Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting (National Gallery Of Art, Washington)

Book Description

The first three decades of the sixteenth century represent, visually and intellectually, the most exciting phase of the Renaissance in Venice—when Giorgione and the young Titian, together with Sebastiano del Piombo, Palma Vecchio, and others, were working alongside the older master Giovanni Bellini. This beautiful book presents an innovative survey of sixty Venetian Renaissance paintings of the caliber of Bellini and Titian’s Feast of the Gods in Washington and Giorgione’s Laura and Three Philosophers in Vienna.

Unlike previous surveys of the period, this book refrains from dividing up the artists represented and instead explores the interrelationships between them. Through a series of thematic sections, the authors trace the rise of secular subjects—pastoral landscapes, female nudes, and romantic portraits—and the transformation of religious ones as well as innovations in style and technique. Cutting across genres, the book also focuses on the overarching themes of music, love, and time.

Featuring essays by leading scholars, detailed entries on some of the most renowned pictures of sixteenth-century Italy, and revealing technical information, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting is an essential volume to own.

Customer Reviews:

The Renaissance at its finest........2007-01-11

A must for the student and lover of the Renaissance and Venice in particular.

High water mark of renaissance painting.......2006-07-29

This remarkable show (and catalogue) is a summary of Venetian painting from 1500 to 1530, allowing a side by side comparison of the work of Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian in what was one of Venice's astonishing high water marks of artistic creativity.

Once you have been bitten by the bug, these paintings are with you for good. Seeing this work firsthand, one can't help be seduced by the ravishing, luminous beauty light and layers of glazing that makes these paintings unique. The stillness in some of these works suggest the real subject here is light and color -- something these Venetians seem to have captured like no other group of artists.

The reproductions in the catalogue are quite good, and there are a very generous amount of close detail shots of the paintings too -- something particularly useful in illustrating the intricacy of detail in Giorgione's work. The essays are interesting, but my favorite is one I almost missed after the technical photographs of xrays in the back: an essay which describes how the Venetian painters were at a remarkable crossroads of shared experimentation in color including glassmakers, creators of fabric dyes, and other tradesmen that contributed to a new world of color effects in paint. For example the painters would use finely ground glass mixed into the oils to give the glazes a more bright, refractory quality.

This is a captivating show and a great catalogue to accompany it.

The Cambridge Companion to Titian (Cambridge Companions to the History of Art)

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The Cambridge Companion to Titian (Cambridge Companions to the History of Art)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521791804

Book Description

Renowned throughout Italy, as well as Europe, at his death in 1576, Titian was the pre-eminent artist of Venice during the sixteenth century. His importance has never been questioned and his works have been admired from his own day to the present. This Companion serves as an introduction to the prolific artist. Covering all aspects of his life and career, the anthology examines Titian's secular and religious painting, prints and pictures related to poetry, as well as his contributions to architecture.

The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian (Icon Editions)

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Excellent text, horrible pictures
interesting collection of essays

The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian (Icon Editions)
Bruce Cole
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 006430129X

Book Description

This book gives the necessary background for the study and appreciation of Italian painting and sculpture from about 1250 to 1550. It tells how the artists learned their craft, the organization of their workshops, and the guilds they belonged to; how their customers or patrons treated them and where their work was displayed-churches, civic buildings, or private homes. The book discusses how art was made-tempera, oil, panel, canvas, fresco; it surveys the characteristic types of Renaissance art-altarpieces, portraits, tombs, busts, doors fountains, medals, etc.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent text, horrible pictures.......2006-04-06

Bruce Cole has a well-deserved reputation for high quality scholarship and exposition. This book is an excellent synthesis of current knowledge about the role of the artist in society, his materials, and the types of work he might create.

Sadly, the illustrations accompanying the text are worse than any I've ever seen. They're of unbelievably low quality. If you took a low-quality scanner from the mid-90's, kept it on the 'text' setting instead of 'graphics', you would still get better images than the mess that's in this text. It's more like a fourth-generation mimeograph.

They are basically unusable. And that is unacceptable in an art history text. There is no grayscale - just large blurred black blobs. It's as if a creeping fungus made a home in the book, and refused to be dislodged. The fact that this book is in print as such is an insult. With even pedestrian-quality greyscale images, this would be a fantastic text.

interesting collection of essays.......2002-05-17

Over the last 30 years there seems to be a greater interest on the part of art historians in the nuts and bolts issues of how art is created. The works of E.H. Gombrich come to mind, or "The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century", by Albert Boime. This rather disconnected set of essays by Cole examines the material issues facing the Renaissance artist.

What did paintings cost? How was the artist valued? What expectations surrounded the conception and construction of the work of art? How did the original setting differ from our encounter with these works today? These are some of the questions addressed here. This is not a coffee table book, and the illustrations are low quality black and white (at least in the paper back edition).

