TIZIANO Vecellio

The cross on the man’s cloak clearly identifies him as a Knight of Malta. The portrait is typical of Titian’s early work, in which he was still strongly influenced by Giorgione. The latter’s influence can be seen clearly in the way the portrayed man is positioned in the picture, and Titian’s choice of picture format.

The combination of blue, dark green and broken reds make this painting particularly charming. The background dissolves in uncertain forms. The painting seems to be comprised solely of a foreground. Here, all the picture elements are related to each other by means of skillful overlapping and contacts. There is considerable sensuous charm in the position of Adam’s hand on Eve’s right shoulder, just above her beautiful, full breast, as she reaches for the apple with her left hand.

Connected to Titian’s late portraits is the Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence. This is an exceptional portrait which depicts the aged Titian on the left above a wolf’s head, his son Orazio in the centre above the head of a lion, and his nephew Marco above a dog’s head. The wolf, the lion and the dog, symbolize the past, present and future. In the upper part of the painting there is an inscription which is the key to the complex allegorical meaning of the work: “EX PRAETERITO PRAESENS PRUDENTER AGIT, NI FUTURUM ACTIONE DETURPET” (“From the (experience of the) past, the present acts prudently, lest it spoil future action”).

Though it was common enough during the Renaissance to use three human heads to symbolize the ages of man, and to use three animal heads to symbolize prudence, it was very unusual to use them as the theme of a painting. As Titian used personal motifs, it can be assumed that he chose the subject matter himself.

Although the pose does not quite correspond, this drawing has usually been identified as preparatory to the San Salvador altarpiece.

The angel in from the left, the hand raised in the gesture of the annunciation. Under the classical portico the Virgin seems almost belittled behind the wooden lectern, in a pose of resigned submission to the will of God. The intimate character of the apparition is underlined by the presence of everyday objects and animals: the quail, the fruit placed on the steps of the lectern, the half-open work basket.

This painting was originally placed over one of the arches of the landing of the main staircase which joins the Ground Floor Hall to the Upper Hall of the Scuola.

In 1548, Titian was summoned to Augsburg by the Emperor Charles V. The purpose behind it was to help celebrate the emperor’s recent victory at M�hlberg. Titian left Venice in early January 1548 accompanied by assistants including his son Orazio and his cousin Cesare Vecellio. At Augsburg, Titian was set to work on painting portraits of Charles and members of his family. He was also required to paint the portraits of leading members of the Habsburg court. In all, Titian and his assistants executed some twenty portraits during their eight-month sojourn in Augsburg.

One of the portraits painted in Augsburg was that of Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-1586), Bishop of Arras. He was a French statesman, made a cardinal, who followed his father as a leading minister of the Spanish Habsburgs, and was one of the most influential European politicians during the time which immediately followed the appearance of Protestantism in Europe. He was also a notable art collector, the greatest private collector of his time, the friend and patron of Titian and Leoni and many other artists.

Titian worked on this huge altarpiece for more than two years from 1516 to 1518. It has to be seen as a milestone in Titian’s career establishing him as a more universal artist who drew inspiration from outside the confines of Venice. Indeed the powerful figures of the Apostles reflect the influence of Michelangelo, whereas the painting demonstrates clear iconographical similarities with the works of Raphael. Above all, what emerges most strongly in the assumption is Titian’s desire to break definitely with the traditions of Venetian painting in order to arrive at a synthesis of dramatic force and dynamic tension which will become from this moment on the most obvious characteristic of his work.

The picture is composed of three orders. At the bottom are the Apostles (humanity), amazed and stunned by the wondreous happening. St Peter is kneeling with his hand on his breast, St Thomas is pointing at the Virgin, and St Andrew in a red cloak is stretching forward. In the middle, the madonna, slight and bathed in light, is surrounded by by a host of angels that accompany her joyfully hailing. Above is the Eternal Father, serene and noble majesty, calling the Virgin to him with a look of love.

The painting is signed as “Ticianus” low down in the middle of the picture.

Titian worked on this huge altarpiece for more than two years from 1516 to 1518. It has to be seen as a milestone in Titian’s career establishing him as a more universal artist who drew inspiration from outside the confines of Venice. Indeed the powerful figures of the Apostles reflect the influence of Michelangelo, whereas the painting demonstrates clear iconographical similarities with the works of Raphael. Above all, what emerges most strongly in the assumption is Titian’s desire to break definitely with the traditions of Venetian painting in order to arrive at a synthesis of dramatic force and dynamic tension which will become from this moment on the most obvious characteristic of his work.

The picture is composed of three orders. At the bottom are the Apostles (humanity), amazed and stunned by the wondreous happening. St Peter is kneeling with his hand on his breast, St Thomas is pointing at the Virgin, and St Andrew in a red cloak is stretching forward. In the middle, the madonna, slight and bathed in light, is surrounded by by a host of angels that accompany her joyfully hailing. Above is the Eternal Father, serene and noble majesty, calling the Virgin to him with a look of love.

The painting is signed as “Ticianus” low down in the middle of the picture.

Titian worked on this huge altarpiece for more than two years from 1516 to 1518. It has to be seen as a milestone in Titian’s career establishing him as a more universal artist who drew inspiration from outside the confines of Venice. Indeed the powerful figures of the Apostles reflect the influence of Michelangelo, whereas the painting demonstrates clear iconographical similarities with the works of Raphael. Above all, what emerges most strongly in the assumption is Titian’s desire to break definitely with the traditions of Venetian painting in order to arrive at a synthesis of dramatic force and dynamic tension which will become from this moment on the most obvious characteristic of his work.

The picture is composed of three orders. At the bottom are the Apostles (humanity), amazed and stunned by the wondreous happening. St Peter is kneeling with his hand on his breast, St Thomas is pointing at the Virgin, and St Andrew in a red cloak is stretching forward. In the middle, the madonna, slight and bathed in light, is surrounded by by a host of angels that accompany her joyfully hailing. Above is the Eternal Father, serene and noble majesty, calling the Virgin to him with a look of love.

The painting is signed as “Ticianus” low down in the middle of the picture.

