The subject of Titian and the Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice, notwithstanding its expansive title, is Titian’s celebrated Peter Martyr Altarpiece (1537-30). In spite of the painting’s fiery demise in 1867, Patricia Meilman successfully reconstructs the altarpiece and its environment in the reader’s mind, a project facilitated by her clarity of purpose to re-secure the work’s artistic importance. The author furnishes a close study of the religious context, sources, and subsequent critical and artistic significance of...