Titian - Poesie

This exhibition brings together a group of masterpieces by the Renaissance artist Titian for the first time since the late 1500s. Titian called the paintings poesie because he drew on Classical poetry for their subject matter and he imagined them working as visual poems. Titian (about 1488-1576) painted the poesie between about 1551 and 1562 for Philip of Habsburg, King of Spain from 1556. The agreement between patron and artist gave Titian the freedom to choose and interpret the paintings' subjects as he liked. These works - invested with the knowledge and experience acquired during a lifetime of painting - have inspired generations of artists and helped to define our modern understanding of painting as self-expression.

The Renaissance was an age of discovery that prized rationality and intellectual inquiry beyond traditional religious doctrine. The renewed attention it brought to the individual also raised interest in our inner lives.

Titian was particularly attuned to this, linking our bodily sensation of being alive with the passions that drive us. Full of vitality and humour, but also violence and trauma, the poesie are among his supreme achievements of poetry in paint.

The reassessment of the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome was central to intellectual life in the Renaissance period. New translations into Italian of Classical poetry and literature proliferated in Venice, Titian's hometown and the centre of European publishing. Early in his career, Titian contributed one of the supreme visual statements of this new aesthetic with three pictures painted for the private study of the Duke of Ferrara. One of these, Bacchus and Ariadne, is displayed in Room 8 next door.

Since Philip had no fixed residence at the time, the poesie are unlikely to have been intended for a specific space. Titian, however seems to have recalled the Ferrara commission when painting them, adopting the same format and envisioning them in a single room. They are intensely erotic paintings, catering directly to Philip's interest in women and love of hunting. However, Titian painted them with empathy, in search of compelling stories and emotional truth. He drew on Classical poetry, most significantly the Roman poet Ovid's vivid and deeply emotive retellings of ancient myth in the Metamorphoses (early first century AD).

The poesie embrace a wide range of themes and emotional states. Through his dramatically varied painterly touch, Titian appeals directly to our senses, allowing for both comedy and tragedy and raising questions of love, desire and creativity; power, violence and death.

DANAE

ABOUT 1551-3

Danae is the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. When an oracle tells Acrisius that Danaé will give birth tO son who will kill him, he imprisons her. Attracted to Danaé, Jupiter, king of the Olympian gods, enters her chamber disguised as a shower 01 gold and impregnates her. Danae gives birth to a son, Perseus and Acrisius seals mother and child in a chest, throwing it into the ocean. After being rescued, they are taken in by Polydectes, King of Serifos an island in the Aegean Sea. Perseus grows up at his court and ends up fulfilling the oracle's prophecy during a sports contest when, guided by the gods, a discus blows from his hands and kills Acrisius.

Titian probably knew the story from its many later interpretations, verbal and visual, including Correggio's painting from about 1530 (now in the Galleria Borghese, Rome) and the great Florentine poet Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th-century version.

A slight tension runs through Danae's body as she receives the golden shower. She looks up, lips parted, loosely grasping a kerchief in expectation. A lock of her braided auburn hair caresses her left shoulder. This is the moment of Perseus' conception. While appealing to the viewer's desire, Titian invests Danae with carefree self-sufficiency. The old lady leaning in to catch the golden drops provides poignant contraste of age, of intent, of fertility. Titian paints her flesh very differently from Danae's.

Titian sent the picture to Philip, probably in Valladolid or Madrid, in the summer of 1553. Its surface is damaged, revealing Titian's free-hand brush underdrawing of the old lady. The canvas was cut down in the 18th century. It originally had the same format as the others and as we can see from a later copy (pictured), it included an image of Jupiter appearing in the fiery cloud, with his attribute of an eagle. The tip of one of his lightning bolts is still visible at top right.

DIANA AND ACTAEON

1556-9.

Following a successfu morning hunt, Actaeon decides to leave his companions and explore secluded valley. Entering a dense wood, he stumbles upon the goddess of the hunt, Diana, and her nymphs bathing in a spring. He unwittingly witnesses their nakedness. Enraged, Diana changes into stag, rendering him unable to speak so that he divulge what he has seen Actaeon runs off and only realises his transformation when he sees his reflection in a spring. The story is continued in the nearby painting The Death of Actaeon.

Titian follows Ovid's account of the story in the Metamorphoses, but introduces a wider range of reactions among the nymphs.

