m.g.lima - titian, tintoretto, veronese

8/14/2019 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

Titin, Tintotto, Von: at Conlict & Di / pnotikon / Fbuy 2010


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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


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


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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paNOpTIKON On Contemporary Visual Culture

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m.g.lima - titian, tintoretto, veronese

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