Room 14

A patch of light or a distant hillside can set the mood before you have identified the figures. In this room, Venetian painters make landscape part of the story. Giorgione’s Il Tramonto, or The Sunset, offers a setting whose atmosphere is easier to recognise than its debated subject. Titian’s early religious paintings place holy figures in landscapes filled with light. In his later work, looser strokes and hazy distance give nature a different energy. Compare the painted foliage with the figures, and notice where the brushwork lets an edge dissolve. Tintoretto and Bassano bring their own changes of light and rural detail to this Venetian tradition.