Here the artist expands his scope to include multiple nudes seen from a variety of perspectives. Most of the nymphs are generic types but the Black woman appears to be based on real person, probably a model he had hired.

The picture reminds us of the implications of seeing and being seen. As Diana fixes him in her sight, Actaeon, youthfully innocent, realises too late that he has seen something he should not have. The nymphs respond in a variety of ways - from shock and surprise to fascination - while a lapdog comically yaps at Actaeon's hounds. A stag's skull foreshadows his fate, and in the background a figure, presumably Diana, hunts deer - perhaps Actaeon in his transformed state.

Titian sent the picture along with its pendant, Diana and Callisto to Philip August 1559 but it only arrived at the royal court in Toledo in the autumn of 1560.

DIANA AND CALLISTO

1556-9

Jupiter, king of the Olympian gods, catches sight of the nymph Callisto, servant to Diana, goddess of the hunt. Lusting after her, he assumes the appearance of her mistress and approaches Callisto when she is alone. Once close, he reverts to his true aspect and rapes her. Knowing that Diana expects strict chastity, Callisto says nothing, but nine months later, during a communal bath int spring, her pregnancy is revealed and she is banished by Diana.

Callisto gives birth to a son. Arcas, but Jupiter's jealous wife Juno transforms her into a bear. After years roaming the orest alone, she encounters her grown-up son out hunting. Before Arcas can kill her Jupiter has mercy on them, transforming mother and son into the constellations of the Great Bear and the Herdsman.

Titian follows the account of the story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, but may also have referred to the shorter version in his Fasti.

The nymphs expose Callisto's pregnancy by tearing off her clothes. Diana dispassionately banishes her with a gesture of her hand. Callisto's eyes are bloodshot, her body language desperate. She is a rape victim ostracised by her peers. This IS one of the most expressively painted pictures in the poesie series. It contains passages oi great freedom and suggestiveness, such as the wind in the trees and the water spouting from the fountain.

Conceived as a pendant to Diana and Actaeon, the background landscape appears to carry through both paintings, while the hanging draperies and discarded hunting bows mirror one another. The two pictures are painted as lit from opposite angles Titian may have imagined them on long wall with windows on either side. This could reflect information he had received regarding their intended display.

Photography not allowed of this painting in the exhibition

VENUS AND ADONIS

ABOUT 1553-4

Adonis is born of the incestuous relation of his mother Myrrha and her father, King Cinyras of Cyprus. Ashamed at this transgression, Myrrha is transformed into a torchwood tree. Adonis is born from the bark of its trunk and raised by Proserpine, queen of the underworld. He becomes a young man of exceptional beauty and Venus, goddess of love, is smitten with him.

Venus leaves her home on Mount Olympus to go hunting with Adonis. Concerned for his safety. she warns him never to chase dangerous beasts, but he ignores this advice and is killed by boar. Arriving in her flying chariot, Venus finds Adonis bleeding to death and she weeps for him, causing red anemones to grow from his blood.

Titian based his interpretation largely on Ovid's Metamorphoses. He may have picked up the motif of lovers parting at dawn, absent from Ovid's original, from contemporary translation into Italian.

The composition hinges on a moment of hesitation encompassing past, present and future. Dawn is breaking. Venus' nudity, the disarray of her clothes, and the overturned flagon suggest a night of lovemaking. Cupid, Venus' son and symbolic of love, is now asleep. Adonis is leaving for the hunt, his hounds pawing at the ground.

Adonis moves forward as Venus turns. Her back is meticulously rendered, conveying her muscles flexing. She pleads with her younger lover, aware of the danger he is in. He returns her gaze uncomprehendingly. yet hesitates. Titian evokes the abatement of passion on the morning after while conveying, on a deeper level, our powerlessness to protect those we love. In the sky, we see a later point in the story: Venus arrives in her chariot pulled by doves, shining light on the ground where Adonis will meet his death.

A pendant to Danae, the picture was sent to London in September 1554, where Philip was temporarily residing following his recent marriage to Mary Tudor.

PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA

ABOUT 1554-6

Andromeda's mother, the Ethiopian queen Cassiopeia, boasts that she and her daughter are more beautiful than the sea nymphs, the Nereids: Neptune, god of the sea, takes offence. To appease him Andromeda is chained to a rock as a sacrifice to Ceto, the monster sent by Neptune to punish Cassiopeia and her people for her arrogance.

