David Rosand, an Art History Scholar Whose Heart Was in Venice, Dies at 75

The churches of Venice and the classrooms of Columbia University formed the tent poles of the work of the revered art historian David Rosand, who died at his home in Manhattan on Aug. 8 at 75.

He taught his first class at Columbia in 1964 and his last in 2013, with very few breaks in that run. And although as a scholar he was closely identified with 16th-century Venetian painting and its greatest artist, Titian, his breadth of knowledge beyond his immediate field was wide, embracing modernist abstraction, 19th-century American art and Chinese calligraphy.

In addition to sustaining a heavy teaching load, Mr. Rosand was a productive writer, publishing many scholarly essays and producing, or contributing to, more than a dozen books. His classic work, “Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto,” was first published in 1982 and is still used in classrooms.