Venice and Drawing 1500–1800: Theory, Practice and Collecting by Catherine Whistler (review)

The extraordinary work, Venice and Drawing 1500-1800: Theory, Practice and Collecting, offers a comprehensive overview of the artistic developments of drawing and design made by a host of Venetian artists, from Titian to Tiepolo, expressly focusing on the novel composition practices of disegno in Venice from the early Renaissance to early modern era. Catherine Whistler puts forth a provocative premise that "drawing as an art and practice distinct from painting" will speak to the "terms of the specific environmental and cultural conditions of Venice" and how the "drawing as an art and practice" can still resonate for our modern sensibilities and understanding of artistic and historic designs (xiv). To this point, Whistler chooses superlative exemplary drawings to demonstrate the unique place and time in which these works of art were not only produced but also reflective of the material culture and literary discourse that has unequivocally placed their value into historic and modern context.

Whistler breaks her tome into three distinctive sections. In the first section, "Theory: Disegno and Drawing (The Verbal and the Visual)," she gives an overview and detailed explanation of the developing literary discourse and burgeoning market in the contemporary material graphic arts. Thoroughly, we come to grasp a clear understanding of the complex nature of desegno as the foundation for "the mother or father of the three arts [architecture, sculpture and painting]" and why desegno plays a pivotal role in our intellectual abilities for artistic inventions (3). She explains how the Venetian courtly intellectual milieu facilitated novel modes (or "manuals") to not only abstract new interpretations of the natural world for artistic inspiration but also how courtiers and intellectuals would analyze and interpret those unique artistic results. Whistler upholds these perspectives on local innovations through clear explanations of the early concepts of disegno to the authoritarian rhetoric of Giorgio Vasari in which "how artists and writers envisaged disegno as intrinsic to Venetian art" (1) was initially established—only to have it questioned by later generations of critics, such as Carlo Ridolfi and Marco Boschini. Whistler also shows us how the Venetians could "create a suitable language for art criticism at a time when the Académie Français was drawing up the rules of poetics and rhetoric" all the while the Venetians were working to create "drawing […] at the heart of great art since it satisfied the soul" (11). By examining binary oppositions, Whistler points to the relevant historic evidence that paradoxically "dismissed Venetian disegno as unworthy [and has] led many contemporary art historians […] to neglect the visual and material evidence that drawings can provide" (25). Nonetheless, Whistler shows us how Venetian desgno provides a steady ration for critical context, especially in understanding contemporary criticism, and how important it was to the "intellectual ambition and social aspirations of artists, as well as […] the cultural interests of aristocrats, writers and art lovers" (29). By the end of the first section, the reader has a detailed understanding of what transpired in artistic and critical narratives that would envelop the Venetian art at this time.

In the second section, "Practice: Drawing in the Lives of Venetian Artists," we are given a sense of the human drama in which artists and students, homes and workshops, families and patrons created a dynamic artistic environment in and around Venice. Whistler takes us into the Venetian workshops as collaborative gathering spaces for artists and students alike to explore and challenge their homegrown artistic skills and visions. From such, we can understand how the growing Venetian print culture could thrive under collective and collaborative projects, making "the role of drawing [disegno and colore] in conceptualising and realising paintings [expressing] the character and importance of pensiero and compositional studies"—which became a means to accomplish great strides in the visual arts (70). Additionally, we come to realize how the artists themselves viewed their roles in creating their material objects, through inscribing, preserving, or collecting them as "interrogated and valued...