Titian by Sheila Hale

Author:Sheila Hale
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Titian took the cue for his large, stormy Ecce Homo (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) from Aretino’s Humanity of Christ, first published in 1535, in which the writer had added his own anecdotes to the episode from John 19: 2–3 and portrayed Pontius Pilate – the Roman governor of Judaea who reluctantly authorized the Crucifixion of Christ with the words ‘Behold the Man. I find no fault in him’ – as just and peaceable because he had after all done his best to save Christ. Titian, who finished his painting in 1543, gave the story an added dimension of contemporary relevance with references to events that affected Venice in the years while he was working on it. He cast Aretino as Pontius Pilate, the wise man who could see both sides of a problem but could not impose his judgement of Christ as innocent on the baying mob. He dressed him in shimmering pale-blue satin as he presents the bleeding, broken King of the Jews to a multitude of onlookers. From the steps of a Roman palace that might have been designed by Sebastiano Serlio, Aretino/Pilate directs the other players: some biblical figures in modern dress, some portraits of contemporaries, each relating in one way or another to the self-styled repository of the world’s secrets and chief propagandist for a Venice that called itself the City of Christ and the New Rome.

The Ecce Homo was commissioned by Giovanni d’Anna, an immensely wealthy merchant of Flemish extraction and friend of Titian and Aretino, for the piano nobile of his family palace at San Benedetto. Giovanni’s father Martin van Haanan had Italianized the family name to d’Anna after settling in Venice in 1529 when he had the palace frescoed by Pordenone. Martin’s father had been ennobled by the Habsburgs in recognition of his financial contributions to their wars against the Ottoman Turks, and his son Giovanni remained close to the inner circle of the Habsburg court, which was chronically short of funds. The prominent two-headed Habsburg eagle on the shield held by the Roman soldier with his back to us at the bottom of the steps proclaims the patron’s imperial connection, as does Titian’s signature, ‘TITIANVS EQVES CES F’ (Titian Caesar’s Knight made this), the first of only seven extant paintings to refer to the knighthood that had been conferred upon him by Charles V.

It is one of the largest5 and most spatially complex paintings that Titian produced in this period. Since he was in any case a slow worker who made changes to his paintings as he went along6 it is likely that he had started it some years before 1543, the date that appears beneath his signature on the scroll propped against the steps. He may have set to work on it in the late 1530s, shortly after completing the Presentation of the Virgin, which is organized on similar lines with a classical architectural setting as well as hints of the open brushwork that vibrates on the surface of the Ecce Homo.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.