Author(s): Massimo Favilla

Art

This lavish book is the first ever art historical study to survey this specific and crucial period in the history of La Serenissima the Baroque. The 17th century saw Venice's last big drive to respond on a cultural and artistic level to the Republics inexorable decline on the great stage of European politics. The city's fabric still reflects the desire that was felt at the time for grandiloquent displays of hoped-for triumph. Excess and ostentation prevailed, fuelling a tendency for abundant ornamentation, a taste for the grotesque and the bizarre, and a zeal for enormity and greatness. Here, the authors trace the progression of painting, sculpture and architecture in 17th-century Venice in a series of scholarly essays illuminated by hundreds of glorious illustrations celebrating the city's seminal examplars of Baroque style, among them Santa Maria della Salute, the mosaics of St Marks and the paintings of Giambattista Tiepolo.