***September 2009*** |
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Titian
1488/90 - August 27, 1576 |
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Titian, whose name in Italian is Tiziano Vecellio, was born in Pieve di Cadore, north of Venice, by his own account in 1477 however, many modern art scholars prefer to advance the date to about 1487. In Venice, he studied with Gentile Bellini and then with Giovanni Bellini, but only the latter left a lasting imprint on his style.
The first documented reference to Titian dates from 1508, when he was commissioned to paint frescoes, with the Venetian painter Giorgione, on the exterior of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (the German Exchange). Unfortunately, the frescoes survive only in ruined fragments. Scholars disagree as to which paintings dating from the first decade of the 16th century were actually painted by Titian and which were painted by Giorgione.
In 1511 Titian was commissioned to create frescoes of three Miracles of St. Anthony for the Scuola del Santo. These narratives demonstrate his power to create his ample figures with an incredible sense of anguished, life, as he set realistically conceived events within vividly and rather impressionistically realized landscapes that seemed strangely ahead of their time. In later paintings of this decade Titian progressively enriched Giorgione's idyllic style. Bodies and fabrics took on an increasingly sensuous density and splendor, landscape settings became more resonant, colors deep and intense but harmonious at the same time. Titian was beginning to gain a reputation as an incredible painter with technical mastery and vision and soon the commissions started coming his way at an alarming rate. |
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The dynamic vibrancy of Titian's frescoes is paralleled with his religious paintings of the same period. First among these is the mighty Assumption of the Virgin (1516-18) over the high altar of Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice. Its strong colors, golden light, and massive, gesticulating figures, designed to be seen from afar, nevertheless remain plausible in terms of ordinary human experience. Its unveiling in 1518 provoked a sensation. In another painting for this church, the Madonna of the House of Pesaro (1519-26), Titian effected a crucial change in Renaissance sacre conversazioni (paintings of the Virgin enthroned among saints) by placing the Virgin, traditionally at the composition's center, halfway up its right side, and by painting behind her in diagonal recession two giant columns that soar out of the picture's space. This new scheme was widely adopted by later artists, such as Paolo Veronese and the Carracci family, and, with its evocation of movement and infinity, it opened the way to the baroque style. The most dynamic of all Titian's paintings of this period was the huge Death of St. Peter Martyr (1530, now destroyed), in which the violent action was echoed in the convulsion of trees and sky.These paintings, both secular and religious, give evidence of Titian's awareness of contemporary High Renaissance achievements in Rome and Florence. Known to him only through prints and drawings (before his visit to Rome in 1545-46), they served as a stimulus and an aid in creating a Venetian counterpart: a High Renaissance style equally complex, monumental, and dynamic, but one which made full use of the traditional Venetian resources of color, free brushwork, and atmospheric tone. |
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Titian's paintings of the 1530-40's are marked by a relatively quiet, pictorial subtlety, and coloristic refinement. He continued taking on commissions both for the church and for nobility, including three grandiose ceiling paintings (1543-44, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice), in which drastic foreshortenings and titanic figures bespeak Titian's knowledge of the human figure.Titian's most important innovations in the years from 1530 to 1550 were made in portraiture. In 1516 he had been named official painter to the Venetian state. He worked at the courts of Ferrara and Mantua and in the 1530s and '40s he traveled to Bologna to paint the Emperor Charles V and Pope Paul III, and at the pope's request, he visited Rome and met Michelangelo. He joined the court of Charles V at Augsburg, Germany, in 1548 and 1550 and as a result of this connection, he obtained a multitude of portrait commissions.
The neutral atmospheric backgrounds of the earlier portraits were soon replaced by cleverly disposed elements of setting, such as a column, a curtain, or a view into landscape. These elements, and the patterns in which Titian arranged them, remain staples of formal portraiture well into the 21st century.Titian used his unsurpassed skills as a visual dramatist to compel the viewer's participation in the sitter's inner life. {Pietro Aretino (Frick Collection, New York)} |
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After 1550, when Titian had returned to Venice, his style again changed. 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. His use of colours 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 elemental powers of nature. |
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Titian used this dematerializing painting style to convey a state of being that transcends the physical. This late style, an astounding phenomenon in the context of Renaissance art, had its final manifestation in the Pietà intended for Titian's own tomb chapel; the work was left unfinished at his death and is now in the Accademia in Venice.
Titian died in Venice on August 27, 1576. His work, which permanently affected the course of European painting, provided an alternative, of equal power and attractiveness, to the linear and sculptural Florentine tradition championed by Michelangelo and Raphael.This alternative, eagerly taken up by Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez, Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, and the impressionists, is still vital today. In its own right, Titian's work often attains the very highest reach of human achievement in the visual arts. |
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Titian is considered the greatest 16th-century Venetian painter and the shaper of the Venetian coloristic and painterly tradition. He is one of the key figures in the history of art and helped advance painting to a much higher level.
Frescoe definition: The art of painting on fresh, moist plaster with pigments dissolved in water |
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