Venice

City of Pictures

Martin Gayford

$29.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Thames & Hudson
17 June 2025

History; European history

A Sunday Times Art Book of the Year. This is a unique and compelling journey through five centuries of the city known as 'La Serenissima' - a perfect companion for both lovers of Venice and lovers of its art.

Venice was a major centre of art in the Renaissance: the city where the

medium of oil on canvas became the norm. Nowhere else has been depicted by so many great painters in so many diverse styles and moods. Venetian views were a speciality of native artists such as Canaletto and Guardi, but the city has also been represented by outsiders: J. M. W. Turner, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, Howard Hodgkin, and many more. Then there are those who came to look at and write about art. The reactions of Henry James, George Eliot, Richard Wagner and others enrich this tale. Nor is the story over. Since the advent of the Venice Biennale in the 1890s, and the arrival of Peggy Guggenheim in the late 1940s, the city has become a shop window for the contemporary art of the whole world, and it remains the site of important artistic events.

In this elegant volume, Gayford - who has visited Venice countless times since the 1970s, covered every Biennale since 1990, and even had portraits of himself exhibited there on several occasions - takes us on a visual journey through the city's past five centuries.

By: Martin Gayford
Imprint: Thames & Hudson
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm,
Weight: 550g
ISBN: 9780500295014
ISBN 10: 0500295018
Pages: 496
Publication Date: 17 June 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Martin Gayford is a writer and art critic. His books include Man with a Blue Scarf (in which he recounts the experience of being painted by Lucian Freud); Modernists and Mavericks; Spring Cannot be Cancelled, with David Hockney; A History of Pictures, with David Hockney; Shaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now, with Antony Gormley; Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939-1954, with David Dawson; and How Painting Happens, all published by Thames & Hudson.

Reviews for Venice: City of Pictures

'Elegant, insightful ... Gayford is the perfect cicerone – observant, original and energetic' - Laura Freeman, The Times 'Conversational, amiable; the effect is that of wandering around the city with a thoughtful and well-read friend' - Keith Miller, Times Literary Supplement