Two more informal Last Suppers, a votive of the Doge who ruled Venice at the time, and the perils of black grounds.
Titian
Great paintings by Botticelli, Bosch, Titian, Tintoretto, the Carraccis, and others, showing multiplex narrative.
Two of his greatest paintings: St George and the Dragon, and Susannah and the Elders, examined in detail.
A note above his studio door proclaimed that he drew like Michelangelo and used colour like Titian. A small selection of works leading to his breakthrough in 1548.
In the first few years of his career, he was commissioned to paint a series showing stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. They are simply brilliant.
It’s not a colour at all, say some, while the Impressionists wanted to banish it from the palette. But throughout the history of painting, the blackest black has remained vital.
Arsenic sulphides, they were both used in alchemy, and used commonly in paintings from Ancient Egypt through to the late 29th century. Tintoretto loved them.
What turns statues and copper roofs blue-green? ‘Copper rust’, the basis of the intense green pigment Verdigris, used by all the Masters.
Venus had been terrified of Adonis going hunting, and cautioned him about going near savage beasts. But he wasn’t to be put off. Superb paintings by Veronese, Titian, Rubens, and others.
A dark tale of a wicked nurse, incest, transformation, the origin of the precious resin myrrh, and obstetrics in the arboretum. And a possible very early Titian.
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