1. Titian was a Venetian painter during the High Renaissance known for his mastery of color and use of oil paint. 2. He painted aristocratic and mythological works that combined realistic figures with idealized beauty, as well as developing new types of portraits for the imperial court. 3. Titian's style emphasized the immediacy of nature, with his skillful use of light, color, and brushwork allowing him to depict both realistic figures and idealized beauty.

1. Titian, Venice and Natural
Presence
If only he could draw…!
Vasari, 1568 vs. Oh, how beautiful were the
strokes with which Nature’s brushes pushed the
air back at this point, separating it from the
palaces in the way that Titian does when painting
his landscapes!’ Aretino, 1544.

2. Aristocratic works: della Rovere
and Gonzaga dukes

3. The Urbino Venus and Jupiter and Io: The
Gaze as Social Construct. (Mulvey)

4. Invention, Design and Coloring:
Dolce’s Aretino.

5. Titian and The Critics Attention
Must Be Paid.
• Aretino: The immediacy of nature, the beauty of landscape,
the truth of figures in their emotions.
• Dolce’s Aretino – Titian represents the power of color and
the culmination of the social ideal of the artist.
• Mancini – Titian’s figures are the product of wit and fire, the
use of the hand to realize the concept of the mind and most
importantly the quality of nature’s truth.
• Combines uncanny mimetic power with the ability to depict in
exceptional fashion the imperial court and the Italian
aristocracy.
• Develops new types: Poesie, State Portrait.

6. Venice: Oil Paint and Byzantium

7. Dolce to Contarini: Ekphrasis and
Poesie: Venus and Adonis.

8. Titian (1488/90-1576)
• Student of Giorgione’s.
• The greatest of the Venetian
painters of the High Renaissance.
• Has become identified with the
painterly style because of his use
of color.
• His financial success helped to
stimulate the use of oil on canvas
as the new and preferred medium
for painting.
• Painted for so long that he has
three different phases each
characterized by new ways of
working with oil paint.

9. Self Portraits: 1512 -1560; early
and late Styles.

10. Toward the Light in Parma and Venice: Titian, Assumption of the
Virgin, 1517

12. Worship of Venus,
1516-7.
. Titian was commissioned to do a series of
paintings in 1516, by the Duke of Ferrara, which
took him over a decade to complete. The
paintings, destined for the Alabaster Chamber,
were a series of Dionysian themes, one of which
was The Worship of Venus .The Worship of Venus
was Titian’s first painting in his commissioned
series, and he based the content on ancient Greek
mythology, and an ekphrasis based on the writings
of Philostratus, a Greek sophist of the Roman
imperial period in the 3rd century AD.
The painting depicts a Roman rite of worship
honoring Venus, the Roman goddess of love,
beauty, sexuality, fertility, prosperity, and victory.
On this day of worship, women would make
offerings to the goddess Venus in order to cleanse
themselves. In the painting you see two nymphs,
or female nature spirits who were linked to Venus,
standing to the right with a statue of Venus by
their side.

13. Classic vs. Tender Putti: Raphael
Galatea

15. Titian’s Inventions: Feast of the Andrians, 1524
and Mantegna Bacchanal, 1480.

16. Rubens’ Imitatio, Worship of Venus, 1524 and
1608.

17. The Court Portrait

18. Equestrian and Figures Portraits
Charles V at Muhlenberg, 1548
Durer, Triumph of Maximilian,
1525.

19. Durer, Death, the Knight and the
Devil (The Miles Christianus).

20. Imperial Precedents: Marcus Aurelius (sic.
Constantine)

21. State Portraits: Titian, Philip II and
Durer, Maximillian I

22. Pittura vaga and quickness.
• Nature: The master of
masters.
• Swells and hollows of
light – paragone, rilievo.
• Blending of Colors – no
edges in nature vs.
nature’s brush – the
basis of unity?
• Real and unreal
• “Splendour of this type
does not last.”

23. Pesaro Altarpiece, 1524: Enthroned Madonna:
St. Peter Martyr, 1530 (copy Loth, 1660).

24. The Annunciation, 1559-64 and Martyrdom of
St. Lawrence, 1567: Form Into Light.

25. Late Titian: Color and Impasto.Pieta 1576.

26. Chiaroscuro: Light and Shade as Expressive
Force.
Tintoretto, Crucifixion, 1589.

27. After Michelangelo, Day by Tintoretto
Michelangelo, Day, Medici
Chapel, 1525-8.

28. Spectacle and Suspicion: Veronese
Decoration and Reform.

29. Veronese: Surface Beauty, Solid
Form.

30. After Titian: International fame,
Natural Model.After Titian, Diana and Callisto,
1566
Rubens after Titian, Europa,
1624.