Venetian secret
The Venetian secret was a major art scandal in eighteenth‑century Britain. It claimed that a secret painting method from Renaissance painters in Venice could produce amazing color effects. The secret was a fraud cooked up by Ann Jemima Provis and her father, Thomas Provis. They tricked several well‑known artists, including Benjamin West, who was president of the Royal Academy in London.
In 1796 West bought an old manuscript from Jemima and Thomas Provis, which they said showed the materials and techniques used by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. West and his contemporaries believed the manuscript was authentic and began using the described methods in their own paintings, such as Cicero Discovering the Tomb of Archimedes. Under West’s influence, other Academy artists adopted the same techniques.
Within a year, critics saw through the hoax. The works produced by West and others did not match the true color effects of Venetian painting, and the secret scandal was exposed. West and his followers were ridiculed in the British press; James Gillray even published a satirical cartoon about it in 1797. West later created another version of Cicero Discovering the Tomb of Archimedes in 1804 as an apology for his mistake.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:35 (CET).