Book Description

From New York Times bestselling author Iain Pears...

Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad and art historian Jonathan Argyll have charmed mystery readers around the world. Their latest case is baffling to the extreme, when clues from a Titian researcher's death by mugging point to murder--and a criminal conspiracy...

"[An] elegant mystery...but the real work of art here is the plot, a piece of structural engineering any artist would envy."--New York Times

"Light and sassy...Agatha would have loved it." --Los Angeles Times

* Iain Pears is the author of the highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost

Customer Reviews:

art interest revival.......2007-01-19

Iain Pears delivers yet again a positive and entertaining reading material in THE TITIAN COMMITEE,surely most readers will feel the need to
review TITIAN paintings as I did to embrace closely with the plot.
Framed with simplicity and easily accesible by all readers it builds up to a great finale almost as a 1950 novel bringing together most of the players in a final deliverance.
Always with the necessary descriptions but not overwhelmly leaves room for the reader to recreate the images.
Hopefully we will continue to receive new art mystery proposals such as this one from the author,Pablo More-Uruguay-South America

Lead characters outshine beautiful location........2006-02-13

The second in the Jonathan Argyll series is dissimilar from the first in that it is set in one location (I prefer books that wander across Europe), but has more enough mystery to keep anyone guessing as suspects come in and out of reasonable suspicion. Not much detail is given to the secondary characters, so it allows for a really quick read with a satisfactory ending that explained why my choice of murder was wrong. As usual with Pears there is historical accuracy, as well as plenty of humor. All in all, a great weekend read when you do not wish to dive into a larger book.

Don't Drink the Water.......2003-09-10

Don't Drink the Water

An Ian Pears' view of ever-romantic Venice never lets readers forget they are in a watery wasteland. However appealing visually, the downside is very dirty water, water everywhere. You can't get "there" from "here" without crossing the canals, and God forbid you should ever, ever fall in!
The protagonists fall in the canals, suffer from seasickness, and root around in sub-basements never meant to be seen by the tourists.

The plot is secondary to the fun and the easy-to-digest art history that author Pears provides. Gorgeous, volatile Flavia and diffident Jonathan (think Hugh Grant) team up to investigate the endangered members of the prestigious Titian Committee, who are being picked off one-by-one. Their directive is to bring the investigation to a speedy, expedient closure that will make the various Italian bureaucracies look good. Solving the crime is secondary. As Flavia's marvelous superior General Bottando informs her when she triumphantly states she has found another body in France, "But you're not meant to be finding more," he said grumpily, "You're meant to be dealing with the more than adequate supply we have already."

It is hard to pigeonhole Pears' Art Mysteries as to type. The satire is good humored, but nevertheless has a bite. The protagonists are made far too uncomfortable and the action too graphic to be a "cozy," and the lack of dedication to task make it impossible to label the stories "hard boiled." If you adore things Italian and have more than a passing interest in art history, I highly recommend this series.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

Another Good Entry in the Series.......2003-04-17

This is the second book in this series of art mysteries (Raphael Affair was first). The series need not be read in order as I found when I read this one out of order.

Pears' ironic humor is abundant and his main characters all so human. The cultural aspects always add to the plot and Pears' writing style also adds.

The plot of Titian Committee is good. The author presents the reader with members of a research committee who are all - at some time or other - suspects, prime suspects or murder victims.

Like some of Pears' other books, there is a moral decision/question that throws an extra twist. Are the good guys always good? Or is it good to be a good guy and not so good?

Somehow the reader gets the warm feeling throughout this book that Mr. Pears writes with a constant grin on his face. This is an enjoyable light read.

Gee I miss Venice (I read it for the scenery).......2003-04-11

I think I'd read anything set in Italy, and Iain Pears does a wonderful job conveying its charms in this series. This particular book is set in Venice, which is really brought to life (I got rather excited when the body of a victim was found in a canal that was down the street from a hotel where I once stayed.)

This is my first of Pear's 'art history mysteries,' however, and the characters and the plot have yet to grow on me. Flavia diStefano, an Italian detective, is energetically drawn, but Jonathan Argyll, the art expert who tags along with her, is an enigma. Perhaps he is more colorful in other stories in this series. The plot is pretty tortured and difficult to retain if you are not an art history export. There is rather a lot of detail conveyed third-hand (scenes in which two characters sit in a cafe talking about what a third character said to a fourth character).

Book Description

This enthralling book views the lives and greatest works of the Renaissance masters through the prism of their ardent rivalry. Rona Goffen, one of the most highly respected scholars of the Italian Renaissance today, brings Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian to life in this lively account of their passionate strivings to outdo both living competitors and the masters of antiquity.

