The Merchants of Venice Art

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Byline: Peter Plagens

No one sold the world on modernism like Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.

No, it wasn't Manet, with his "Luncheon on the Grass" in 1863, which is what we were taught in art-history class. It wasn't even, as many critics have said lately, J.M.W. Turner in England a generation earlier with his swirling, atmospheric ships-at-sea paintings. Frederick Ilchman, a curator at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, believes it was the Venetian artist Titian and a couple of rival painters, Tintoretto and Veronese, who--about 450 years ago--really invented modern painting. That is, Ilchman says, if your definition is his: "oil on canvas, not done for any specific site, and with the artist, not the patron, choosing the subject matter." Ilchman offers proof in the 56 paintings that make up one of the most breathtaking old-master exhibitions …