VENETIAN LIFE AND ART: The conditions of art production in Venice
during the Early Renaissance were quite different from those in
Florence or Umbria. By the disposition of her people Venice was not a
learned or devout city. Religion, though the chief subject, was not
the chief spirit of Venetian art. Christianity was accepted by the
Venetians, but with no fevered enthusiasm. The Church was strong
enough there to defy the Papacy at one time, and yet religion with the
people was perhaps more of a civic function or a duty than a spiritual
worship. It was sincere in its way, and the early painters painted its
subjects with honesty, but the Venetians were much too proud and
worldly minded to take anything very seriously except their own
splendor and their own power.
Again, the Venetians were not humanists or students of the revived
classic. They housed manuscripts, harbored exiled humanists, received
the influx of Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople, and
later the celebrated Aldine press was established in Venice; but, for
all that, classic learning was not the fancy of the Venetians.
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