Passion in Venice

Drawing on works by some of the of the greatest names in Venetian painting including Veronese, Tintoretto, Crivelli, Giambono and the Bassano family, Passion in Venice creates a new and illuminating context for these great masters by considering their work alongside contemporary works in other media, and from other parts of Western Europe, including Tuscany, France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. This volume provides a re-assessment of the artistic scene in Venice, examining the rich visual tradition which flourished over three centuries across all artistic media, outstripping other western European schools in terms of output and the number of artists committed to the subject.

An essay by Catherine Puglisi and William Barcham explores the origins of the image of Christ as Man of Sorrows and its emergence as a distinct and central devotional image in the religious life of Venice from about 1300. The authors address the questions of who was the Man of Sorrows and why the figure grew significantly in Venice during the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. Xavier Seubert’s essay focuses on the appeal of the Man of Sorrows as an image expressing pity and anguish, but also offering hope for deliverance and redemption. The main catalogue section presents works from major American and European collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Canada, the J Paul Getty Center and the National Gallery, London, almost none of which have been linked before through the study of a common artistic theme. This rich array of artworks includes illuminated manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings and liturgical objects.

Author biographies

William Barcham is professor in the department of the History of Art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the State University of New York. He is the author of The Religious Paintings of Giambattista Tiepolo: Piety and Tradition in Eighteenth-century Venice (1990), and Paintings in the National Gallery, London (2000) with Augusto Gentili and Linda Whiteley. In 2004, Dr. Barcham was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship.

Catherine Puglisi is professor and chair of the department of Art History at Rutgers University, New Jersey, where she specializes in Italian Baroque painting and sculpture. She is the author of Caravaggio (1998) and of the monologue and catalogue raisonné on Francesco Albani (1999).

Xavier John Seubert is professor of Liturgy and Sacramental Theology at Christ the King Seminary in Buffalo, NY and is the Thomas Plassmann Distinguished Professor of Art and Theology Emeritus at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, NY.

Table of Contents

1. Foreword
2. Acknowledgments
3. The Man of Sorrows in Venetian Art by William Barcham and Catherine Puglisi
4. Isaiah’s Servant, Christianity’s Man of Sorrows, and Saint Francis of Assisi by Xavier Seubert
5. Notes to the reader
6. Catalog
7. Bibliography
8. Photography credits
9. Index