Titian’s Altarpieces:Color, innovation, and invention

Katherine Arens

1300’s Medieval altarpieces were more like icons than they were an imitation of nature. Figures were flat and the use of gold leaf and jewel toned colors predominated. They were often polytychs.

1500’s Venetians, by the Cinquecento, preferred the pala, a single picture plane. The sacra conversazione was a common convention which placed the Madonna and Child, with a group of saints, in a unified space.

1430-1516 Giovanni Bellini, one of Titian’s masters, brought increased naturalism to

painting in the Cinquecento. His mastery of perspective enabled him to

create realistic space in his paintings.

1477-1510 Giorgione and Titian embraced the Venetian emphasis on colorito and pushed naturalism further. Dolce stated that Titian "moves in step with nature, so that every one of his figures has life, movement and flesh which palpitates,"

In Florentine painters, Raphael and Michelangelo focused on disegno, or drawing, as

being the foundation of all great painting. Carefully detailed cartoons were

completed before transferring the design to canvas to be painted.

Paolo da Venezia, Coronation of Mary, mid 1300’s

Domenico Veneziano , St. Lucy Altarpiece, 1455

Giovanni Bellini, Holy Conversation, 1505

Giorgione Barbarelli da Castelfranco, Castelfranco Altarpiece, 1505

Assunta (Assumption)1516-1518

Raphael, School of Athens, cartoon and detail, 1505

Raphael, Transfiguration, cartoon and painting, 1516-1520

Titian could draw; he saw it differently than Florentine artists did. He preferred charcoal over pencil or fine point; it was more painterly.

Colorito was used by Venetians as a verb; the act of coloring or using color. It was the process that captured the imagination of Venetian painters.

Drawing was ancillary to painting in Venice; it wasn’t necessary to painstakingly pre-draw a cartoon. Color and form imitated nature; contour edges did not imitate nature and so had no place in a painting.

Titian’s Assumption 1516-1518

The Assunta was painted for the Frari, commissioned by the prior, Fra Germano da Casale.

Titian considered the placement of the painting, over the high altar in the Gothic basilica, when planning the composition.

Many of the innovations were driven by the space.

Monumental scale: it’s 22 feet high, due to viewers distance from painting.

Bold geometric composition; a direct contrast to the space and tracery windows.

Iconography, triumph of life over death in reference to the choir screen sculptural details.

Depiction of supernatural light, uniquely Titian’s innovation. He used light as a symbol of heaven andpurposely made that light an unnatural, golden light to indicate its source.

Titian’s divine light was golden and did not cast shadows as natural light would.

Madonna di Ca’ Pesaro (1519-1526)

Pesaro Altarpiece and presumed original state