In 1516 Titian made contact with Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara for whom he was to work for a decade on pictures destined for the Alabaster Chamber. In this period he painted a series of magnificent paintings of Dionysian themes: the Worship of Venus in the Prado, The Andrians (Bacchanalia), also in the Prado, and Bacchus and Ariadne, in the National Gallery, London. In these paintings Titian combines a richness of colouristic expression with a great formal elegance. These are the elements which characterize this whole so-called “classic” phase of Titian’s development and which is dominated by the supreme masterpiece of the Frari Assumption of the Virgin.

The Bacchanal of the Andrians was the last in the series, The subjects are taken from classical descriptions of works of art: here Titian reproduces a picture the writer Philostratus saw in Naples in the second century AD, representing the people of the Greek Island of Andros making merry on the river of wine that Dionysus had created. This splendid opportunity to emulate the past was not lost on Titian, whose brilliant naturalism and marvellous colour declare him the equal of Apelles.

The subject of this painting refers to the arrival of Bacchus on the island of Andros, where his followers await him in varying degrees of inebriation, as they drink from the island’s river flowing not with water, but with wine. The god himself is not present, but his ship can be glimpsed in the distance and the Bacchanalian essence is exalted in the flask of wine held unsteadily aloft. The shifting shadows may evoke the checkered moods of intemperance, but there is no moral disapproval and the mood is elegiac and tolerant. The choice of subject may reflect not only the hedonism of the patron but also the agricultural prosperity of the Ferrarese countryside, replete with food and drink.

The man leaning on his elbow in the centre derives from Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina cartoon, while the drunken nymph to the far right is based on a classical statue of Ariadne.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Camille Saint-Saëns: Samson et Delila, Act III, Scene 2, Bacchanal

Titian was not afraid to depict humorously the more drastic aspects of the bacchanal.

In 1516 Titian made contact with Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara for whom he was to work for a decade on pictures destined for the Alabaster Chamber. In this period he painted a series of magnificent paintings of Dionysian themes: the Worship of Venus in the Prado, The Andrians (Bacchanalia), also in the Prado, and Bacchus and Ariadne, in the National Gallery, London. In these paintings Titian combines a richness of colouristic expression with a great formal elegance. These are the elements which characterize this whole so-called “classic” phase of Titian’s development and which is dominated by the supreme masterpiece of the Frari Assumption of the Virgin.

Titian’s sources for the Bacchus and Ariadne were a variety of classical texts (especially Catullus and Ovid), all of them concerning Ariadne, the daughter of the king of Crete. Because of her love for Theseus, she helped him escape her father’s labyrinth by means of a ball of thread. However, Theseus deserted her on Naxos while they were returning to Athens. There, she became the lover of the god Bacchus. Above her, already visible, is a crown of stars representing the “Corona Borealis”, into which she (or, according to a different tradition, her bridal head-dress) is eventually transformed.

This painting is among Titian’s most Raphaelesque, particularly in the contrapposto of Ariadne and the controlled energy of Bacchus and his train, who seem more numerous than they really are. To achieve colouristic brilliance, Titian has used the strongest pigments then available on the market.

Titian executed three ceiling paintings (Sacrifice of Isaac; Cain and Abel; David and Goliath) for the ceiling of the church Santo Spirito in Isola (now they are in the sacristy of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice). These paintings are characterized by the spiraling movement of the figures, the counterpoised poses and the strong intersecting diagonals. In these canvases we see Titian’s Mannerism at its height.

Alessandro Farnese (1520—1589) was the son of Pier Luigi Farnese and the grandson of Pope Paul III. Though he was showered with ecclesiastical honors by his grandfather, he did not succeed in becoming pope when Paul died in 1549. Nonetheless, he continued to exert considerable influence on Roman politics until his death, and was in addition, a particularly important patron of the arts.

This portrait is the earliest surviving example of a series of portraits Titian painted of Emperor Charles V. It was almost certainly painted in Bologna in 1533, for numerous sources describe the emperor’s clothing at this time as being very similar to what he is shown wearing in the painting. It is generally accepted that in this picture Titian was copying a portrait made by the Austrian artist Jakob Seisenegger, though there have also been suggestions that the opposite is the case. Titian projects his subject’s masterful personality more convincingly, however, by focusing on the Emperor’s height, choosing a lower viewpoint and restricting ambient space.

Executed for the church of San Rocco and long venerated as miraculous, this painting is a German-style interpretation of a traditional Venetian devotional model.

In this painting, which is also known as Christ and the Cyrenian, Titian vividly conveys the intense, physical suffering experienced by Christ as he is bowed down by the weight of the cross. The beholder is encouraged to meditate on the physical realism of the scene and empathise with Christ.

In the 1570s Titian executed an outstanding series of paintings dedicated to the passion of Christ. This include the Crowning with Thorns (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), Mocking of Christ (Art Museum, St. Louis), Ecce Homo (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg), and two versions of Christ Carrying the Cross (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and Museo del Prado, Madrid). In these works, pervaded with immense dramatic power, the brushstrokes gradually dissolve into rapidly applied dabs of pigment. The aim is no longer to reproduce nature but to directly convey the raw emotion of the painter, who is participating fully in the tragic subject of his picture.

Christ and the Adulteress depicts the gospel story in which Christ was challenged by the Pharisees to condemn a woman caught in the act of adultery. Although formerly widely considered to be by Giorgione, it is now generally held to be by the young Titian. Its revolutionary character is clearly evident when seen against the background of the artistic tradition represented by Giovanni Bellini. Fifteenth-century compositions, even those with narrative subjects, tended to be calm and static. Here, by contrast, poses and gestures are bold and vehement, the figures possess a new physical robustness, and the colours of the draperies are glowingly sensuous. Whereas fifteenth-century pictures were typically painted on the smooth, glassy surface of primed and polished wood, this - like virtually all of Titian’s subsequent work - is painted on the more uneven surface of canvas, and the oil paint applied with more visible brushstrokes.

This painting was originally some 50 cm wider than it is now, as is evident from an early copy which shows the additional figure of a man wearing highly fashionable striped hose; the portrait-like head survives as a fragment, also now in Glasgow.

There is considerable disagreement about the attribution of this work to Titian. While the manner in which the colours are applied is reminiscent of his late work, the extraordinary spatial effect, which is mainly produced by the turning of the thief’s cross, can be observed in none of his later works. The way the light falls would also be an unusual feature in Titian’s works in the 1560s. If this indeed is not one of his paintings, it is nonetheless one of the highest quality examples of the adoption of elements of his style by other artists.

