This album is the product of a collaboration between the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the radio station SWR to mark an exhibition of Italian art based mainly around the work of Vittore Carpaccio. The result is a surprising anthology of music that was known in Venice in the first quarter of the 16th century, including mostly pieces that have not previously been recorded: works by lesser Venetian composers, music by Josquin, Mouton and other oltremontani, two items by the only Italian composer to have been prominent in sacred music of these years, Costanzo Festa, and of course two motets by Willaert, who served no fewer than 35 years at St Mark’s Basilica. The only oddment here is the Gloria (alone) of Josquin’s Mass Pange lingua.

The Marian Consort field eight singers (four men, four women) under the marvellously controlled direction of Rory McCleery. Their sound is pure, their intonation unflappable, their balance immaculate. My only reservation is that they sound the same in everything: Willaert’s great motet Beatus Stephanus, included because Carpaccio’s canvas of his martyrdom is one of the prize pictures in the exhibition, betrays nothing of the text’s anger and could just as well be a description of a peaceful countryside. Willaert’s music is hard enough to convey at the best of times; but we surely need to get a little closer to the mark.

For the solo songs the miraculous Sarah Anne Champion is joined by the equally flawless lutenist Kristiina Watt. An engaging booklet note by Tim Shephard puts everything into the perspective of art and music of the time in Venice.