If you compare these two paintings—Venus of Sleep and Venus of Urbino—together, it seems to be two coherent scenes in which Giorgione's lover, who has been asleep for 22 years, wakes up in a bedroom in Urbino.
With a hint of lazy sleepy eyes, she looked indifferently at the world outside the painting, which had become strange.
Caption: Giorgione's Venus of Sleep, part of 1510
She died in Venice and was resurrected in Urbino
In 1512, Titian returned to Venice after the epidemic.
He added a background to the late master brother Giorgione's unfinished Venus of Sleep.
The Venus in this painting is modeled after his lover Zecilia. The couple in distress has left some sad rumors, it is said that before the outbreak of the epidemic, Joel Gione, who can sing and dance, met her at the ball, and the two fell in love at first sight. When the plague spread, Zecilia was infected first, and Giorgione never abandoned it, resulting in the death of both of them.
Giorgione's Jutis, written during the same period, is now in the Hermitage
Titian's completed background makes this naked, sleeping Venus lie under the rocks on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by wild grasses and wildflowers, and the distant green trees, blue sky and white clouds, and the vast line of sea water, forming a beautiful scenery like her body.
Venus, who was sleeping, wore a classical Greek hairstyle and had a solemn expression like the Virgin depicted by painters of the same period. Despite her perfect human flesh, she reveals a divine side that is highly integrated with nature.
Another 22 years later, when Titian was in full swing, he received an order from Francesco Maria I, Duke of Urbino, de la Rovere (1490-1538) for his soon-to-be-married son, Guido Baldo II. Della. A painting by Rovere (Guidobaldo II della Rovere, 1514–1574) was used to bless the wedding.
Maria I, Duke of Urbino, nephew and adopted son of the former Pope Julius II, has been introduced to the family in a series of articles introducing Raphael, and his wife is the eldest daughter of the famous "First Lady of Europe", Marquise Isabella de Este of Mantoba. Eleonora Gonzaga (31 December 1493 – 13 February 1570).
Titian was commissioned by Maria I around 1536-38 to paint elonora I. Portrait of Gonzaga
Titian completed the painting for his son Guido Baldo II, depicting a model who is said to be a famous prostitute in Urbino at that time. He adopted the same body posture that Giorgione had painted more than 20 years ago, and if the two paintings are compared together, "Venus of Sleep" and "Venus of Urbino", it seems to be two coherent scenes - Giorgione's painting of the lover who has been sleeping for 22 years, waking up in a bedroom in Urbino.
Titian Part of Venus of Urbino, 1538
The awakened Venus, with disheveled blonde hair, holds a bouquet of flowers in her right hand and a ring symbolizing engagement on the little finger of her left hand. On a luxurious bed in front of a dark screen, the jade body is stretched.
The other half of the background, however, is a scene that has nothing to do with the interior, and the puppy lying at the end of the bed and the two women in the distant background play a role in balancing the picture, but there is little communication between them, one of them is facing the audience, kneeling under the window to find something from the cabinet and the loyal puppy, which also makes people guess Titian's intentions.
This atmosphere, in keeping with Venus's awakening from a dream with a hint of bewilderment in her eyes, also gives us the impression that this is an accidental, unarrancipled, natural but unpretentious moment of real life.
Part of Titian's Venus of Urbino
Titian Part of Venus of Urbino
In the opinion of most critics, the second painting, Venus of Urbino, although it has the name of a goddess, has more worldly erotic hints and symbols.
This erotic meaning became a paradigm imitated by many painters in later generations. For example, the 19th-century French painter Manet created the controversial Olympia. Similarly, Titian's Pastoral Ensemble, influenced by Giorgione, was also interpreted by Manet as Lunch on the Grass, an explicit erotic work that challenged people's moral space at the time.
Some even resented it, such as mark Twain, an American writer at the end of the 19th century who was good at humor and satire, who in an 1880 travelogue accused "The Venus of Urbino" as "the most obscene, obscene, and shameless painting in the world." ”
Titian's provocative, unpleasant erotic meaning in "Venus of Urbino" is not only reflected in the setting up a relatively private environment for her, in addition to her messy hair, bare figure and bright skin tone.
In fact, we should not be surprised by Titian's antithetical and unified treatment in the background, which highlights the main characters of the picture through the contrast of completely different scenes and light.
Because in the previous chapter, I introduced the painting "The Miracle of the Newborn" that he left in his youth at the School of Saint Anthony in Padua, which is very obvious, and the upper part of the picture presents two very different and opposing spaces.
Part of the background of Titian's Venus of Urbino
Titian's Miracle of a Newborn Baby, 1511
And when he created this "Miracle of the Newborn", it was also the moment when the master brother Giorgione bid farewell to the world with his Venus.
At this point, we will also say goodbye to this talented Giorgione.
It is necessary to use his "Venus of Sleep", a dying song, to summarize Giorgione's contribution to the history of painting:
First of all, his expression of female charm has revolutionary significance, creating a large-scale mythological female nude figure painting from the subject matter, which caters to the needs of the secular princes and nobles at that time, and also paves the way for Titian to more boldly express the theme of female lust later.
You may think of Botticelli's tempera paintings for the Medici family, but the Venus of Giorgione is fundamentally different from Botticelli: Botticelli is an idealized, decorative human body. Giorgione is closer to the real female body, especially in the use of color to represent women's skin, and has a surprising sense of reality.
