The Accademia is the “essential one-stop shop for Venetian painting,” says Time Out, and “one of the world’s greatest treasure houses.” Somewhere in the queue to enter the Accademia, you might grumpily wonder if the wait is worthwhile. But when the masses of students part to reveal Bellini’s gorgeous Madonnas and Carpaccio’s shimmering gore-fests, you won’t regret the wait. It was Napoleon who made the collection possible, explains Time Out, by confiscating artworks from hundreds of churches, convents and religious guilds and installing them here in the former convent of Santa Maria della Carità.
Among the superstars are here Bellini, Giorgione, Veronese, Titian, Tintoretto, Carpaccio and Canaletto, their works the inspiration for countless masterpieces down the ages. Commenting on Giorgione’s exceptional Vecchia (Old Woman), Laura Teso at My Corner of Italy writes that “Michelangelo saw this work and held it in mind while painting the Sibyls in the Sistine chapel."
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