Venice

'Venice isn’t just the most painted city in the world, it is probably the most written about too. Finding a fresh angle from which to view it is a challenge. Gayford’s answer is to understand the city and its history through the splendid and varied art it has inspired. Packed with potted histories and informed anecdotes, this is a tome to pack on a visit to La Serenissima' - Waldemar Januszczak, Art Books of the Year, The Sunday Times
'Impressive' - New European
'Clear, vividly well written and deeply original ... a very bold, far reaching analysis of this much discussed city ... to offer an original perspective on this important city is a very significant achievement' - David Carrier, Counterpunch
'Engaging, sumptuously illustrated … This is the present influencing the past and vice versa, living history' - Country & Town House
'A compelling portrait of Venice capturing the work of great painters from Titian and Canaletto to Monet and Turner' - Traveller
'Elegant, insightful ... Gayford is the perfect cicerone - observant, original and energetic. This isn’t a straight history of Venice or Venetian art, but a book about how artists and writers have pictured Venice and shaped the way visitors see Venice in turn. From Jacopo de' Barbari’s seabird's-eye map of the lagoon to Anselm Kiefer’s’ takeover of the Doge’s Palace, via Veronese, Canaletto, Ruskin, Manet, Monet, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire and Yayoi Kusama: discover Venice anew' - Laura Freeman, Books of the Year, The Times
'I didn’t think it would be possible to write a new, fresh and original book about Venice, but Martin Gayford has managed it ... I can’t think of a better way of introducing Venice and it makes me want to get on a plane at once' - Sir Charles Saumarez Smith
'Gayford vaults the psychological crevasse between the 15th century and the present with élan, recovering the vitality, energy and thrilling modernity of its innovations … The freshness and precision of his vision reanimates even the most familiar Venetian masterpieces. A Titian scholar, his evocation of the disarming, almost hallucinatory sensuality produced by the dash and flutter of brushstrokes is positively gleeful' - Lisa Hilton, Spectator
'The scale of the book is dazzling, spanning 500 years of history, opera, sculpture and buildings, religion, philosophy – and, of course, art. Along the way, elegant prose introduces a fascinating cast … All told, this is a wonderful lesson in Venetian paintings, and how to look at them. It made me desperate to return to Venice and rush to the Frari Basilica to contemplate Titian’s Assunta' - The Tablet
'Martin Gayford points out, with learning and discrimination, the hidden-in-plain-sight' - Michael Prodger, Country Life
'The book is conversational, amiable; the effect is that of wandering around the city, its museums, churches and confraternities, its calli and campi, its limping bell towers and scene-stealing façades, its duelling bridges and blind alleys, with a thoughtful and well-read friend … [Gayford’s] book is a celebration that sidesteps some of the clichés of a more heritage-driven approach … he roots the project in the elementary pleasure of standing in front of, looking at and thinking about beautiful and interesting things' - Keith Miller, Times Literary Supplement
'This is a book to immerse yourself in and to let your imagination run freely' - The Artist