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Art History Mini-essay: Titian
Mar. 20th, 2006 08:41 pm(A quick aside: I just saw the Dada exhibit today, and it rocks so very hard. I'll put up a review of it later - I think I'm going to go see it again tomorrow.)
Venice in the mid-1500s found itself virtually unchallenged as the primary art center of the high and late Renaissance, producing paintings of great skill and innovation. Strangely, for a city with very little landscape of its own, Venetian artists such as Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione featured nature very heavily in their paintings: Bellini placed his holy figures amid inventive and imaginary landscapes, and the short-lived Giorgione's most famous painting features a moody, humid, lightning-illuminated landscape centering around a mysterious gypsy woman.
But it would be Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian as he's known in English, who would be the dominant painter of Venice. His career spanned 68 very productive years. He had a strong feel for color, making his paintings strikingly vivid and appealing. He developed a new style of brushstroke that, in the words of Frederick Hartt, converted the brush into a "vehicle for the direct perception of light through color and for the unimpeded expression of feeling."
Stories about Titian's technique tell of him turning his paintings to the wall for months, before beginning work on them with renewed ferocity. He frequently layered on thin "veils" of colored glazes - reportedly twenty, or even thirty. His desire was not for colors that lept out at the viewer, but rather sought to deepen, enrich, and unify the colors in his compositions.
( Read more... )
Venice in the mid-1500s found itself virtually unchallenged as the primary art center of the high and late Renaissance, producing paintings of great skill and innovation. Strangely, for a city with very little landscape of its own, Venetian artists such as Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione featured nature very heavily in their paintings: Bellini placed his holy figures amid inventive and imaginary landscapes, and the short-lived Giorgione's most famous painting features a moody, humid, lightning-illuminated landscape centering around a mysterious gypsy woman.
But it would be Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian as he's known in English, who would be the dominant painter of Venice. His career spanned 68 very productive years. He had a strong feel for color, making his paintings strikingly vivid and appealing. He developed a new style of brushstroke that, in the words of Frederick Hartt, converted the brush into a "vehicle for the direct perception of light through color and for the unimpeded expression of feeling."
Stories about Titian's technique tell of him turning his paintings to the wall for months, before beginning work on them with renewed ferocity. He frequently layered on thin "veils" of colored glazes - reportedly twenty, or even thirty. His desire was not for colors that lept out at the viewer, but rather sought to deepen, enrich, and unify the colors in his compositions.
( Read more... )