Competition and rivalry are hallmarks of Renaissance history, literature, and art. Renaissance artists strove to achieve the fame and memory of the great artists of antiquity by creating works that would be admired for their religious piety, classical erudition, beauty, and naturalism. In this context, the word paragone most often refers to the debate arguing the merits of painting versus sculpture , but it can also refer to the comparisons of painting and literature and of two rival aesthetic approaches to painting , referred to by the Italian words colore, or sometimes colorito color , and disegno design or drawing.
During the Renaissance each aesthetic had strong regional associations — disegno with central Italy, especially Florence, and colore with Venice. In turn, these differences have been explained through several historical, cultural, and geographic factors.
San Marco, which boasted the relics of the Evangelist Mark, was begun c. The interior walls are covered in glittering gold mosaics , and its exterior is clad in richly colored marble inlay and studded with sculptures taken from the Byzantine capital of Constantinople now Istanbul in the 13th century.
San Marco embodies the Venetian love of rich color and the effects of reflected or diffused light, which are also present throughout the city, in the watery and often foggy environment of its canals. The humid climate of the lagoon city also made fresco painting , common in other parts of Italy, impractical.
The plaster deteriorated quickly in the damp air, so when the technique of oil painting became available to them in the late 15th century, Venetian painters readily embraced it. Not only was the new medium more durable, but it allowed painters to fully explore the stylistic possibilities of oils, in particular rich colors and naturalistic effects of light. The medium was also more flexible than fresco and tempera painting, which required careful planning and the production of numerous preparatory drawings.
