On 10 June, the Museo del Prado will inaugurate the exhibition Tiziano, featuring the largest group of works by the artist to be shown together since 1935. It will also be the first exhibition devoted to the artist's work in Spain.
Organised in conjunction with the National Gallery, London, which presented a smaller version of the exhibition from February to May, the exhibition at the Museo del Prado will include some 65 works. The selection demonstrates Titian's absolute mastery of all the leading genres of painting, religious, mythological and portraiture. Among the paintings on display are more than 30 from foreign museums and institutions which have never been exhibited in Spain. These include the Venus of Urbino (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi), Salome (Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphili), La Schiavona (London, The National Gallery), Man with a Glove (Paris, Musee du Louvre), Tarquin and Lucretia (Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum), The Flaying of Marsyas (Kromeriz, Archbishop's Palace), as well as the masterpieces by the artist in the Museo del Prado's permanent collection. Giovanni Bellini's Feast of the Gods (Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art), which formed part of the spectacular group of mythologies that Titian painted for the Camerino d'Alabastro in the Ducal palace in Ferrara, will be one of the highlights of the exhibition.
The exhibition will enable the visitor to gain an understanding of the work of one of the greatest figures in western art, through a display that opens in the first decade of the 16th century and ends with Titian's death in 1576; eight decades that witnessed one of the most remarkable creative developments in European art. In addition to the obvious importance of an exhibition of this type devoted to one of the great geniuses of Renaissance painting, its relevance to the history of the Museum's collection is especially significant. The preference shown by Spanish monarchs for Titian's work made his paintings the aesthetic reference point around which the Royal Collection -- the basis of the current Museo del Prado - was assembled. From 10 June onwards, the Prado will be able to show the largest selection of paintings by Titian adjecent with the most significant groups of works by his two great artistic heirs: Rubens and Velazquez. No other museum could offer this remarkable conjunction.
The exhibition curator, Miguel Falomir, Head of Department of Italian Renaissance Painting at the Museo del Prado, has devised an exhibition which combines a chronological arrangement (allowing for an analysis of Titian's stylistic development and his use of innovative narrative techniques) with sections devoted to his working practices.
The arrangement of the exhibition
- Up to 1516. This first section covers Titian's earliest works and looks at his relationship with Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione and Sebastiano del Piombo, as well as the process by which he forged his own style.
- 1516-1533. Giovanni Bellini died in 1516, making Titian the leading painter in Venice. He also made his first contacts with Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, resulting in the growth of his reptutation outside Venice. This process culminated in 1533 when Titian was knighted by Charles V. This section looks in detail at the Camerino d'Alabastro, the most important mythological cycle painted in the first half of the 16th century. Giovanni Bellini's contribution to that cycle, the Feast of the Gods (Washington, National Gallery of Art), with its landscape repainted by Titian, will be exhibited for the first time in Spain.
- 1533-1554. These two decades saw Titian's lengthiest periods outside of Venice. In 1546-47 the artist went to Rome and worked for Pope Paul III, while in 1548 and 1551 he was summoned to Augsburg by Charles V. For these patrons he produced such mayor works as the Danae (Naples, Capodimonte) and the Gloria (Madrid, Museo del Prado). This section will emphasise the artist's innovations in the field of portraiture, a genre that particularly contributed to his international reputation, as well as his attitude to other great contemporaries such as Michelangelo. It also looks at Titian's response to the arrival in Venice of Mannerists such as Salviati and Vasari in the 1540s.
- Late Titian: 1554-1576. One of the largest sections in the exhibition along with the previous one. It looks at the profound transformation which Titian's painting underwent from the early 1550s, evident in formal aspects of his style, such as the use of a more subdued palette and an increasingly fluid brushstroke, as well as the emotional aspect, resulting in ever more expressive and dramatically intense works.
The Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue written by leading European and American specialists, including: Charles Hope (Director of the Warburg Institute, London); Fernando Marias (Professor of the Universidad Autonoma, Madrid), Paul Hills (Professor of the Royal College of Art, London); Jennifer Fletcher (Professor of the Courthald Institute, London); Carmen Garrido (Head of the Technical Documentation Department at the Museo del Prado); David Rosand (Professor at Columbia University, New York); and the exhibition curator, Miguel Falomir, Head of Department of Italian Renaissance Painting at the Museo del Prado. Among its aims is to make available to scholars the results of recent research and investigation carried out at the Museo del Prado, including the restoration of fourteen paintings by the artist, such as the Gloria and Charles V at Muhlberg.
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