During the Renaissance, Venice established itself, thanks also to its position as an international emporium open to major mercantile routes, as the main Italian center for the creation and distribution of prints. The fulcrum of a true "image revolution", the city is the place where some of the most important and fascinating graphic and editorial creations of the 16th century were created and marketed.

The Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, in collaboration with the Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa, dedicates a major project to this unrepeatable artistic season which traces the highest achievements of graphic art in the Serenissima, capable of competing on the same level as painting, almost that one was the mirror of the other. The focus of the exhibition are the collections of the two institutions, partly restored thanks to the support of Save Venice, which are accompanied, in order to allow a complete vision of this extraordinary artistic phenomenon, by works from private and public collections: the Marciana National Library, the Giorgio Cini Foundation, the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, the Scuola Grande di San Marco, the Library of the Correr Museum, as well as the Queriniana Library of Brescia, the Palatina Library of Parma, the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Galleries of Offices.

The project - which takes place simultaneously in the two locations, accompanied by a single catalog - is divided into chronological and thematic sections: news at the end of the fifteenth century; large formats; Venetian and foreign engravers between the first and second decades of the sixteenth century; the birth of chiaroscuro; “From Titian […] many countries”; polygraphs and book printers in the mid-16th century; “through prints, the manners of Italy” in Venice; “Titianus inventor”: the workshop and graphics from the master's maturity to his late age; Agostino Carracci engraver of Veronese and Tintoretto; Giuseppe Scolari “excellent designer and carver of woodblock prints”. They are accompanied by some in-depth studies, specifically designed for specific sections present only in Venice or Bassano, to highlight the originality of the proposed itineraries and the extraordinary richness of the individual collections. The themes addressed are of exceptional relevance and involve some of the major artists of the time.