Painted for Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino, this work contrasts with portraits Titian executed in the same period. Adhering to an earlier practice, he made a preliminary drawing, maintaining clear contours he perhaps considered more seemly than chiaroscuro for a representation of Christ.

In the Crowning with Thorns, painted for the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, the space is compressed in the scene by arranging the figures on a shallow plane delimited by the wall of a building. There are explicit references to antiquity: the figure of Christ derives from the celebrated Laocoon, an antique statue discovered in Rome in 1506, an archetypal exemplum doloris (“example of pain”). Another famous antique sculptural fragment, the Belvedere Torso, provides the model for the upper body of the torturer on the left. With the inclusion of the bust of Tiberius Caesar, a direct reference to the Roman authorities who condemned Christ, Titian also pays homage to the classical past.

This is a brutal scene, in which Christ’s tormentors twist the crown onto his head with their canes, but the violence is relieved and Christ’s suffering exalted by the beauty of the colours, which especially in the blue and green to the right are colder than usual in deference to Titian’s Roman sources. In Christ’s foot extended on the steps, however, Titian pulls out all the Venetian stops and one can sense the blood flowing through the veins under the flesh. The pattern of the canes slices through the massed figures like the strokes of a knife, forming a Trinitarian triangle to the right of Christ’s head. An inimitable Titian touch is the cane lying unused on the foremost step, still, shadowless and deadly, like a snake.

In his final years Titian painted a series of paintings dedicated to the passion of Christ. These works, which include the Crowning with Thorns, are pervaded with immense dramatic power, the brushstrokes gradually dissolve into rapidly applied dabs of pigment. The aim is no longer to reproduce nature but to directly convey the raw emotion of the painter, who is participating fully in the tragic subject of his picture.

Particularly impressive about this painting are the wonderful colours and the modulated lights on the body of Christ, as well as the carefully painted landscape, which is a rare feature in Titian’s late work. The ruins, the city in the background, and the marvellous colours of the hills are reminiscent of Veronese’s early landscapes. The cross, isolated in front of the broad landscape, gives the painting a timeless quality that emphasizes its devotional function. The work’s theme is not the moment of the crucifixion, but the loneliness of death.

The painting was commissioned for the San Domenico in Ascona by the Cornovi family, who had recently moved to Ancona from Venice.

Though this was painted only a little later than the superb Crucifixion in the Escorial, there are already clear signs that Titian’s style has progressed to the point where he is painting purely with colour. The scene with the mourners is taking place only in the foreground. The sky and the figures under the Cross are all painted in dark colours. Blue and black dominate the scene; white is used to produce dramatic highlights. Titian succeeds in representing St Dominic’s sorrow as he embraces the Cross almost entirely by means of the distribution of light and the broad sweeping brushstrokes.

The stark placement of the three mourners in the immediate foreground, inviting us to share their suffering, makes this one of the first masterpieces of Counter-Reformation art, where narrative clarity and emotional empathy were denoted as artistic priorities. The Virgin and saints are arranged in a crescent, like the head of an anchor, at the base of the cross. On the left, the Virgin sways in solitary grief, while in the centre St Dominic, with exaggeratedly long fingers, feverishly clutches the base of the cross to draw strength. Christ, more fully illuminated than the others, is already beyond their reach, an effect Titian achieves by making him a little smaller than the rest and so creating a feeling of distance and separation. The blood which is pointedly depicted coursing along the sinews of his arms and down his side to soak into the loincloth also conforms to the taste and tenets of the Counter-Reformation.

It was through Aretino in 1539 that Titian first offered his services to the family of the Farnese Pope Paul III. After painting the Pope’s grandson Ranuccio in 1542, Titian’s next commission for the family was a Danaë seduced by Jupiter in the guise of a shower of gold coin. He began the canvas in Venice in 1544 for Ranuccio’s elder brother, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and when he left for Rome the following year, he took it with him to finish. Giorgio Vasari, the biographer and protege of Michelangelo, brought the Master to see it. The latter was full of compliments in Titian’s presence, but according to Vasari later complained that, though he liked the colouring and style, “it was a pity that in Venice they never learned to draw and that their painters did not have a better method of study.”

The pose is obviously Michelangelesque while the cupid is based on a statue in the style of Lysippus, which Titian would have known since it was already in Venice in the collection of Cardinal Grimani.

X-rays reveal an underlying composition close to the Venus of Urbino, but as a papal legate remarked to Cardinal Alessandro, the erotic Danaë made the Venus of Urbino look like “a Theatine nun”. The model was reputedly the Cardinal’s mistress, a courtesan named Angela.

This is another version of the highly successful series on the Danaë theme produced by Titian’s workshop. When compared to the version he painted himself, the difference in quality becomes evident. The distorted face of Danaë and her cord-like hair mock any attempt to compare her with the skillfully lit head of the Danaë in Madrid.

Between 1553 and 1554 Titian executed for the Habsburgs two “mythological fables” of clearly erotic intent, the Danaë and the Venus and Adonis, both now in the Prado, Madrid.

The Danaë is really a variation on a canvas painted ten years earlier for the Farnese family. With greater fidelity to Ovid’s text, the Cupid has now been replaced by the elderly nurse who attempts to use her apron to gather the shower of gold into which Jupiter had transformed himself in order to possess the young woman.

Danaë is frequently represented in Renaissance and Baroque painting. You can view other depictions of Danaë in the Web Gallery of Art.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

Richard Strauss: Danaë’s Love, Danaë’s monologue

This portrait is considered to be a replica in his own hand of an almost identical portrait in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, which identifies the subject as Daniele Barbaro in an inscription. The picture in Ottawa is probably that mentioned in 1545 in a letter from Pietro Aretino, which once belonged to the portrait collection of Paolo Giovio in Como. With the body turned slightly to the right and the grave, spiritual face framed by the beard and hair, Daniele Barbaro’s gaze is fixed on the viewer. His black gown reveals scarcely anything except the left hand and the book, which, as an attribute of scholarship, alludes to Barbaro’s humanistic education. Barbaro was hardly 30 years old at this date.

