Book Review: Depictions of Femininity in Cinquecento Venice

Titian’s Vision of Women, Ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Francesca Del Torre Scheuch, Wencke Deiters. Skira.

As the global Covid lockdowns wound down, the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna opened a lavish exhibit of paintings by Titian, gathered from great collections in Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Britain, the United States, and Russia. It was an exercise in faith and hope, betting against a stacked deck, for there was no guarantee either that the show would open, or that an audience would have the courage to visit a public space, emerging from the masked and paranoid fear that haunted the world.

The book’s sub-header promises “Beauty, Love and Poetry.” Not unreasonably, the director general of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Sabine Haag asked in her preface if the exhibition had anything new to say about this trinity. The contributing authors clearly thought it did, writing lengthy essays providing authoritative analysis to Titian’s delightfully personal paintings – a detail of La Bella opens the book, and sensitive viewers can only bow to Titian’s extraordinary ability to capture character. La Bella has the fresh prettiness of youth, and the master has given her such liveliness that she seems ready to speak.

Sylvia Ferino-Pagden begins her excellent first essay by explaining his prodigious talent as something like love, quoting Antonio Perrsio’s comments:

This is something I heard from his own mouth, and from those who were present with him as he worked: if he wanted to draw or paint a figure, and looked to find it in a female or male model, the model would so occupy his sight, and his spirit would become so absorbed in it, that he could no longer perceive anything else, so that It seemed to those around that he was completely lost in the thoughts of his own mind. So complete was his immersion and so well did he capture the carnality and appearance of his models that he came close to remaking nature in his works. For it is generally thought that this Is what occurs between a man and a woman who give up their spirits in the acts of love…

Titian loved women. Even in his sixties his friends reported that he caressed and kissed the women he met, and flirted with them, and “indulges in them more than the weakness of his body allows.”

Putting Titian in context, Ferino-Pagden describes the erotic priorities of sixteenth century painting, which was then in direct competition with poetry for superiority in provoking desire, but is keen to balance Titian’s reputation as a ladies’ man with the complexity of the lives of real women in Venetian society, who were deeply involved in charity, literature, and revered as nobil donne. She explains that many of Titian’s Belle Veneziane (Venetian Beauties) portraits once considered courtesans are now thought to have been commissioned as bridal gifts, or “wedding allegories,” and exposes the difficulty of using current morals and values to judge the art of past eras.      

Robert Wald writes about the failings of conventional art history, which followed the patterns set by Vasari in neglecting to provide a general history of art after the renaissance, instead, treating it as a series of improvements upon the technical perfection that had supposedly been achieved. Little has been written considering the uses of art – art commissioned for private homes had a very different function to those in the public eye. Consequently, interpreting unprecedented non-religious paintings made after the fifteenth century is extremely challenging. Wald has a likeably rebellious tone, and when he cuts to frank discussion of attitudes to erotica in the sixteenth century, he writes, “The idea that a painting by Titian could be sexually arousing was not a criticism of either the viewer or of the artist, but the highest form of praise.”

Amadeo Quondam writes about women appearing in the literary culture of Titian’s time, in great detail. He explains that women were the subject of classical literature and sculpture, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Orlando Furioso, Petrarch, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and numerous discourses written about women. Anna Bellavitis provides still more contextual content, offering insight into the lives of women in Cinquecento Venice. Men and women were treated differently by the law, and females were considered less reliable witnesses, but led full lives with extensive control over finance, inheritance, and trade. She concludes that women in sixteenth century Venice were able to express themselves, speak out and write in ways that they could not elsewhere.

So far there has been little of Titian’s own life, and much of social context. Now Silvia Gazzola reads the gestural language of desire in Titian’s paintings, interpreting the semiotics of death and yearning, for example considering a violet bloom tucked into the folds of Violante’s camicia, where it is destined to die from the heat of desire. Gazzola reads contemporary writers and painters, interpreting “an aesthetics of procrastination.” Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo dedicates his attention to the hairstyles in Titian’s paintings, providing extensive references to Venetian braiding, perfume, and the ribboned favors of romantic entanglement. Jane Bridgeman describes the dress of Venetian women, beginning with horrifying descriptions of the subjugation of women in Italy – according to contemporary accounts women were seldom seen in public, men did the shopping, and young women were virtually imprisoned, whereas in Genoa they were free to walk the city in groups. Bridgeman continues with a detailed breakdown of the layered costume of Titian’s period. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo begins with a study of Giorgione’s Laura, explaining the imagery of the exposed breast as a symbol for nourishment, and inner life. The breast is the door to the soul, and a metaphor for intimacy.

