Martin Gayford, acclaimed art critic and writer, takes us on a visual journey through the history of Venice. But this is not a conventional chronicle of battles, rulers, sieges and revolutions – though such events sometimes come into the story. It is told in the belief that the most interesting things that have happened in this city were artistic and visual. That is, they were to do with pictures. 

No-where else has been depicted by so many great painters in so many diverse styles and moods, as La Serenissima. The Venetian masters of the Renaissance – the Bellini brothers, Carpaccio, Titian, Veronese – through to the artists of the eighteenth century such as Canaletto and Guardi are all part of the roll call, but outsiders were equally impacted. J. M. W. Turner, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent and Howard Hodgkin were deeply affected by the paintings and buildings of Venice, as were writers and musicians such as George Eliot, Henry James and Richard Wagner.  In the compelling detail for which he is known, Martin Gayford draws out the lives of the artists and their rivalries and brings the narrative up to the present day for this special event in collaboration with Thames & Hudson.

Martin Gayford is a regular contributor to The Spectator magazine and the national press. His numerous publications include Modernists & Mavericks; Michaelangelo: His Epic Life and Lucien Freud: Painting People. He is fascinated by Venice and has been visiting it regularly since the 1970s.