Titian executed three ceiling paintings (Sacrifice of Isaac; Cain and Abel; David and Goliath) for the ceiling of the church Santo Spirito in Isola (now they are in the sacristy of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice). These paintings are characterized by the spiraling movement of the figures, the counterpoised poses and the strong intersecting diagonals. In these canvases we see Titian’s Mannerism at its height.

Titian uses a very unusual iconography in this painting. David prays after defeating the Philistine giant, and the leaden sky is rent by the light of grace.

In the years following the execution of his two celebrated mythological paintings, the Diana and Callisto, and the Diana and Actaeon, Titian painted other mythological paintings for Philip II, including the Rape of Europa (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), the Death of Actaeon (National Gallery, London), and Perseus and Andromeda (Wallace Collection, London).

In the Death of Actaeon, the dramatic scene of the young hunter attacked and ripped apart by the pack of dogs takes place in a landscape of livid colours heavy with premonition.

In his later career Titian, like Veronese, developed a greater seriousness and expressive intensity, not only in his religious works, but also in his pagan mythologies. The painting Diana and Actaeon was painted as part of a series of six large mythological canvases {or poesie as Titian called them) for the principal patron of his final years, King Philip II of Spain. A very general theme underlying the series is that of the loves of the Olympian gods, and of the usually tragic circumstances for any mortals who become involved with them. The principal literary source for the paintings is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the most popular work of classical literature in the Italian Renaissance. In Diana and Actaeon, the huntsman Actaeon unwittingly enters the secret glade where the goddess Diana and her nymphs are bathing by a fountain. Diana, goddess of the hunt and the moon (hence the crescent in her jewelled headdress) was also a severe guardian of chastity, and was outraged by this intrusion. As every Renaissance viewer would have known, she immediately exacted punishment by transforming Actaeon into a stag, whereupon he was chased by his own hounds and torn to pieces.

This cruel story was chosen for his patron by Titian himself, certainly in large part for the opportunities it presented for the extensive display of female nudity. In the 1550s Philip was still a young man with presumably normal sexual appetites, and the attraction of the subject was that it invited the male spectator to share Actaeon’s experience by the fountain, without sharing the terrible consequences. However, the new climate of religious severity, towards which Philip actively contributed in his role as Most Catholic King, made erotic subject matter more problematic than it had been when Titian painted the Venus Anadyomene forty years earlier.

In his later career Titian, like Veronese, developed a greater seriousness and expressive intensity, not only in his religious works, but also in his pagan mythologies. The paintings Diana and Actaeon, and Diana and Callisto were painted as part of a series of six large mythological canvases {or poesie as Titian called them) for the principal patron of his final years, King Philip II of Spain. A very general theme underlying the series is that of the loves of the Olympian gods, and of the usually tragic circumstances for any mortals who become involved with them. The principal literary source for the paintings is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the most popular work of classical literature in the Italian Renaissance.

Diana’s nymphs were expected to be as chaste as the goddess herself. One of them, Callisto, was seduced by Jupiter who first disguised himself as Diana in order to gain the nymphs presence. In Diana and Callisto, the unfortunate Callisto is shown being stripped by her companions at the command of the chaste goddess Diana to reveal her pregnancy. Banished for her shameful state, Callisto was transformed into a bear by Jupiter’s jealous wife Juno, but was later immortalised by him as the constellation of the Great Bear.

In Titian’s painting, Diana in her grotto confronts Callisto, her robes drawn aside to reveal an unmistakable pregnancy.

The pendants Diana and Acteon and Diana and Callisto (both on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh) were formerly in the collection of Philippe Egalit�, Duc d’Orleans. After the French Revolution they were purchased by the immensely wealthy Duke of Bridgewater and still belong to his descendants.

Titian used his assistants not just to help him meet his burdensome official obligations, but even more importantly to produce replicas and variants of his most popular compositions. Titian in his later career regularly made - or had made by his shop - replicas or variants of his works as a matter of course, and only later sought to identify a suitable buyer for them. The Diana and Callisto, now in Vienna, belonged to a series of workshop variants of the mythologies earlier painted for King Philip II of Spain.

This is a workshop copy of the official portrait Titian painted for the Hall of Greater Council in the Palazzo Ducale in c. 1537. All paintings in the Hall were destroyed in 1577 in the second terrible fire of the decade. This official image is much tamer than the later portrait of c. 1545 - painted some seven years after the death of Gritti - which was conceived along much less formal lines, consequently conveying a sense of the larger-than-life personality of the most effective Venetian doge of the sixteenth century.

This painting is in the Sala delle Quattro Porte in the Palazzo Ducale.

Though the painting was commissioned as early as 1555, it was not completed by the time Titian died. It is not only a votive picture for Doge Antonio Grimani (1436—1523), who is shown kneeling in front of a personification of the Faith, but is also a complex allegory of Venice. In the background the silhouette of the city is visible, and in the foreground St Mark, the patron saint of Venice, appears opposite the Doge. Most of the work was probably carried out by his workshop.

Titian’s tasks as official painter to the Venetian Republic included the execution of votive paintings commissioned by the doges. He worked extremely slowly on this large painting of an allegorical figure of Faith appearing to Doge Antonio Grimani, depicted in a theatrical pose of devotion. This is the best preserved part of a badly damaged painting. Left unfinished at the painter’s death and saved from a fire in the Doge’s Palace, it was completed by Marco Vecellio, Titian’s nephew. The painting is in the Sala delle Quattro Porte.

In the background, St Mark’s Square, and in front of it the lagoon and the numerous ships upon which the wealth and safety of Venice were founded emerge as from a haze of colour.

In 1515-17 Titian designed a large woodcut representing the Drowning of the Pharaoh’s Host in the Red Sea. The subject, taken from Exodus 14:20-31, shows the miraculous salvation of the Israelites when the Red Sea, having parted to allow them to cross, rolled back again to drown the pursuing Egyptian army. The very high artistic and technical quality of the print implies that Titian exercised close supervision over the cutting of the woodblocks by specialized craftsmen.

This painting was executed for Giovanni d’Anna, a wealthy Venetian merchant, who had a palace, the Palazzo d’Anna, on the Grand Canal. Representing the Gospel story of how the tortured and bleeding figure of Christ was led out of the jjudgment hall by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and was delivered to the Jews to be crucified, the picture shows a composition, with its flight of steps leading to the entrance of a grand public building at one side, which in many ways resembles that of the Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple.

