Sublime Truth and the Senses
Titian's Poesie for King Philip II of Spain
In this fascinating study Marie Tanner examines the ways in which Titian incorporates new concepts of sensuality and spirituality in the mythological paintings for King Philip II of Spain.
The paintings for Philip II, known as the Poesie, are among the most frequently discussed works of art that address a favored Renaissance theme, the influence of the pagan gods on human actions. The commission is traceable to 1549, when Emperor Charles V summoned the artist to Augsburg following Prince Philip’s triumphal parade through the empire as his father’s heir apparent. The cycle that took shape comprises Danae and Venus and Adonis (Madrid, Prado); Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland); Perseus and Andromeda (London, Wallace Collection) and Europa (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). These masterpieces of the artist’s mature period can be considered the most important Renaissance grouping of mythological paintings executed by a single artist.
The author proposes that Philip’s expected elevation prompted the commission and that the subjects form a cohesive program of Hapsburg ethical views and political concerns, and that Titian created new visual idioms to represent the complex issues which the subjects address in part by engaging themes with a significant prior history in family patronage. While Titian's Poesie for Philip II are well known monuments of western culture, they have never before been investigated with this focus.
The dispersal of the pictures in the seventeenth century resulted in a scholarly focus on the single pictures and a concentration on their sensual aspects. In Aretino, a Venetian dialogue on painting, Titian’s friend and apologist Lodovico Dolce is a spokesman for art that following poetry, entices through beauty, while hiding important truths beneath the veil of allegory. This study analyzes the ways in which Titian incorporates new concepts of sensuality and spirituality in a Venetian vernacular to create masterpieces whose originality and ravishing beauty belie their didactic content.
Each chapter is concerned with an individual painting and may be read as a series of interlinked essays. Considered together, these chapters reveal that the Poesie constitute a record of Philip’s theocratic ambitions as expressed through the vocabulary of ancient mythology, of cosmological speculation, and of scientific knowledge. This book is a corollary to Tanner's study, "The Last Descendant of Aeneas, the Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor."
London, Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019
Reviews
The paintings for Philip II, known as the Poesie, are among the most frequently discussed works of art that address a favored Renaissance theme, the influence of the pagan gods on human actions. The commission is traceable to 1549, when Emperor Charles V summoned the artist to Augsburg following Prince Philip’s triumphal parade through the empire as his father’s heir apparent. The cycle that took shape comprises Danae and Venus and Adonis (Madrid, Prado); Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland); Perseus and Andromeda (London, Wallace Collection) and Europa (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). These masterpieces of the artist’s mature period can be considered the most important Renaissance grouping of mythological paintings executed by a single artist.
The author proposes that Philip’s expected elevation prompted the commission and that the subjects form a cohesive program of Hapsburg ethical views and political concerns, and that Titian created new visual idioms to represent the complex issues which the subjects address in part by engaging themes with a significant prior history in family patronage. While Titian's Poesie for Philip II are well known monuments of western culture, they have never before been investigated with this focus.
The dispersal of the pictures in the seventeenth century resulted in a scholarly focus on the single pictures and a concentration on their sensual aspects. In Aretino, a Venetian dialogue on painting, Titian’s friend and apologist Lodovico Dolce is a spokesman for art that following poetry, entices through beauty, while hiding important truths beneath the veil of allegory. This study analyzes the ways in which Titian incorporates new concepts of sensuality and spirituality in a Venetian vernacular to create masterpieces whose originality and ravishing beauty belie their didactic content.
Each chapter is concerned with an individual painting and may be read as a series of interlinked essays. Considered together, these chapters reveal that the Poesie constitute a record of Philip’s theocratic ambitions as expressed through the vocabulary of ancient mythology, of cosmological speculation, and of scientific knowledge. This book is a corollary to Tanner's study, "The Last Descendant of Aeneas, the Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor."
London, Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019
Reviews
Reviews
"This ambitious and at times quite astonishing book aims at a radical new interpretation of the six poesie that Titian, at the height of his powers and fame, prepared for Philip II from approximately 1553–62....Sublime Truth complements Tanner’s earlier, prize-winning study, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (Yale University Press, 1993....Beautifully produced, there is a dazzling collection of supporting visual material drawn from across media—paintings, frescoes, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, coins, prints, printed books, emblemata."
College Art Association, August 24, 2022
"Tanner weaves a compelling scholarly narrative, spellbinding in its encyclopedic circumference....her text provides comprehensive historical and ideological context to comprehend the paintings as they would have been understood by their highly educated sixteenth-century patron and Renaissance humanist viewers." Renaissance Quarterly, Volume LXXIV, NO. 1 (2021)
College Art Association, August 24, 2022
"Tanner weaves a compelling scholarly narrative, spellbinding in its encyclopedic circumference....her text provides comprehensive historical and ideological context to comprehend the paintings as they would have been understood by their highly educated sixteenth-century patron and Renaissance humanist viewers." Renaissance Quarterly, Volume LXXIV, NO. 1 (2021)
| renaissance_quarterly_review.pdf |
Titian's Poesie series
Titian Self-Portrait
