m.g.lima - titian, tintoretto, veronese
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On Contemporary Visual Culture
p a p e r sp a N O p T I K O N
february 2010
Titin, Tintotto, Von:at Confict & Di
Mclo Guim Lim, ph.D.
Dtmnt o Viul Communiction
amicn Univity in Dubi
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Titin sl-otit
Cic 1562 ?, 86 x 65 cm
Mdid, Muo dl pdo, inv. N407
Muo Ncionl dl pdo, Mdi
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Titin, Tintotto,Von:
at Confict & Di
by Mclo Guim Lim
The exhibition, Titien, Tintoret, Vronse Rivalits Venise, ocially
translated as, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese... Rivals in Renaissance Venice,
presented in the Louvre Museum rom September 2009 to early January
2010 examined the context o proessional lie in the visual arts o Venice
in the 16th century, as a means to a more complete understanding osome important internal aspects o the evolution o Venetian painting
during that period. Conceived initially by Frederick Ilchman and shown
at the Museum o Fine Arts o Boston rom March to August 2009, it
was expanded and developed to its nal orm with the contributions o
curators Jean Habert and Vincent Delieuvin in Paris.
The artistic relationships between the celebrated masters o Venice
can be better understood, according to the exhibitions concept, when
related to the context in which these renowned painters developed their
proessional activities. A context marked by competition, rivalries,
disputes, shocks and alliances between individual artists and theirartistic actions, admirers and supporters. Disputes that were at the
same time artistic and commercial: a competition or the hearts and the
pockets o patrons, both public and private. Fame is the basis o ortune,
but one has to have the means to secure recognition, and at a given point,
at a certain stage or position in the careers o these artists, dierent
strategies will be devised and employed or that purpose.
The subject o proessional and personal rivalries among the leading
painters o the period was discussed by early writers and historians
o Renaissance and Venetian art such as Vasari, Ridol and others:
competition among the greatests helped to develop and sustain a
constant level o artistic excellence and ormal renewal. To exempliy
and examine precisely how that orm o competition was refected
in the creative process, the ideas and the works o Venetian painters
in the mid and late 16th century was the aim o the exhibition by
placing side by side paintings o the same subjects and genres by
dierent artists. Works coming rom European and North American
public collections were seen together allowing an exceptional in situ
examination and comparison.
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Tintotto sl potit
Cic 1588, 63 x 52 cm
pi, Mu du Louv,
Dtmnt d pintu, INV. 572
rMN / Jn-Gill Bizzi
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In the case o Venice, the impulse and the energies o Renaissance
art combined in the mid and second hal o the 16th century with the
relatively long overlapping period o the careers o exceptional painters.
Working side by side, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto contribute to
produce a particularly charged eld o artistic rivalries. The ensuing
competitive process presented challenges, conficts and criticism,
but also mutual infuences, exchanges and emulation among these
great masters.
The particular social and institutional context o the arts in Venice
would explain the more positive artistic results o such an intense
process o competition. Under dierent circumstances, the perils and
destructive eects o this kind o strong disputes could rapidly emerge.
Such was the case, quoted by Ilchman, o the artistic rivalries in Rome
and in other places where artists had to battle or privileged positions
within a courtly structure o art production, resulting, in the long term,
on barriers to the emergence o new talent and the stultication o
artistic development.
The show was organized along chronological and thematic subdivisions
that included portraiture (a properly Venetian obsession in the
period as a mark o social status) and power; the paragone (comparison
between the arts) and the theme o mirrors and refections (the
painting o multiple points o view in one picture); the intermixings
o the religious and the proane in works that united genre and the
monumental, piety and the sensual or the estive; the desired woman
and the woman in danger (the emale nude as an invention o Venetian
painting); the nocturnal sacred scene (expression o the new religious
sensibility o the Counter Reormation); portraits o artists and collectors
and small decorative works (the role o this last section in the general
economy o the exhibition was less clear). Oering a somewhat extended
panorama o the period, works by Jacopo Bassano, Francesco Bassano,
Palma Giovane, Domenico Tintoretto, as well as Schiavone, Sustris
and Von Achen complemented the paintings o Titian, Tintoretto and
Veronese, side by side in thematic relations and ormal disputes,
in counterpoint, in relations o mutual infuences or conrontation.
Among the main elements that composed the unique eld o the arts
in Venice in the mid 16th century we can point out the sumptuary
code o its public culture, civic art, civic patronage, the disputes o the
scuole (raternities), a diversity o sources o patronage and artistic
reedom. These elements were integrated on the basis o the enormous
commercial and industrial wealth o Venice, its technological and
military powers, maritime expansion and exchanges, as the city was
the point o articulation between the East and the West.