According to an inventory taken in 1556, Emperor Charles V took a Christ on stone with him to the monastery of Yuste, to which he retired after his abdication. It was probably this painting, which is the only known work of this type by Titian.

In creating a pair of paintings of Francesco Maria della Rovere and Eleonora Gonzaga, duke and duchess of Urbino, Titian predictably reprised many of the themes seen in Piero della Francesca’s double portrait of their predecessors, Federico da Montefeltre and Battista Sforza. Once again, the male portrait is more rugged and individualized, emphasizing military exploits and adventures. Francesco Maria poses alert in his stunningly rendered, glinting armor, his right arm and baton dramatically thrust out into the viewer’s space. Behind him a splendid, plumed parade helmet, reflecting the vibrant, pulsating red of a velvet drape, faces a jauntily angled set of lances. In marked contrast, Eleonora Gonzaga sits primly in her chair, immobile within her highly detailed but much less lovingly depicted court dress. Her pet dog lies bored on a table in front of a window. Titian’s landscape is expansive but untraversible, marked by a church tower in its idealized blue distance.

The painting commemorates the emperor’s victory over the Protestant princes at the Battle of M�hlberg on 24 April 1547. The dominant red in the foreground, visible on Charles’ helmet decorations, his sash and the horses trim, was the colour of the Catholic faction in the many religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.

This is one of Titian’s most dramatic and monumental portraits, conveying not so much the personality of the sitter as the high ideals of his imperial office. At the Battle of M�hlberg the Emperor had defeated the Schmalkadic League of Protestant princes, and in Titian’s picture he is portrayed as the archetypal Christian knight victorious against heresy - a kind of modern St George. Apart from the brilliant creation of a memorable image, Titian shows his skill in the consummate handling of textures, such as the diffusion of the evening sunlight through the landscape and the captivating sheen of the armour.

In the Entombment, the broader and more open brushwork that Titian was now developing serves to trap the light and add a torrid and glittering intensity to the colours. The dead weight of Christ’s body is accentuated by collapsing the rhythm of the figures towards the left, resisted only by the bearded figure of Nicodemus. The latter has Titian’s features, as if the artist wanted to allocate to himself a responsible role in the burial process, just as Michelangelo had portrayed himself as Nicodemus in his unfinished Pietà of c. 1550 in Florence Cathedral. The Gospels describe Christ’s tomb as being excavated out of rock, but in Titian’s interpretation it takes the form of a classical sarcophagus decorated with the Christian themes of Cain and Abel and the Sacrifice of Isaac - Old Testament events considered to prefigure the Crucifixion and Resurrection. The corner of the sarcophagus projects into the very front of the picture plane in a cutting analogy of the disciples’ grief.

The motif of the Virgin holding the limp arm of Christ is inspired by Raphael’s Entombment in the Villa Borghese and perhaps also by Aretino’s Humanity of Christ.

In this painting Titian skillfully uses the direction of the light to support the dynamics of movement that permeate the entire painting. The greatest contrast of light and shade is present on the body of Christ. The observer’s eyes are first drawn to his winding sheet and legs, before moving to his upper body, which is lying in darkness. The shadow in this area treats the subject of Christ’s death and entombment in an unusual way, using purely formal means of expression.

Titian’s most important patron in the 1530s was Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and nephew of Alfonso d’Este. The artist’s portrait of Federico is of unsurpassed poise and elegance and may have been intended to support the sitter’s matrimonial intentions. The flattery is not unalloyed. The Duke’s love of pleasure, indicated by his sumptuous costume and the pampered dog, may be subsumed by his seigneurial dignity but the slight inclination of his head and the small sensuous mouth evoke the flippant selfishness of the same Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto.

The way the dog recognizes its master would have been seen as a conventional tribute to the power of portraiture to achieve a vivid likeness.

This is one of Titian’s most beautiful works, which, in the warm and impassioned intensity of the colour, sums up the youthful period of Titian. The beautiful woman carrying flowers is thought to be Flora, the classical goddess of flowers and spring. The title of Flora goes back to an engraving which was made from the picture in the 17th century by Sandrart. This painting is one of the first of a series of portraits of ideal female beauty that Titian painted. The sheen of her reddish golden hair, the soft hue of her skin, and the just visible breast whose bareness is skillfully emphasized by her hand and the pink brocade, display Titian’s abilities as a subtle colourist and his sure feeling for sensuality.

In the 17th century, the Flora came to the Netherlands and inspired Rembrandt to paint his wife Saskia in the same guise, albeit less scantily clad.

In the 1560s Titian began to record himself and his family. His daughter Lavinia, who was born after 1530, has been associated with the Girl with a Fan as well as with the Young Woman with a Dish of Fruit, and both portraits are characterized by a pride and affection that suggests a strong personal bond with the artist. The Prado Self-Portrait of c. 1560 shows Titian as withdrawn and distant in near profile, in contrast to an earlier Self-Portrait in Berlin, where he appears without the tools of his trade but as if staring critically at an unseen canvas as described by Palma Giovane.

This painting is in exceptionally good condition, allowing one to admire the stiff silk of the dress conjured up by a dense weave of brushstrokes.

Giulia Varano was the wife of Guidobaldo II della Rovere, duke of Urbino. They married in 1534.

This fragment was part of the Christ and the Adulteress, as shown by an early copy of the painting. It represents the head of a man wearing highly fashionable striped hose.

This drawing is a study for the Battle of Spoleto, painted for the Palazzo Ducale in Venice in 1538. It formed part of a larger narrative cycle running round three walls of the Hall of the Greater Council. Unfortunately, all paintings in the Hall were destroyed in 1577 in the second terrible fire of the decade.

The deep apse is divided vertically by slender ribbing, and illuminated by four orders of lancet windows, separated by elegant quatrefoil decorative motifs. Above the high altar rises Titian’s celebrated altarpiece of the Assumption.

In his Isabella d’Este, Titian combines the category of the anonymous beauty with that of the portrait. By 1536, when she saw it finished, Isabella, one of the most admired and sophisticated women of the Renaissance, was a lot older than she looks here, and Titian was specifically asked to make use of a portrait by Francia as a guide to her earlier appearance. He was clearly never expected to produce anything close to a likeness, but to render a flattering evocation of her appearance when young. Famed for her elegance, she wears a turban of her own design. Whatever the limitations of such a likeness, Titian manages to endow her with a feisty personality that evokes her wide-ranging abilities and imperious manner.