In addition, his painting style and technique are also very different, which is the new contribution of his generation in technology. When he creates on canvas, he no longer follows the old routine of drawing sketches, and colors are no longer attached to the relationship between sketches, releasing the expressiveness of colors themselves;
Finally, he used more sophisticated oil painting techniques, and it is said that Giorgione discovered the correct proportions of pigments mixed with walnut oil and flax oil, and also experimented with mixing hot oil with wax to blend out viscous pigments, which are deeper in color and can make the picture appear richer in layers. (Again, I apologize, for reasons that are well known, some paintings cannot be put in full, you can search the Internet for comparison and appreciation, thank you for understanding.) ）
The chief contend of the Venetian painting world
The topic continues to come back to Titian's path of growth.
After returning to Venice, Titian, with a wealth of experience in life and death, also mastered mature painting techniques and gained some fame, he believed that he had the strength to the elderly Giovanni. Bellini challenged.
At this time, Giovanni Bellini was still a brother in the Venetian painting world, and he devoted the last of his life to creating large-scale war-themed murals for the council chamber of the Doge's Palace in Venice.
Titian was also eager to join this major government-funded cultural project, and in 1515 he petitioned the Venetian government to paint one of the walls.
Titian's application was approved and he was paid the same as Bellini, which also meant that he was officially recognized as a chief painter as Bellini.
But soon after, Bellini, in conjunction with other painters, the government reversed the decision. Titian filed a complaint and eventually won the order, but the remuneration was only half of the original, and it was stipulated that he could only bring one assistant.
Shortly after this dispute, Giovanni died on 26 November 1516. From old Jacob. Bellini began, the family has continued to glory in the Venetian painting world for a century, and from this time on, it began to lose its status as a protagonist on this stage.
Titian eventually took over as chief painter, but the city promised to pay him half of Bellini's money. Or because of these contradictions, the order for frescoes in the Governor's Mansion has been dragging on for more than 20 years.
Just like the rivalry between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo in Florence more than a decade ago, we also have no chance to see the artistic masterpieces produced by Giovanni and Titian fighting each other. This group of large war-themed murals located in the Venetian City Hall was destroyed by a fire in the middle of that century.
Although the two are competitors, they have also maintained long-term cooperation. The following painting, The Feast of the Gods, in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., represents a collaboration between the two around 1514.
Feast of the Gods Partial Bellini Titian 1514 Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA
Widespread accountability of this oil on canvas was made by Giovanni Bellini in 1514 and the last masterpiece of his life.
But there is also evidence that the painting was written by three men, including Titian, and another theory is that the painting was taken from a verse in Ovid's Fasti, conceived by Titian and finally completed by Bellini.
The painting first draws the viewer to the multitude of people involved in the gathering, depicting almost the main god of ancient Greco-Roman mythology in this relatively narrow scene.
Includes the central frontmost, Mercury Messenger God Hermes in Greek mythology, Founus (Faunus, god of forests and fields), Jupiter (King of Jupiter, Zeus in Greek mythology), Pan, Nepturne (Poseidon in Greek mythology), Chris (Ceres the goddess of harvest, Demeter in Greek mythology), Apollo (god of light in Apollo), and Bacchus (Dionysian Greek mythology in Dionysus) and other gatherings of the gods.
Feast of the Gods Detail 1
Feast of the Gods Detail 2
Feast of the Gods Detail 3
The content also has a hint of eroticity, the water fountain girl Lotis on the far right of the picture may be drunk, half lying on the lawn, while priapus, the goddess of reproduction, is planning to lift her skirt. At this moment, a donkey bark came from the right side of the picture, stopping Priapssa's behavior. The donkey was brought into the room by Silenus.
The above passage is a little difficult for some friends to read, and I will put a brief list of ancient Greek-Roman gods at the bottom for your reference:
Zeus (Jupiter): Father of the gods.
Hera (Juno): Wife of Zeus, equivalent to the Queen Mother.
Poseidon (Neptune): One of Zeus's brothers, poseidon.
Hephaestus (Woolkan): Vulcan.
Apollo (also called Apollo in Roman mythology): Sun God.
Artemis (Diana): Apollo's twin sister, the moon goddess.
Ares (Marius): God of War.
Hermes (Mercury): Messenger of the gods.
Athena (Minerva): Goddess of Wisdom.
Aphrodite (Venus): Cupid.
Hestia (Vesta): Vesta, guardian of the family.
Demeter (Chris): The goddess of harvest in charge of agriculture.
Compared with the frescoes with many characters and rich plots left on the Walls of the Vatican by Raphael and others in the same period, Bellini's characters have some problems in proportion, perspective, and anatomy, which make them look a little deformed and stagnant. However, no one denies that it is a beautiful painting:
Bellini impressed the audience with color and scenery, the different flesh colors of men and women, the magnificence of clothing, and the exquisite ornamentation of utensils. It is worth mentioning that in this gathering, there was also a rare blue and white porcelain from China, which at that time, I am afraid that only a place as rich as Venice and frequent trade exchanges between east and west could often see such artifacts.
Feast of the Gods Detail 5
Feast of the Gods Detail 6
The jubilant figures occupy less than half of the proportions of the painting, and in the background, the lush trees, the birds perched on the trees in the upper right, and the blue sky are shrouded in a clear, transparent air that seems to carry the sea breeze.
Bellini is to tell us that although he is over eighty years old, his observation of the landscape and his use of outdoor light and color are still the most intelligent people in the painting world at that time.
It was with Bellini and Giorgione laying the groundwork for these techniques that, when Titian's age came, he quickly woven their techniques into a new painting language of his own, including color, light, brightness, magnificence, joy, intoxication, indulgence, passion, and then officially announced to the world:
The heyday of the Venetian School began!
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