The notion of revisionist art history raises eyebrows. All too often it means resurrecting figures forgotten for very good reasons or forcing well-established notions through a wringer of modish theory. But when art historical revisionism—or any other kind—is driven by a quest for expanded understanding rather than by a desire for novelty, it can usefully disrupt entrenched habits of thought. It can make us consider, instead of the obvious, predictable aspects of an artist’s work or a period, fascinating zones of untidy, overlapping slippage and cross-fertilization. Intelligent revisionism can correct inaccuracies and make us see the celebrated and the familiar in fresh ways. Witness this Fall’s ambitious exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi—a persuasive argument for reexamining even the most well-studied evidence. “Il Rinascimento a Venezia e la pittura del Nord ai tempi di Bellini, Dürer, Tiziano” (oddly translated by the organizers as “Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Bellini, Dürer, Titian”) should change forever the way we look at both Italian and Northern Renaissance art.¹

The thesis, briefly, is that between 1450 and 1600 artists working in Venice, the Netherlands, and parts of Germany were engaged in a complex conversation that had profound ramifications for art on both sides of the Alps. It’s a view that discredits the idea that the Italians single-handedly invented Renaissance art, except for oil paint, which was invented by the van Eycks and brought to Italy by Antonello da Messina, an Italian, or rather a Sicilian as his