Isabella commented that Titian’s portrait was “so pleasing that I doubt that at the age I am represented I could have possessed all the beauty it contains.”

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, which formed the headquarters of the German merchant community of Venice, occupies a prominent site on the Grand Canal, immediately next to the Rialto Bridge. The decoration of the principal, western fa�ade of the Fondaco was entrusted to Giorgione, while Titian was allocated the much less important fa�ade to the south, which looks on to a narrow street. Titian’s frescoes, painted c. 1509, included trophies, children engaged in combat, and other images of struggle and warfare. The dominant image, placed directly above the entrance portal, was interpreted as a representation of Judith. It survives as a scarcely legible fragment, but its composition is recorded in an engraving by Jacopo Piccini.

This masterpiece, one of the finest and most poetical of Titian’s creations, is unanimously dated by the critics at around 1515. The main focus is on neither the horrific events nor the religious significance of the scene. It is not even clear if this is Salome with the head of the Baptist, or Judith with the head of Holofernes. The former is suggested by the displaying of the head on a platter, the latter by the presence of the female servant who is a feature of the traditional iconography of the Judith story.

Both at the time when the painting was in the collection of the Duchess of Urbino, and later, when it belonged to the Aldobrandini family, it was believed to depict Herodias, Herod’s wife and the mother of Salome. However, a number of foreign visitors who had an opportunity to see Titian’s painting in the Villa Aldobrandini at Montecavallo thought it to be a representation of Judith. This common belief is also reflected in modern historiography. In fact, if the figure in the painting were Herodias, dressed here in bright red, carrying the head of John the Baptist on a tray, then the girl in the green dress on her right would have to be Salome. Yet there is nothing regal about the two women, while the seductive attitude of the main figure is well suited to the Jewish heroine Judith, a rich and attractive widow who, with her oppressor Holofernes decapitated, now holds the head with the assistance of her maid. This theme was often treated as a symbol of virtue.

That this interpretation of the subject may be the correct one is also confirmed by the fact that there is a 1533 record of a Judith by Titian in the collection of Alfonso I d’Este. Considered lost, there cannot be the slightest doubt that it is this painting, which comes in fact from the collection of Lucrezia d’ Este, granddaughter of Alfonso I.

The painting, with its wonderful colour contrasts of red, green, and white, and its delightful female figures, is one of Titian’s depictions of an ideal of female beauty. This is why it was frequently copied.

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Alessandro Scarlatti: La Giuditta, oratorio, Part I (excerpts)

In 1574, Titian described this painting in a letter to the secretary of Philip II as being “the naked woman with the landscape and satyr”. Its present name, Pardo Venus, derived from the Spanish palace of El Pardo, where the painting was for a long time kept. The reclining naked figure was interpreted as a Venus. In fact, the painting depicts the moment when Jupiter, in the form of a satyr, approached Antiope, a king’s daughter, who will give birth to twins.

The representation of the nude woman shows the direct influence of Giorgione’s Venus in Dresden. Titian never painted independent landscapes, however, the landscape plays an important role in his paintings when the subject allows it.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony in C Major (Jupiter-Symphony) K 551

The female portrait, known by its complimentary epithet “La Bella”, is one of the most famous paintings of the later years of Titian’s artistic career, confirming his reputation as a master portrait painter and founder of the Venetian painting movement. The painting shows the three-quarter-length portrait of a young woman wearing a precious, exquisitely tailored dress in blue damask fabric with subtle gold embroidery and slashed sleeves in burgundy velvet to show the white fabric puffs of the blouse underneath, and a fur draped over her right hand with casual elegance. This nonchalance is mirrored in the way the woman’s face captures the observer’s attention, as its features adhere to the precise aesthetic canons of the Italian Renaissance such as a high forehead, slender eyelashes, vibrant gaze and black eyes, pale cheeks daubed with red, breast radiant with the colours of the moon and the honey-coloured hair styled in knotted braids.

Like so many of Titian’s other works, it is likely that this portrait is an idealized portrait of female beauty, and not a precise depiction of any one person. This is corroborated by the Duke of Urbino, who, in a letter he wrote on May 2nd 1536, simply described it as the “lady in the blue dress”. The painting gains its opulent, sensuous appeal mainly from its masterful combination of colour values, from the blue dress with red sleeves, through to the flesh tones and the golden brown, skillfully plaited hair.

This deeply felt painting is one of the numerous devotional works created by Titian in his final years.

The composition of the picture, opening out onto a landscape, is reminiscent of a type of portrait frequently used by Titian and his workshop. The position of the Madonna, whose lower body is mainly in the centre of the picture and whose upper body is turned to the left half, is a further example of Titian’s unusual talent for composition - he was always finding new ways of developing long-established pictorial formulas.

The large heavy figure in this picture can be compared to the sculptures of Sansovino and Michelangelo.

The represented saints are Catherine and the young John the Baptist. The figures are placed well to the foreground, juxtaposed against the wooded background. This painting was possibly painted for the Duke of Mantua.

In 1529 Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua ordered three more works from Titian. The only one to survive is probably identifiable with the Madonna and Child with St Catherine and a Shepherd, known as the Madonna of the Rabbit. With a look of winning encouragement the Virgin restrains the rabbit, a symbol of fecundity, so that the child can clamber down and play with it. The richly dressed St Catherine, proffering her charge like a lady-in- waiting, introduces a courtly aspect, and in fact the Giorgionesque shepherd in the background may be a portrait of Federico himself: Since x-rays show that the Madonna’s head was originally turned in his direction. In the foreground, the delicate wild flowers recall the locus amoenus or “idyllic setting” of classical poetry, and in the park-like landscape we see the Arcadia of the Concert Champêtre refracted through the smiling fertility of the Ferrara Bacchanals. Nowhere else does Titian so successfully integrate the traditions of the Sacra Conversazione and the Pastoral.

This painting mainly captivates through the beauty of its colours and the marvellous landscape. The small format is a sign that this was a private devotional picture. What at first sight appears to be a normal picture of the Madonna gains an additional, very private dimension as a result.

