Jacopo Bassano and the Flood of Feltre

Painted in 1576, Jacopo Bassano’s The Flood of the Colmeda commemorates a deluge that swept through the small town of Feltre, in the mountains to the north of Venice, in 1564. Drawing attention to aspects of The Flood of the Colmeda that evoke period speculation about the potential human causes of flooding on the Venetian mainland, a topic of pressing importance during a period of aggressive agricultural and industrial expansion in Venetian territory, this article advances an ecocritical interpretation of the painting and of Bassano’s work, in general.