“Who would have thought that the serene masterpieces of the High Renaissance owed so much of their vitality to backstage brawling? Only Rona Goffen knows enough to trace these labyrinthine rivalries. In her book the artists take on cinematic vitality, making us see the artifacts produced by such creative brawlers in entirely new ways. They are knockouts. So is her book.”—Garry Wills

“A handsome, copiously illustrated book.”—Virginia Quarterly Review
“This lively and appealing book is an important achievement. . . . Magnificently researched and handsomely produced, Renaissance Rivals advances the discussion of a central aspect of early modern culture. In doing so, it has no rivals.”—Werner Gundersheimer, American Scholar

Customer Reviews:

Correction to "Qualified Praise".......2006-07-29

Goffen has provided a clear, engaging, and refreshing view of Michelangelo and allows for further study and questioning.

I do want to make a remark regaring the review called "Qualified Praise." Goffen does not state that Michelangelo died in 1566. She adheres to the February 17, 1564 date:

"Instead, Vasari paraphrased an anecdote reported by an unknown correspondent, writing within a month of Michelangelo's death on 17 February 1564." (p. 117).

A masterful work.......2006-06-10

Goffen's book is a powerful and thrilling volume of scholarship. Having passed away of breast cancer, the author rests knowing that her words and scholarship will continue to delight and inform many people desiring a new take on the overly discussed pieces of Michelangelo and his "antagonists."

This books is both complex and lucid. Goffen has taken great care to use her language tactfully, but not sparingly. She presents many solid arguments with charged notation. The author leaves her reader swimming and fascinated at the same time. Goffen discusses the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian with solid grounding in the social context and network previously left behind by many scholars. Goffen is in fact so well grounded in the social context of her subject's time--and her own time--that "Renaissance Rivals" can certainly be seen as a modern day "Lives of the Artists". However, this text has not been embellished, nor fabricated by anyone desiring to create a legacy. Rather, Goffen's careful text offers argument and explanation for why Michelangelo and his rivals were indeed such great artists.

This masterful work is a pleasure to read and will certainly stand in the pantheon of scholars as an accessible text written by a brilliant author.

Qualified praise.......2006-02-13

A sumptiously illustrated book, written in a chatty, somewhat prolix style. Worthy of five stars, but for two significant problems, warranting the subtraction of two stars:

1) Some annoying factual errors, the most significant of which is the author's repeatedly giving Michelangelo's date of death as 1566, rather than 1564.

2) The binding is simply not up to the task of keeping the heavy pages of the book together. My copy has already split in a couple of places, even though it has been handled gently.

Average customer rating:

The utmost beauty.

Titian's Women
Rona Goffen
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300068468

Amazon.com

Just as the Italian peninsula itself was a patchwork of widely divergent city-states up until the 19th-century risorgimento, so the art and artists of the Italian Renaissance differed according to the regions in which they flourished. If Florence is the city most often associated with Renaissance art, Venice runs a close second; and of all the artists associated with the Venetian style, Titian is arguably the greatest. In Titian's Women, art historian Rona Goffen examines the role of women in the great man's work. Whether painting a bride or a goddess, Titian brought a degree of respect and empathy to his portraits; though his models may have been prostitutes, Goffen argues, the finished subjects were indisputably ladies. Combining art history with a remarkable command of the period's social history, Goffen crafts a fascinating discussion of Titian's work, his times, and his particular genius.

Customer Reviews:

The utmost beauty........2001-09-05

In appreciation of beauty, perhaps the only difference between a layperson and an artist is that the latter can see and openly render that beauty. Unfortunately, sometimes "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Beautiful paintings of women by this ingenius artist has been considered (by some) in the same class with eroticism, or even pornography.
Titian is noted for his radiant and sensual rendering of human flesh. The effects are achieved by painstaking efforts in glazing, scumbling, and manipulation of colors. As a lady's man himself, Titian "loves every woman he meets" (although he reportedly was heartbroken at his wife's death), recognizes their beauty (after all, beauty is indifferent to social bias in this artist's eye), and expresses maverlously their charm in his paintings.
The readers will get it all in this book and if social convention has a problem mistaking artistic appreciation with mundane eroticism, then so what is new?

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Masterful Introduction to Titian

Titian and Venetian Painting, 1450-1590
Bruce Cole
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0813390435

Book Description

This up-to-date, well-illustrated, and thoughtful introduction to the life and works of one of the giants of Western Painting also surveys the golden age of Venetian Painting from Giovanni Bellini to Veronese and its place in the history of Western art. Bruce Cole, Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts at Indiana University and author of numerous books on Italian Renaissance art, begins with the life and work of Giovanni Bellini, the principal founder of Venetian Renaissance painting. He continues with the paintings of Giorgione and the young Titian whose work embodied the new Venetian style. Cole discusses and explains all of Titian's major works--portraits, religious paintings, and nudes--from various points of view and shows how Venetian painting of this period differed from painting in Florence and elsewhere in Italy and became a distinct and fully-developed style of its own.