One of Titian’s earliest religious paintings, the Madonna and Child with Sts Anthony of Padua and Roch was until fairly recently attributed to Giorgione, and the Virgin with her delicate, oval face and crisp folds of red drapery denned by shadow descends from the more remote and queenly Virgin of Giorgione’s only altarpiece, the Castelfranco Madonna.

This painting is much larger and more ambitious than Titian’s other works from this early period. Notable is the monumental contrapposto of the Virgin seen from low down.

In the relaxed and confident painting Titian brings the charms of the family circle to the well-tried formula of the Sacra Conversazione. St Dorothy’s indulgent smile is that of a visiting relative while the noble St George irresistibly recalls the avuncular bore, always right, taking himself very seriously, and full of the best and dullest advice. The green curtain bracketing the brighter colours of the figures supports this mood of secure domesticity.

X-rays show that both the child and St George originally faced outwards, which would have made the picture more old-fashioned and more formal.

The powerful, animated figures, together with a view of Venice in the background, are typical of Titian’s style in the early 1520s. Though it certainly took its inspiration from Raphael’s Madonna da Foligno, painted about 1511, Titian’s figures appear to possess a much higher degree of reality because of their expressive movements and the rich variety of colour in which they are painted.

Titian included a view of the Doge’s Palace (Palazzo Ducale) and the church of St Mark’s in Venice. This gives the work a further dimension of realism, enriching the interrelated levels of reality created by the coexistence within the picture of the Madonna, the donor and the saints.

In this half-length picture of the Madonna, Titian was still keeping entirely to a pictorial idiom typical of Giovanni Bellini. St Joseph is on the left, and Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, on the right of the Madonna. John, depicted as a naked boy, is giving the Madonna the cherries that give the painting its name.

Titian was neither such a universal scholar as Leonardo, nor such an outstanding personality as Michelangelo, nor such a versatile and attractive man as Raphael. He was principally a painter, but a painter whose handling of paint equalled Michelangelo’s mastery of draughtsmanship. This supreme skill enabled him to disregard all the time-honoured rules of composition, and to rely on colour to restore the unity which he apparently broke up.

We need but look at Madonna with Saints and Members of the Pesaro Family which was begun only some twenty years after Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna with saints to realize the effect which his art must have had on contemporaries. It was almost unheard of to move the Holy Virgin out of the centre of the picture, and to place the two administering saints - St Francis, who is recognizable by the Stigmata (the wounds of the Cross), and St Peter, who has deposited the key (emblem of his dignity) on the steps of the Virgin’s throne - not symmetrically on each side, as Giovanni Bellini had done, but as active participants of a scene.

In this altar-painting, Titian had to revive the tradition of donors’ portraits, but did it in an entirely novel way. The picture was intended as a token of thanksgiving for a victory over the Turks by the Venetian nobleman Jacopo Pesaro, and Titian portrayed him kneeling before the Virgin while an armoured standard-bearer drags a Turkish prisoner behind him. St Peter and the Virgin look down on him benignly while St Francis, on the other side, draws the attention of the Christ Child to the other members of the Pesaro family, who are kneeling in the corner of the picture. The whole scene seems to take place in an open courtyard, with two giant columns which rise into the clouds where two little angels are playfully engaged in raising the Cross.

Titian’s contemporaries may well have been amazed at the audacity with which he had dared to upset the old-established rules of composition. They must have expected, at first, to find such a picture lopsided and unbalanced. Actually it is the opposite. The unexpected composition only serves to make it gay and lively without upsetting the harmony of it all. The main reason is the way in which Titian contrived to let light, air and colours unify the scene. The idea of making a mere flag counterbalance the figure of the Holy Virgin would probably have shocked an earlier generation, but this flag, in its rich, warm colour, is such a stupendous piece of painting that the venture was a complete success.”

Titian was neither such a universal scholar as Leonardo, nor such an outstanding personality as Michelangelo, nor such a versatile and attractive man as Raphael. He was principally a painter, but a painter whose handling of paint equalled Michelangelo’s mastery of draughtsmanship. This supreme skill enabled him to disregard all the time-honoured rules of composition, and to rely on colour to restore the unity which he apparently broke up.

We need but look at Madonna with Saints and Members of the Pesaro Family which was begun only some fifteen years after Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna with saints to realize the effect which his art must have had on contemporaries. It was almost unheard of to move the Holy Virgin out of the centre of the picture, and to place the two administering saints - St Francis, who is recognizable by the Stigmata (the wounds of the Cross), and St Peter, who has deposited the key (emblem of his dignity) on the steps of the Virgin’s throne - not symmetrically on each side, as Giovanni Bellini had done, but as active participants of a scene.

In this altar-painting, Titian had to revive the tradition of donors’ portraits, but did it in an entirely novel way. The picture was intended as a token of thanksgiving for a victory over the Turks by the Venetian nobleman Jacopo Pesaro, and Titian portrayed him kneeling before the Virgin while an armoured standard-bearer drags a Turkish prisoner behind him. St Peter and the Virgin look down on him benignly while St Francis, on the other side, draws the attention of the Christ Child to the other members of the Pesaro family, who are kneeling in the corner of the picture. The whole scene seems to take place in an open courtyard, with two giant columns which rise into the clouds where two little angels are playfully engaged in raising the Cross.

Titian’s contemporaries may well have been amazed at the audacity with which he had dared to upset the old-established rules of composition. They must have expected, at first, to find such a picture lopsided and unbalanced. Actually it is the opposite. The unexpected composition only serves to make it gay and lively without upsetting the harmony of it all. The main reason is the way in which Titian contrived to let light, air and colours unify the scene. The idea of making a mere flag counterbalance the figure of the Holy Virgin would probably have shocked an earlier generation, but this flag, in its rich, warm colour, is such a stupendous piece of painting that the venture was a complete success.”

Titian was neither such a universal scholar as Leonardo, nor such an outstanding personality as Michelangelo, nor such a versatile and attractive man as Raphael. He was principally a painter, but a painter whose handling of paint equalled Michelangelo’s mastery of draughtsmanship. This supreme skill enabled him to disregard all the time-honoured rules of composition, and to rely on colour to restore the unity which he apparently broke up.

