Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2015 Meet the Masters: Highlights from the Scottish

Titian: Anadyomene (Venus emerging from the sea), c 1525

Louise Marshall

18/19 February 2015

Lecture summary:

“In 1524 Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, commissioning a work from Sebastiano del Piombo, wrote that he did not want ‘saint’s stuff [cose di sancti]’ but ‘some pictures which are attractive and beautiful to look at’. He seems to have been part of a trend.” (Peter Burke, The Italian : culture and society in Italy,165.) Federico Gonzaga would certainly have approved of ’s Venus, which exemplifies the new genre of the poesie, or painted poetry, developed in Venice in the early sixteenth century with the paintings of (d. 1510) and Titian (c. 1490?-1576). This lecture discusses the ways in which Renaissance patrons and artists looked back to the classical past for inspiration while at the same time transforming and adapting classical subject matter to suit their own purposes. We will look at the way Titian’s deceptively simple composition engages in the paragone (debate/competition) between ancient and modern art, and between painting and sculpture—since it is a recreation of a lost work by , the most famous and celebrated of all Greek painters, whose composition was known through Roman sculpted copies. In this sense it can be seen as a kind of manifesto, a triumphant proclamation of Titian’s superiority over all comers, a celebration of the power of his brush and its power to transmute paint into living, palpable flesh.

Key Slides:

Titian, Portrait of a man, c 1510, National Gallery, --, 1514, , Rome --Assumption, 1516-18, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, high altar --, 1519-26, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, side altar Series of 3 paintings painted for studiolo (study) of Alfonso d’Este, duke of Ferrara: --Worship of Venus, 1518-20, Prado, Madrid --, 1522-23, National Gallery, London --Bacchanal of the Andrians, 1523-25, Prado, Madrid --Venus of , 1538, , --Portrait of Emperor Charles V, 1548, Prado, Madrid -- and Actaeon, Diana and , National Gallery of Scotland & National Gallery of London, sent to Philip II, king of spain, in 1559 --Rape of Europa, 1562, Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, completed by Titian c 1510, Staaliche Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden Giorgione, Fête champêtre, c 1510?, , Paris Antonio Lombardo, Venus Anadyomene, c. 1503, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

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References:

Humfrey, Peter, Painting in Renaissance Venice, New Haven, 1995. Great, easy to read, authoritative history of Venetian art with very perceptive visual analyses of all major works.

Huse, Norbert and Wolfgang Wolters, The art of Renaissance Venice. Architecture, sculpture, and painting, 1460-1590, Chicago, 1990. More sober and detailed survey of all media.

Rosand, David, Painting in sixteenth-century/Cinquecento Venice. Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, any edition (1982 and later). A classic study by the world authority on Venetian art.

Rosand, David, The meaning of the mark: Leonardo and Titian. Franklin D. Murphy Lectures, Spencer Museum of Art, 1988.

Goffen, Rona, Titian’s women, New Haven, 1997. The Cambridge companion to Titian, ed Patricia Melman, Cambridge, 2004. Series of studies on key aspects of Titian’s art by experts in field, including Rosand on Titian’s mythologies.