Paul Hills’s book deals with the aesthetics of color and its social history in Venice. These two ostensibly diverse agendas are interwoven through the author’s examination of the cognitive skills of the patronal classes (Hills owes a great deal to Michael Baxandall’s concept of the “period eye”), and the materials and processes involved in fashioning the visual environment of the city. As the title informs us, Hills deals with color in marble, mosaic, and glass in addition to painting. He also considers the role of color in architectural decoration, in textiles, and the significance of the restriction of color in printing and printmaking. These materials, objects (mostly luxury “goods”), and the environment of the city—both natural and constructed—are used by Hills to define a uniquely Venetian aesthetic. An intelligent consideration of the relationships between various media is most welcome, and will hopefully inspire more interdisciplinary treatments of the city’s artisanal, manufacturing, and mercantile culture. Make no mistake, however, that this is a book about painting, and about painting during what Hills, and most students of Venetian art history, consider to be its “golden age”: the later 15th and 16th centuries. Hills concentrates on the works of the two greatest definers...