We need but look at Madonna with Saints and Members of the Pesaro Family which was begun only some fifteen years after Giovanni Bellini’s San Zaccaria Altarpiece to realize the effect which his art must have had on contemporaries. It was almost unheard of to move the Holy Virgin out of the centre of the picture, and to place the two administering saints - St Francis, who is recognizable by the Stigmata (the wounds of the Cross), and St Peter, who has deposited the key (emblem of his dignity) on the steps of the Virgin’s throne - not symmetrically on each side, as Giovanni Bellini had done, but as active participants of a scene.

In this altar-painting, Titian had to revive the tradition of donors’ portraits, but did it in an entirely novel way. The picture was intended as a token of thanksgiving for a victory over the Turks by the Venetian nobleman Jacopo Pesaro, and Titian portrayed him kneeling before the Virgin while an armoured standard-bearer drags a Turkish prisoner behind him. St Peter and the Virgin look down on him benignly while St Francis, on the other side, draws the attention of the Christ Child to the other members of the Pesaro family, who are kneeling in the corner of the picture. The whole scene seems to take place in an open courtyard, with two giant columns which rise into the clouds where two little angels are playfully engaged in raising the Cross.

Titian’s contemporaries may well have been amazed at the audacity with which he had dared to upset the old-established rules of composition. They must have expected, at first, to find such a picture lopsided and unbalanced. Actually it is the opposite. The unexpected composition only serves to make it gay and lively without upsetting the harmony of it all. The main reason is the way in which Titian contrived to let light, air and colours unify the scene. The idea of making a mere flag counterbalance the figure of the Holy Virgin would probably have shocked an earlier generation, but this flag, in its rich, warm colour, is such a stupendous piece of painting that the venture was a complete success.”

The monumental apparatus in this painting includes an extraordinary gallery of portraits.

In the latter part of his career Titian continued to give much care to portraits, though painting fewer. The most flamboyant is the Portrait of a Man in Military Costume dateable to the early 1550s. He is portrayed so theatrically that it is hard to take him seriously. Titian only adopted the full-length format for clients of the highest rank and surprisingly in so swagger an image the sitter has escaped identification. His outfit also needs to be better understood since it seems halfway between a military and a hunting costume.

The identity of the subject of this life-size painting is unknown, probably it represents Ferrante Gonzaga (1507-1557), a successful commander under Charles V and later viceroy of Sicily and governor of Milan. The Cupid fiddling with his magnificently decorated helmet sets the portrait in an allegorical-mythical context.

The sitter on the painting is an unknown young man. It is remarkable that the energetic hands of the man get a special emphasize in the composition.

Here the muted grays, blacks and whites make individual highlights of colour - such as the sitters blue eyes, red lips, and flushed ear lobes, and the chain around his neck — all the more prominent. The casual though clearly contrived pose, emphasized by the signet ring on his right hand, together with the unified use of colour, clearly differentiate this portrait from Titian’s portraits of rulers, which are characterized by stiff poses and a colourful splendour.

The biographer Giorgio Vasari, in his Life of Titian, describes a similar portrait which he says could easily have been mistaken for a Giorgione if Titian had not signed it. This portrait was erroneously identified by early critics as the portrait of Ariosto; it is perhaps a likeness of Titian’s earliest patron, a member of the noble Barbarigo family.

In his early period, Titian’s portraits are strongly realistic. The painting in its gripping tonal palpability and attention to detail, such as the stitching in the satin, has much in common with Giorgione’s late portraits. But Titian, somewhat competitively, carries Giorgione’s realism a step further in the way the sleeve billows out and invades our space, extending the boundaries of Giorgionismo in a burst of hyperrealism. The sitter’s expression is arrogant, typical of the male dandy. The figure stands out in bold relief against the plain background and the colour emphasizes the unusual lighting, revealing the mood of the sitter as well as capturing his physical presence.

In December of 1567 Titian sent to Spain his second Martyrdom of St Lawrence, destined for the high altar of the monastic church of St Lawrence at the Escorial. Here too, he repeats the composition used earlier for the altarpiece of the same subject for the church of the Crociferi, completed in 1559, but handles it in a more tortured way, giving free rein to the expressiveness of his late style.

There is another version of this picture painted on wood in Vienna. It is debated which is the original, however it is certain the both were executed in the workshop of Titian.

Paintings showing the grieving Virgin were popular devotional images. This Mater Dolorosa with outstretched hands was painted in 1553-54 as the counterpart of Ecce Homo, which Titian painted for the emperor in 1548. It was was commissioned by Mary of Hungary, the elder sister of Emperor Charles V.

One of numerous versions of this theme painted by Titian and his workshop in the 1550s, this Mater Dolorosa with clasped hands is particularly impressive because of the delicate colour scheme of the blue cloak, pink garment, and saffron yellow veil. Inventories tell us that Charles V also took a Madonna on wood, together with the Ecce Homo, with him to the monastery of Yuste. Some authors assume that this is the work in question.

In his last years Titian painted a series of paintings dedicated to the Passion of Christ. These include: Crowning with Thorns (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), Mocking of Christ (Art Museum, St. Louis), Ecce Homo (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg) and two versions of Christ Carrying the Cross (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg and Museo del Prado, Madrid). In these works, pervaded with immense dramatic power, the brushstrokes gradually dissolve into rapidly applied dabs of pigment. The aim is no longer to reproduce nature but to directly convey the raw emotion of the painter, who is participating fully in the tragic subject of the picture.

The Latin title (literally ‘Do not touch me’) refers to Christ’s first miraculous apparition after his death, when he reveals himself to Mary Magdalene. Finding the tomb empty, she mistakes him for a gardener, and implores him to tell her where he has moved Christ’s body. As he calls out her name she recognises him and, leaning on her jar of ointment, reaches out, saying, ‘Master’. But he replies, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father’ (John 20:17). The theme was very rare in Venetian art at this time. This picture should be understood, however, as a devotional image of a popular penitent saint elaborated into a narrative.

Despite some awkwardness in the construction of the figures, Christ and Magdalene fit in harmoniously into the wonderful landscape that takes up most of the picture.

The paintings dating from the very earliest years of Titian’s career, such as the Orpheus and Eurydice, reflect his deep interest in the realistic depiction of the natural world.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Cristoph Willibald Gluck: Orfeo, Act I, Orpheus’ aria in G Major