Exhibition Review: The Genius of Venice
The Genius of Venice I1o5-I600, the grand exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts from November 25, i983, to March II, i984, transformed the London season, as one brochure announced, into "A Venetian Winter." Notwithstanding the strong competition of the British Museum's exhibition of Raphael drawings, all London seemed filled with enthusiasm for the Queen of the Adriatic, an enthusiasm that manifested itself on every level of culture consumption and tourism: from gondolier shirts, carnival masks, and tins of baicoli to concerts of Venetian music, programs of films set in the lagoon, and public lecture series on topics such as "Venice: Art and Culture" and "Venice and the Victorians"; and, not least important in setting the tone of the occasion, special travel packages guaranteed the presence of large numbers of live Venetians in the British capital (the show was sponsored by the Sea Containers Group and Venice Simplon-Orient-Express Limited). 1 With a kind of forbearing noblesse, the exhibition itself put up with all this, standing well above the hoopla it generated by virtue of its own extraordinary achievement. The Genius of Venice was impressive in every way, for the scope and intelligence of its organization as well as for the quality, quantity, and variety of the works of art on view. Celebrating what is generally acknowledged to be the golden age of Venetian art, the exhibition included paintings (I47 catalogued, although not all were finally sent to London), drawings (84 items), prints (63, although not all arrived), and sculpture (42 objects); in addition there were prints, manuscripts, documents, and maps illustrating aspects of Venetian history, politics, and civic ritual (i9 items). Together, these filled fifteen galleries of the Royal Academy, offering the visitor a breathtaking panorama of the Venetian Cinquecento, highlighted by masterpieces rarely seen, the most notable being Sebastiano del Piombo'sjudgment of Solomon from Kingston Lacy and Titian's Flaying of Marsyas from Kromeii, Czechoslovakia. The presence of such works testified to the diplomatic skills of