Customer Reviews:

Masterful Introduction to Titian.......1998-12-15

Bruce Cole, the respected historian of Renaissance Italian art, has brought forth yet another highly compelling book, this time illuminating the achievements of the great Venetian painter, Titian. Cole, author of more than 10 books and a connoisseur of the highest order, offers clear and interesting commentary on the style of one of the masters of the Italian Renaissance. By placing Titian in the general context of Western art and the specific context of the golden age of Venetian painting, Cole makes Titian's achievements shine through his discussions of Titian's portraits, religious paintings and nudes. He shows how Venetian style differs from that in other parts of Italy, especially Florence, and how it grew and developed in its distinctive way. Cole explores Titian's contributions to portraiture, his sophisticated use of mythology, the question of drawing in Venetian painting, Titian's use of color, and the artists he influenced.

Book Description

Titian Remade explores imitation and the modern cult of originality through a consideration of the disparate fates of two Venetian painters: the canonized master Titian (ca. 1488-1576) and his artistic heir, the now-unremarked Padovanino (1588-1649). Reading the latter's Sleeping Venus (1610),
triumph (1620), and Self-Portrait (ca. 1630) against corresponding works by Titian, Maria H. Loh argues the case for repetition as a positive act of artistic self-definition. Her history of creative emulation and engaged viewing in early modern visual culture offers a profound vision of art as a
continual process of retrieval and projection that effectively bonds the present to the past and the self to the other.

Titian (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)

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Titian (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)
Mike Venezia
Manufacturer: Children's Press (CT)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0516269755

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Nice book - shame so many pictures are so small.
Represents the zenith of the Venetian school
It's a good book

Titian
Filippo Pedrocco
Manufacturer: Rizzoli International Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0847823024
Release Date: 2001-03-07

Book Description

In the quarter century since the last catalogue raisonné of Titian, more research has been carried out on the painter than in the whole of the previous four hundred years. New documentation has come to light, pictures have been cleaned and major exhibitions have allowed for scrupulous comparisons to be made. As a result, Titian's whole oeuvre has been reassessed, many old questions of attribution settled-- and a few new ones raised.

Titian's place as one of the giants of Western culture has never been in doubt. He represents the culmination of the Venetian school, evolving a technique of free, spontaneous brushwork and a rendering of form through color that amazed his contemporaries and is now seen by some as foreshadowing Impressionism. In a long life of nearly ninety years he painted hundreds of canvases, ranging from moving and intense religious images, through penetratingly psychological portraits (including Charles V and Philip II of Spain) to sensuously erotic mythological scenes like Bacchus and Ariadne and the Venus of Urbino. Over 250 paintings are now attributed to him. All are illustrated here with detailed commentaries giving the circumstances of their commission, their subsequent history and stylistic analysis. Also included is an exhaustive bibliography. The fruit of many years' research, Titian is a monument of scholarship that will remain definitive for the foreseeable future.

Customer Reviews:

Nice book - shame so many pictures are so small........2003-11-13

This is a comprehensive survey of the entirety of Titian's ouput, the best available, as far as I am aware. The reason for 3 stars and not 5 is because of the small size of many of the reproductions. I will never understand why publishers produce books of this large size and then fill them predominantly with images that take up only about an eighth of the page. Whatever the reasons for this - printing costs, rights, photographic file sizes - or just the need to cram everything in for a catalogue raisonne - it's still annoying to have on you lap a book of this size (13x11ins) and be looking at pictures of only 3x4ins. It is, after all, the images by Titian which are of most interest, not the accompanying text.

Nevertheless, there are still a few paintings shown at reasonable size and which use the scale of the book, as well as 30 or so full page details, so I would say it is still worthwhile.

Represents the zenith of the Venetian school.......2001-05-18

Titian represents the zenith of the Venetian school and is a universally acclaimed "Old Master" who painted more than 250 canvases during his extraordinary lifetime. From moving and intense religious images, through penetratingly psychological portraits, to sensuously..presentations of the human form, Titian is a proven master of the brush and his superb use of color, form and dimension became benchmarks for the generations of artists who have studied him. Filippo Pedrocco's informative text provides a concise art history of Titian's life and work, while the wealth of full-color reproductions of Titan's paintings are flawless and completely document the scope and dimensions of this master painter. Filippo Pedrocco's Titian is a very highly recommended contribution to personal and professional art history collections, and would make an ideal "Memorial Gift" acquisition for academic and community libraries.

It's a good book.......1999-07-29

Ya! It's a really good book, lot's of friendly pictures

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