Augusto Gentili and the history of art as a humanistic discipline

The volume Detailed Portraits. Venice and Its Surroundings 1500-1575 was published in October 2025, just a few months after the passing of the great scholar.

With his last work, Augusto Gentili aimed to fill a historiographical gap that, upon reflection, is quite glaring: the absence in the history of studies of a volume dedicated to Venetian portraits of the sixteenth century.

The book reconstructs the forgotten stories of men and women starting from the signs and cues that artists wisely scattered on the canvas.

The detail then reveals all its power: it is the lever from which private events, sometimes tragic, emerge, intertwining with the higher plane of History, conflicting family relationships, unforgettable love stories, or inexhaustible melancholies that have forever marked the fate of these characters.

In some more fortunate cases, the detail even reveals names, such as the one that has finally been returned to the Captain by Carpaccio.

By revisiting some of these stories, we will pay tribute to Augusto Gentili, to these forgotten protagonists, and to the history of art as a humanistic discipline.

Valentina Sapienza teaches Modern Art History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she founded and directs the Study Center RiVe ( https://www.unive.it/pag/41456 ), dedicated to the figurative culture of Venetian Renaissance.

Her research activity focuses on Venetian painting of the Renaissance, particularly on the relationship between images, context, and religious thought, on the apprenticeship of artistic trades, and on the history of patronage.

She is the author of numerous essays on the main Venetian painters of the sixteenth century (Tintoretto, Titian, Leonardo Corona, Palma il Giovane…), has published the monograph The Church of San Zulian in Venice in the Sixteenth Century (École française de Rome, 2018), and has edited and written, with Anna Bellavitis, the volume Apprenticeship, Work, Society in Early Modern Venice (Routledge, 2023).

In December 2026, her latest volume Leonardo Corona (circa 1552 – 1596), Painter of the Seven Manners (Il Prato) will be released.

She has also co-directed, with Anna Bellavitis and Frédéric Kaplan, the international research project ANR-FNS GAWS. Garzoni: Apprenticeship, Work and Society in Early Modern Venice, 15th-18th centuries.

She currently coordinates the project Art for Arts’ Sake. The Artistic Patronage of Venetian Corporations: 15th-18th century.