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Von Th pilgim o emmu
Cic 1555 1560, 242 x 416 cm
pi, Mu du Louv,
Dtmnt d pintu, INV. 146
rMN / Gd Blot
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The role o Venice as cultural mediator, as point o intersection and
bridge between the East and the West, was also one o the sources o its
artistic originality and o its pioneer role in painting in the Renaissance.
As source, that is, as model, example, or inspiration it contributed in
important ways to the development and transormations, o Renaissance
and Post-Renaissance art in Europe.
The unique urban milieu o Venice is the result o an original historical
process o state and city building o a combative and resourceul people.
Merchants and seaarers at heart, their outlook was both practical
and adventurous. The civilization they created, as it developed to its
highest orm, combined a highly structured and organized society
around a dominant, all mighty political center, conscious o its wealth
and power, with the enjoyment o material lie, an appetite or material
goods and the display o wealth. These, we can observe, ormed the
two integrated poles o a culture o public discipline and control on
one hand, and o sensual energy, o material enjoyment and gratication
on the other.
The very physical milieu o the city is one that provides a unique visual
experience and a unique dynamic sense o light, orm, space and color.
Coupled with the heritage o Byzantine and Oriental art, Venice
would produce a particular synthesis o the Renaissance artistic energies
and orms as an original creation, the only one that could and did in act,
specially in painting, rival the pioneering creative role o Florence.
The artist who showed the way to the Renaissance in Venetian art
was Giovanni Bellini. Those who consolidated the new art, giving it a
decisively indigenous character were his direct disciples: Giorgione
and Titian. Giorgione transormed the lessons o Bellini into a new
concept and a new method o painting and opened the way to the
development o the art o Titian. Ater the early death o Giorgione,
Titian developed in a personal way Giorgione s ormal concepts and
technique. The work o Titian consolidated Venetian painting as one
o the major original contributions to the art o the Renaissance.
From a historical point o view, we can consider Titian as the central
gure o the narrative o art in Renaissance Venice. He can also be
considered the point o articulation o the exhibition s narrative o
artistic disputes and exchanges in Venetian art. Titian was a supporter,
guide and at times proessional mentor o Veronese, and erce
competitor against Tintoretto or commissions and or the artistic
and aesthetic prominence and leadership, in a time in which a new
and dynamic concept o the artwork and o the artist as a creative orce
was being developed.
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Titin - sint Jom
Cic 1570-1575, 135 x 96 cm
Mdid, Muo Thyn Bonmiz, inv. 1933.4
Muo Thyn-Bonmiz, Mdid
Tintotto sint Jom
1580, 143,5 x 103 cm
Vinn, Kunthitoich Muum,
inv. N GG 46
eich Ling, Vinn
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Von sint Jom
Cic 1580, 251 x 167 cmVni, Glli dllaccdmi , inv. N. 652
scl, Flonc. su concion Minito
Bni attivit Cultuli
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The new ideas and practices we see developing in the art o Venice
in the Renaissance express a general change in the historical course
o art aecting the very oundations o arts relationship to the times,
to the social context and a change in the cultural and social roles o
artists. Indeed, we can point out that the artist as such was born in
the Renaissance. The Renaissance is the period that consolidates the
creation o the autonomous domain o the Fine Arts, as distinct rom the
sphere o the Crats, and the concomitant concept o the artist as distinct
culturally, socially, proessionally rom the cratsman or manual laborer
o previous times. The emancipation o the artist and the creation o the
autonomous work o art are the two aces o the same cultural process at
the origins o modernity.
The autonomous artist, emancipated rom the guild system both
proessionally and ideologically, exercises his activities within
transormed conditions o production requiring a new sel-
administration o proessional lie and o proessional standings
and reputation, constant vigilance in competition, inventiveness to
dierentiate himsel rom the other producers, at times new marketing
initiatives, and a great reserve o energy at all times.
The great masters o Venetian art contributed to a new awareness o
painting as an autonomous orm, beyond the linear and sculptural
ormal paradigms o the Renaissance in Florence in the previous century,
by stressing color, mass, sensual and dynamic eects, and also by
modiying the relations between the visual and the literary domains.
The obscurity o Giorgiones themes and allusions did not prevent the
recognition and the enjoyment o the high artistic quality o his work.
The audacities o orm in Tintoretto may have shocked many o his
contemporary, but did not prevent the recognition o his artistic genius.
