mass produced by a large group of workmen, is an identifiable precursor of nineteen-century industrial production. Why then cannot we think of European modernism as originating here in eighteenth-century Venice, and not a century later in Paris? All of the defining conditions of modernism were present in old regime Venice. We might defend this analysis of Venetian modernism by also consider the works of Pietro Longhi. (1701-85). Like Constantin Guys (1802-92), the subject of Charles Baudelaire’s essay “The Painter of Modern Life,” he does contemporary subjects almost exclusively. You can apply much of Baudelaire’s famed account word for word to Longhi. As a Venetian commentator wrote about Longhi in 1762:

Being of a whimsical and brilliant spirit he set about painting small pictures of everyday matters such as conversations and entertainments; with scenes of love and jealousy which, since they were faithful portrayals of reality made a great impression.

He too anticipated modernism.

Why then cannot we think of European modernism as originating here in eighteenth-century Venice, and not a century later in Paris? As we have said, all of the defining conditions of modernism were present in old regime Venice. But there is more to the story. We expect the origin of modernism to mark out the beginning of a tradition, while Canaletto lived and worked in Venice just before the end of the Republic, in 1797. That said, the real problem, I think, is that this birth of modernism in the Venetian Republic was a case of premature innovation. Just as the system of mass production of shipping in the Arsenal was developed too soon to be a model for the English industrial revolution, so the modernist nature of Canaletto’s art came too soon. This, after all, is why the Canalettos was sold exclusively to a specialized market, foreigners who wanted a visual souvenir of their visits to the Venetian Republic. A lively market in contemporary art was never fully developed in eighteenth-century Venice. The successful birth of modernism required a more lively ongoing art world economy, such as we got in Paris and New York with Impressionism, Cubism and Abstract Expressionists. And by the time that happened, Venice had become an artistic backwater, the great historical monument modern tourists visit, which is so magnificently depicted by Canaletto.

Note:

The Doge visiting the Church and Scuola di S. Rocco is discussed briefly in David Carrier and Darren Jones, The Contemporary Art Gallery: Display, Power and Privilege (2016). On Longhi, see Terisio Pignatti, Pietro Longhi. Paintings and Drawings (1969). This analysis is inspired in part by Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, which argues that the real successors of Canaletto were the Impressionists. The Arsenale is discussed in Frederic C. Lane, Venice. A Maritime Republic (1973). For another Venetian anticipation of modernism, see my https://brooklynrail.org/2023/11/artseen/Tiziano-1508-Agli-esordi-di-una-luminosa-carriera/

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