Thus far the book has been an exposition of intensive detail, at best a fascinating study of women in sixteenth century Venice as sensual people dealing with the oppressive conventions and mores of their time, at worst inadvertently proving the adage that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, especially when it’s a Titian. The second section of the volume nominally focuses on the paintings themselves rather than their social context, and Ferino-Pagden opens again, with an essay titled Premise guiding the rest. The principle she offers is that the biblical narrative of Eve as the cause of man’s fall was the root of the misogyny women suffered, and Titian enjoyed “greater freedom of interpretation than he ever had when producing religious works” when he created portraits and secular themes. She continues with a consideration of the Belle Veneziane, working to understand these erotic half-length portraits, which seemed to promise ideal women to their future husbands as pictures of love, and weaving almost supernatural desire into Titian’s sensual series of paintings, La Bella, the Girl in a Fur, and his Young Woman in a Feather Hat.

But now the topics of the essays become increasingly obscure, and Titian almost vanishes. Wald returns with narrative of a copy of a painting by Palma Vecchio once attributed to Titian. Paulus Reiner analyses Venetian finger rings. Ferino-Pagden returns, describing the interesting cover-paintings which were used to conceal many portraits of women from prying eyes, including Titian’s Little Tambourine Player and The Triumph of Love in her discussion. Beverly Louise Brown considers the necessary idealization of Titian’s great ladies, who he sometimes had to paint without ever seeing his subjects. Irena Artemieva writes about Venetian portraits of couples. Anouck Samyn concentrates on the meanings of hand gestures in an intriguing essay about nuptial promises. Francesca Del Torre Scheuch considers heroines and saints, giving particular attention to the story of Lucretia and her suicide painted by Titian as a martyrdom; to Judith, the exemplar of virtue and killer of Holofernes; to Salome with the head of John the Baptist; and to Mary Magdalene, who Titian (and his workshop) repeatedly painted weeping, with her eyes fixed on heaven, and her hand to her bared bosom. Wencke Deiters examines the roles of women as they were described by male and female humanists, poets and writing courtesans, while Venice reigned among Europe’s publishing centers, with women finding status and self-awareness in the enduring struggle between the sexes. Ferino-Pagden’s essay on the Sleeping Venus in the collection of the Dresden Museum, the Venus of Urbino, and the Pardo Venus returns the by now wandering narrative solidly to Titian’s paintings, and the awe men had for the pornographic implications of these works. Stefan Albi continues the topic in his sensual piece about Titian and Venus, considering literary sources comparing the goddess to the city, punning Venus and Venice, both rising from the ocean. Thomas Dalla Costa offers his thoughts on Titian’s poesies, or poem paintings, a series of six large canvases inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which gave Titian immense opportunities for creative freedom, and many, many nude figures. Titian painted Nymph and Shepherd when he was an elderly man, but captured viewers in the eye of the nymph, sensualist to the end. Charles Hope writes about Titian’s Allegory in the Biblioteca Maciana, Venice, which is his only non-religious work remaining in its original location. Puzzlingly, Bernard Aikema’s essay follows, and though it is an interesting piece about La Vecchia, a painting of an elderly woman by Giorgione, there is no mention of any connection to Titian in it. The essays are concluded by Brown’s brief thoughts on Titian’s Portrait of Clarice Strozzi, superficially a painting of a pretty girl with a pretty dog, but actually presenting the child as a bridal prospect, and a short remembrance of art historian Rona Goffen, a friend and colleague of the writers.

By now readers will surely understand that this is not a book for a general audience. Titian specialists may find much in it to enjoy, for it is full of the kind of minutiae relished by the obsessed, but for the laity, Titian is lost among the details.

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