Perseus, son of Danaé and Jupiter, flies by with his winged sandals on his way back from killing the snake-haired gorgon Medusa. He falls in ove with Andromeda and decides to help, but not before securing her hand in marriage with her parents.

Perseus kills the monster and, as onlookers cheer, he puts down his shield to wash his bloody hands in the seawater. Mounted on his shield is Medusa's head, which has the ability to turn living things to stone. The seaweed on the shore turns hard, creating coral.

The artist shows the dramatic moment when Perseus plunges into the sea to kill the monster Ceto. His expressive brushwork brings the agitated water and the beast to vivid life, but the focus is on the chained figure of Andromeda, stretched out against the dark rock Her pale skin and balletic pose offer a contrast to the assertive figure of the male hero. Her look of distress seeks the viewer's empathy, tempering the picture's overt eroticism.

Titian appears to have sent the picture to Philip in Ghent in 1556. It seems to have left the royal collection as early as the 1570s and has changed hands at least 15 times since, which helps to explain its condition. Pigment change has also made it appear darker than Titian intended. The blue pigment smalt that he used for large parts of the sky has turned greyish-brown. Other areas are better preserved - we can still appreciate such suggestively rendered details as the reflection of Andromeda's ruby earring on her skin.

THE DEATH OF ACTAEON

ABOUT 1559-75

This picture continues the story begun In Diana and Actaeon nearby. Having unwittingly seer the goddess Diana naked, the young hunter Actaeon is transformed into a stag. He runs off pursued by his own hounds. He cries out to his hunting companions, but all they hear is a bleating deer. The hounds catch up with him and tear him apart. As he bleeds tc death, Actaeon thinks to himself how he would have enjoyed leading the party to hunt down the stag he has become.

Titian largely follows the account given by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, but adds Diana, who is absent from this part of the story.

We see Actaeon in the middle distance, in mid-transformation, with a human body and a stag's head. Painted as if with motion blur.

Actaeon's hounds rush him. The goddess Diana aims her bow at him, although her arrow and bowstring were never painted. A member of Actaeon's hunting party flees on horseback.

Titian appears to have started the picture n 1559 but never sent it to Philip. Most of what we see today was painted a decade or more later for an unknown purpose. It demonstrates how the artist took the insights of the poesie to a logical conclusion.

Content with widely varying states of finish, Titian creates an almost elemental continuity across the painted surface, merging his figures with their surroundings. His vigorous execution communicates the emotion of the scene. The burst of yellow denoting a bush by Diana's foot epitomises the passionate expressionism of his last years.

THE RAPE OF EUROPA

1559-62

Jupiter, king of the Olympian gods, is struck with passion for the Phoenician princess Europa. He commands Mercury, the messenger god, drive her father King Agenor's cattle to the beach where Europa and her friends are relaxing. He disguises himself as a snow-white bull, which so fascinates the girls that they gather around it, caress it and crown it with flowers. Europa climbs onto the bull's back and suddenly it takes off into the sea. Jupiter carries her to Crete where he rapes her.

The story of Europa was widely interpreted in Classical literature and art. Titian primarily drew on Ovid's Metamorphoses and possibly his Fasti, but he also adapted elements, such as Europa's tight-fitting garment, the fluttering veil the dolphin at left and the cupids é top, from a passage in Leucippe and Gitophon by Achilles Tatius (second century AD).

Europa is portrayed in all her fleshy presence. She flails awkwardly, as if about to tumble off the back of the bull, which looks at the viewer with a feigned innocence that ultimately suggests alien indifference. Cupids frolic through the air: One enthusiastically rides a dolphin while a sinister-looking, spiky fish swims up under Europa's feet.

The effect is simultaneously comical and chilling Europa's wide-eyed agitation hovers somewhere between ecstasy and horror, her billowing red scarf an exclamation of passion. The boundaries and sudden shifts of power inherent to desire and sex are matched by atmospheric dissolution. Mountains blur in haze, warm moistness hangs in the air, a garment trails through the eerily still waters.

Titian sent the painting to Philip in Madrid in the spring of 1562, concluding his series of poesie. It is beautifully preserved, although the blue pigment smalt that Titian used for parts of the sky has degraded over time and turned brown.

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