Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Muddied Mirror: Materiality and Figuration in Titian's Later Paintings

The Muddied Mirror: Materiality and Figuration in Titian's Later Paintings

Cranston, Jodi

Hardcover

Art Criticism & TheoryArt HistoryIndividual Artists

ISBN10: 0271035293
ISBN13: 9780271035291
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: Feb 19 2010
Pages: 176
Weight: 1.70
Height: 0.70 Width: 7.30 Depth: 10.30
Language: English

Ideal painting in the Renaissance was an art of illusionism that eliminated for the viewer any overt sense of its making. Titian's paintings, in contrast, with their roughly worked and open surfaces, unexpected glazes, and thick impasto brushstrokes, made the fact of the paint increasingly visible. Previous scholars have read these paintings as unfinished or the product of lesser studio hands, but in The Muddied Mirror, Jodi Cranston argues that this approach to paint is integral to Titian's later work. Rather than presenting in paint a precise reflection of the visible world, the artist imparted an intrinsic corporeality to his subjects through the varying mass and thickness of the paint. It is precisely the materiality and disfiguration of these paintings that offer us the key to understanding their meanings. More important, the subjects of Titian's late paintings are directly related to the materiality of the body--they represent physical changes wrought through violence, metamorphosis, and desire.

Also in

Art History

View All