Art and Music in Venice Book - MMFA 2013

Art and Music in Venice
From the Renaissance to the Baroque

This publication accompanies the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' current exhibition Splendore a Venezia: Art and Music from the Renaissance to Baroque in the Serenissima, on display between October 12, 2013 and January 19, 2014. This is a relatively short time for such an important exhibition that provides the historical background to so many artistic and musical tendencies and innovations that took root in Venice and subsequently shaped the Europe's artistic taste and creativity for some time.

The book comprises of 240 pages, many of which are devoted to high quality illustrations and reproductions of paintings.  Together, the illustrations and the text reveal how the music, drawing and painting intertwined, forming one artistic expression. What we now refer to by such terms as renaissance, baroque, or classical, actually represented tor the Venetians' their everyday arts. They were their 'contemporary' music and 'contemporary' visual art expressions, their latest 'hits'. One cannot help but to realize how much more sophisticated and even refined people's artistic tastes were at those times as compared to our's.  

Here are images of several book's pages to give you some idea of what is inside. My photographs of those pages fail to capture the full scope of the content and the beauty of this publication.

Unfortunately, MMFA no longer has an online bookstore. But you can purchase the book in person at the MMFA Boutique and Store.

You can also read more about the exhibition here.