Περιγραφή
No documents record the birth of Titian, but he was born into the minor gentry probably around 1490 in Pieve di Cadore, a small town in the upper Piave valley in the Dolomites. His grandfather had been a leading figure in the community and his father, Gregorio, distinguished himself during the abortive invasion of Italy by imperial troops under the Emperor Maximilian in 1508. Thus the greatest Venetian artist of all time was by birth a mountain man, and he never lost touch with his birthplace, where his family had a prosperous lumber business. Titian arrived in Venice at the age of somewhere between ten and twelve. He got his start in the workshop of Sebastiano Zuccato, a minor artist, then transferred to the studio of Gentile Bellini and subsequently to that of his more famous brother, Giovanni. The documentary realism of Gentile’s detailed panoramas of Venetian life would have been useful in learning the rudiments of portraiture and an introduction to working on a large scale. However, it was Giovanni who had brought Venetian painting to the front rank, exploiting the relatively newly developed technique of oil painting to create a more potent sense of reality through atmospheric unity, and elevating the role of light and color to a sublime and expressive vehicle for emotional content. Titian was to remain much in his debt, but he soon gravitated towards Giorgione who, more than the much older Bellini, represented the cutting edge of contemporary Venetian art. Giorgione had combined the coloristic power of Bellini with Leonardo’s elemental tonal realism, creating an elusive, less static world vulnerable to change. Titian was to absorb his style very thoroughly but possessed a more robust artistic personality, which after the death of Giorgione in 1510 gave him the necessary leadership potential to become Bellini’s successor as caposcuola of the Venetian High Renaissance, carrying the torch of Venetian luminism and color through the next generation. In Titian’s work, the veil of reticence and mystery that clings to Giorgione is now lifted, and humanity is confronted more directly and with a psychological clarity grounded in everyday experience. This aspect of his work is often taken for granted, and a principal aim of this short account of Titian’s life and work is to set it out more clearly.
(από την έκδοση)
Περιεχόμενα
Titian in Venice: The Early Years
Rise to Prominence: Madonnas and Beautiful Women
Fame and Wider Horizons: The Assumption of the Virgin, the Pesaro Madonna and the Ferrara Bacchanals
The 1530s: New Ideas and New Patrons
Papal Patronage and Give and Take with Rome
Working for the Hapsburgs: Charles V and Philip II
“Chromatic Alchemy”: The Late Works
Chronology
Σελίδες 96
ISBN13 9783822849125
