The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance

The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance by Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) is the first essay in a four-volume series on Italian painters of the Renaissance and after. This set has become a classic reference work. It is often referred to as the “four gospels”. These books have established the international reputation of their author. Unlike the prevailing conceptions at the time, Berenson establishes a dialogue between the works of art and the viewer. This famous work first appeared in the English language in 1895. Critics were unanimously favourable.

It is a monumental work. These texts open the world to their readers. Louis Gillet of the ‘Académie française’ (French Academy) wrote to the author in 1908: “It is perhaps the greatest service you have rendered to the history of art, to have defined better than any another critic the personality of the different schools, for having distinguished, alongside the Florentine school, the special physiognomy of the Umbrian schools, and alongside Venice, the face of the Northern school; to have characterized the different geniuses, to have more precisely than any other delineated the map." Louis Gillet then translated the work into French.

In this first volume dedicated to Venice, the reader discovers or rediscovers the painters of the Quattrocento and of the following centuries. The author gives them unity. For undoubtedly the first time in the history of art, he gives us a synthetic and global vision of these painters in their world and their time.