ЗападноеврЗападноевропейское искусство от Джотто до Рембрандта

In the Madonna of the House of Pesaro, 1519-26, Titian applied his triangular compositional principle to the traditional Venetian Madonna group. The symmetry is broken up by a radical view from one side. The scene is a portico of the Virgin's palace. At the steps plunging diagonally into depth Titian painted the kneeling members of the Pesaro family and an armoured figure who gives the Virgin as a trophy a Turk, taken in battle. The columns are seen diagonally, their capitals are outside the frame. At the top clouds float before the columns, on which stand child angels with the Cross. The colours are rich and deep.

Titian's portraits do not often sparkle with colour as the male costume of the sixteenth century was black. In his Man with the Glove Titian's triangular principle is embodied in the balanced relationship of the gloved and ungloved hands to the shoulders and the youthful face. The carefully modelled hands and features are characteristic of Titian's portraits. Even in this picture, dominated by black and by the soft greenishgray background, colour is everywhere dissolved in the glazes, which mute all sharp contrasts.

A subject that occupied Titian in his mature years is the nude recumbent Venus – a pose originally devised by Giorgione. In 1538 Titian painted the Venus of Urbino for the duke of Camerino. The figure relaxes in ease on a coach in a palace interior whose inlaid marble floor and wall hangings make gold, greenish, soft red-and-brown foil for her beautiful body, the floods of her warm, light brown hair. Pure colour rules in the picture of Titian's middle period. In his later years form appealed to Titian less; substance itself was almost dissolved in the movement of colour.

In 1546 Titian painted a full-length Portrait of Pope Paul III and his Grandsons. Undoubtedly, this painting was carried to a point that satisfied both artist and patron. The brushstrokes are free and sweeping. But the question still arises whether the picture is really finished. The sketchy technique characteristic of the backgrounds in Titian's early works was applied by the artist to the whole picture. Veils of pigment transform the entire painting into a free meditation in colour. Colour indeed, is the principle vehicle of Titian's pictorial message.

In the works of his extremely old age, form was revived and colour grew more brilliant. Titian's late paintings of pagan subjects are unrestrained in their power and beauty. The devices of rapid movement and excellent colour, ignoring details were used to increase emotional effect in the very late Crowning with Thorns, probably painted about 1570, six years before the artist's death. The hail of brushstrokes creates cloudy shapes. The agony of Christ and the fury of his tormentors are expressed in storms of colour. The last religious works of Titian reached a point beyond which only Rembrandt in the seventeenth century could proceed.

Make sure you know how to pronounce the following words:

Titian; Giorgione; Venus; Cupid; Venice; Venetian; Gothic; bacchanal; Veronese; sarcophagus; Naples; Alpine; Susannah; profane

Notes

Sacred and Profane Love – «Любовь земная и небесная»

Bacchanal of the Andrians – «Вакханалия»

Assumption of the Virgin – «Ассунта»

Madonna of the House of Pesaro – «Мадонна Пезаро»

Man with the Glove – «Юноша с перчаткой»

Venus of Urbino – «Венера»

Portrait of Pope Paul III and his Grandsons – «Портрет Папы Павла III с Алессандро и Оттавио Фарнезе»

Crowning with Thorns – «Бичевание Христа»

Tasks

I. Read the text. Make sure you understand it. Mark the following statements true or false.

1. The subject of the Sacred and Profane Love has been sufficiently determined.

2. Titian never ventured into the realm of the colossal.

3. The recumbent pose was originally devised by Leonardo.

4. The colours in the Madonna of the House of Pesaro are deep.

5. Titian's portraits sparkle with colour.

6. Titian's last religious works have never been surpassed.

II. How well have you read? Can you answer the following questions?

1. Where did Titian come from? Where was he trained?

2. How did Titian implement Leonardo's ideal of the painter's standard? Was he treated like equal by the princes of his time? Can you prove it?

3. What mythological pictures are analysed in the text?

4. What does the Sacred and Profane Love represent? What is there in the background? What does Cupid do? What does this picture glorify? What colours dominate in this painting? How is this work of art interpreted?