LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Titian
built 636 days ago
In spite of the appreciation of Titian in Britain, this is the first monographical exhibition in this country. In 1983 the Royal Academy's 'Genius of Venice' showed the brilliance of the 16th century Venetian School, with Titian as its 'brightest star'. Eleven works from the National Gallery's collection form a core for the exhibition; key works have been borrowed from the Louvre, the Prado, the Hermitage and the Uffizi, from Washington DC, Berlin and the Czech Republic. The exhibition is, in fact, a collaboration between the National Gallery and the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. The exhibition has on display over 40 major works.
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Titian was a businessman, in other words, and a shrewd one. He marketed his contribution to his own pictures and their degree of finish. You may have noticed how even cheerleaders for the contemporary art boom have lately begun to worry about the current market insanity, hedging their bets, and reputations, perhaps. The current system seems rigged to make rich people richer. Meanwhile Mike Kelley, the American artist, over lunch the other day bemoaned how students and many newly minted art stars seem to take for granted that art is just a business now. I’ve heard the same complaint often, mostly in private, cynicism taking hold so firmly in art circles that complaining of this sort tends to peg the complainer as a fogey and nostalgist.
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After 1550, when Titian had returned to Venice, his style again changed. In a series of superb mythological paintings for Philip II of Spain, beginning with the Danaë (circa 1553, Prado) and including the Rape of Europa (circa 1559-62, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), forms gradually lose their solidity, partially dissolving into hazy paint textures and vibrant brushstrokes, while color becomes more intense, so that a universe seems to be on the verge of disintegrating into flame. A climax is reached in the ferocious Death of Actaeon (circa 1561, National Gallery, London) with its bronzy tonality and phosphorescent textures. Still more profound are the Flaying of Marsyas (circa 1570-76, Kromìøíž, Czech Republic) and the Nymph and Shepherd (circa 1574, Kunsthistorisches Museum). Here colors are more subdued, but the turbulence of the brushwork, hardly matched again until 20th-century painting, almost submerges the form entirely. These late mythological paintings, which Titian called poesie (poems), stand among the most formidable statements ever made of the irresistible, elemental powers of nature.
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After 1550, when Titian had returned to Venice, his style again changed. In a series of superb mythological paintings for Philip II of Spain, beginning with the Dana‘ (c. 1553, Prado) and including the Rape of Europa (c. 1559–62, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), forms gradually lose their solidity, partially dissolving into hazy paint textures and vibrant brushstrokes, while color becomes more intense, so that a universe seems to be on the verge of disintegrating into flame. A climax is reached in the ferocious Death of Actaeon (c. 1561, National Gallery, London) with its bronzy tonality and phosphorescent textures.
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Titian's most important innovations in the years from 1530 to 1550 were made in portraiture. As early as 1516, he began working at the courts of Ferrara, Bologna, and Mantua. During a sixty-year career, Titian produced about one hundred portraits, making it possible to follow both the stylistic and human progress of the artist. Titian’s career ... tracked the course of Italian and European history in the sixteenth century, exemplified through the images of the protagonists of political, religious and cultural power. This aspect - that of tracking Titian's portraiture as a historical reportage of the century - has always fascinated critics, for as Vasari himself stated, "there was almost no famous lord, nor prince, nor great woman, who was not painted by Titian."
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In 1511, Titian began to work as an independent painter; enhancing his style to paint the narratives of the three Miracles of St. Anthony. In these frescoes, Titian displays his prowess at painting emotional faces and poses. During the second decade of the 1500's, Titian ... painted The Three Ages of Man, Sacred and Profane Love, Worship of Venus and Bacchanal of the Andrians, Bacchus and Ariadne, Assumption of the Virgin and Madonna of the House of Pesaro. All of these works display Titian's skill at depicting human emotion and movement. Titian also revolutionized Sacre Conversazioni (the classic picture of The Madonna surrounded by Saints) by placing the Madonna to the right of the pictures instead of in the center. Upon the death of Giovanni Bellini in 1516, Titian became official painter to the Republic.
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