Giorgione invented a new poetics o painting: beyond the illustration
o narratives sacred or proane, and beyond the more or less actual
record o appearances, painting is able to recreate in its own terms, that
is, in the substance o color and suraces, the eects o poetry and music,
subordinating the documental, the narrative, the illustrative elements o
the pictorial arts in a new autonomous visual synthesis.
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Jcoo Bno sint Jom
Cic 1560 -1565, 119 x 154 cm
Vni Glli dllaccdmi, inv. N. 652
scl, Flonc. su concion Minito
Bni attivit Cultuli
Titin entombmnt o Chit.
1559, 137 x 175 cm
Mdid, Muo dl pdo , inv. N440
Muo Ncionl dl pdo, Mdid
Tintotto Doition o Chit
1555 1560, 227 x 214 cm
Vni, Glli dllaccdmi, inv.N.217
scl, Flonc. su concion Minito
Bni attivit Cultuli
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Tintorettos ormal liberties and inventiveness, a Venetian response to
Mannerism, armed the mastery o the artist over his art. Remaking at
the will o patrons the aristocratic elegance o Veronese or the modern
classicism o Titian with a kind o titanic energy, Tintoretto signals as
his own whatever he borrows or appropriates by means o the visible
signature o the painters touch marking completely the orms and
surace o his canvases. The established ascendency o Titian in Venetian
art would not preclude his direct responses to Tintorettos challenge: or
instance, the nito and the non nito rub shoulders in Titians late works
such as the obscure, intriguing and ascinating Child with dogs
(1570-76) a work that illustrates Panoskys characterization o Titians
late style as a kind o sum or unity o conficting and contradictory
ormal impulses.
Beyond the dierences o origins, styles and temperaments, the three
great painters o Venice had in common the act that they were above
all... painters, that is, hommes de mtier, each one o them on his own way
a proud proessional o painting. Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto were
also accomplished amateur musicians when the workday was over. They
were certainly not uncultivated, but they were not, nor they intended to
be, scholars or writers, nor sculptors or architects, as some o the great
Florentine artists. They did not eel the need to rival writers and to
publicly justiy their art by words and concepts. The classicist element
in Titians art, or instance, is always a vivied modern classicism. He is
never an antiquarian, nor a painter-erudite.
To the Venetian masters, the art o painting can stand by itsel, that is,
produce its eects in the rst place rom its own internal energies, as
much as music and poetry. And just as music and poetry, it addresses
itsel to our sentient selves, to our substantive or material consciousness;
it is, thereore, as an expression o lie, its own justication.
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Titin Jcoo std
1567 1568, 125 x 95 cm
Vinn, Kunthitoich Muum, GG-81
Kunthitoich Muum, Vinn
Tintotto nd wokho Ottvio std
cic 1567 1568, 128 x 101 cm
amtdm, rijkmuum, Inv. sK-a-3902
rijkmuum, amtdm
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In a general way we can say that in the experience o great Venetian
art we are given a kind o a phenomenology o the body in the guise
o the body o painting: a celebration o the unity o the sensory sel
and the world. Such an experience reverberated in many ways
throughout the history o art. It was refected or instance by Rubens,
by the impressionists in the evidence o their brush strokes and in
their celebrations o color, and closer to us, by the abstract expressionists
o the 20h century with their ocus on the gestural, on the physicality
o painting and their concept o the art work as an arena or the
body in action.
But perhaps the true heir o Venetian art, one closer to the spirit o the
human adventure that was the brie splendor o Venetian civilization,
was Watteau in 18th century France. In the seduction o color and matter,
Watteau, the painter o time and human passion as remembrance, the
painter o love and melancholy, that is, o the dream that once was, can
be considered the last o the Venetians.
In Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese... Rivals in Renaissance Venice the ocus
was certainly not on the atermath but on the original creative moment:
we are transported in medias res, at perhaps the most embattled period
o the consolidation o the epoch making art o Renaissance Venice.
And here lies the interest o this particular group o works brought
together or us here and now.
Not: Ou thnk to Jn Hbt o th onl intviw in th Louv in Dcmb
o 2009; cil thnk to Clin Duvgn o h kind itnc, o th ublihd
mtil nd th hoto o th wok.
References1. Habert, J. and Delieuvin, V. (eds.) - Titien, Tintoret, Vronse... Rivalits Venise,Paris: Hazan, 20092. Panofsky, E. - Titien: questions d iconographie, transl. by E. Hazan, Paris: Hazan, 2009
Wbit link: htt://mini-it.louv./vni/indx_n.html
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