Find out more at http://www.newbury.gov.uk/newbury-in-bloom.php
On arrival, I walk to Mayfair and meet my Art Historian for a greek salad at Caffe Fratelli, Berkeley St. Very nice! She is doing really well. We have a lovely chat.
Next she lets me in to the exhibition 'The Age of Giorgione'. I did not know what to expect but I am fascinated. The exhibition studies the ideas that changed the course of art in the Venetian Renaissance. Bringing together iconic paintings by masters such as Titian and Giorgione, it explores a pivotal yet poorly understood moment in the history of art.
In the first decade of sixteenth century Venice, although Bellini was still the leading artist of the day, a younger generation that included Titian and the enigmatic Giorgione emerged. Their innovations, combined with the influence of visitors such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci, ushered in a new dawn of Venetian art.
The first great painter to arise during this period is also the most mysterious: little is known about Giorgione’s life, and few works can be definitively attributed to him, yet the elusive poetic quality of his work is so powerful that, despite his early death from Plague, his legacy is profoundly felt in Venice and beyond. Masterpieces by Giorgione are displayed side by side with works by Giovanni Bellini, Albrecht Dürer, Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo and Lorenzo Lotto, among others. Together these important works chart the development of the idealised beauty, expressive force and sensuous use of colour that we recognise today as the hallmarks of Venetian Renaissance painting.
Key artists in 16th-century Venice
There is little contemporary recording of the era as most works were in private hands. Certainly, Venice at this time was a thriving cosmopolitan city republic, which encouraged the arts to fluorish. The city had much wealth due to it's strong maritime links. Politically it was in decline in terms of it's influence but this did not prevent the artistic revival and the government remained strong in local terms.
Giovanni Bellini 1433 - 1516
In his seventies during the decade, Bellini was the number one artist. He had styled himself as a portrait painter for the rich. Below is the only surviving Bellini portrait with a landscape background. In common with most Bellini portraits here the sitter is in three quarter profile. He wears the uniform of the cittadino, a citizen below the nobility group. He could be the influential writer, Pietro Bembo.
Portrait of a Man, Giovanni Bellini c1505
Giorgione 1477-1510
Alongside Titian, Giorgione played a fundamental role in introducing a softer and more naturalistic style, intent on rivalling poetry in its force of mood and feeling. The painter came from the small town of Castelfranco Veneto, 40 km inland from Venice. He was born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco. His name sometimes appears as Zorzo. The variant Giorgione (or Zorzon) may be translated "Big George". Only about six surviving paintings are acknowledged for certain to be his work.
Together with Titian, who was slightly younger, he is the founder of the distinctive Venetian school of Italian Renaissance Painting , which achieves much of its effect through colour and mood, and is traditionally contrasted with the reliance on the more linear style of Florentine painting.
Contemporary documents record that Giorgione's gifts were recognized early. From 1500, when he was only twenty-three, he regularly painted portraits of the prominent nobles. In 1507–1508 he was employed, with other artists of his generation, to decorate with frescoes the exterior of the newly rebuilt Fondaco del Tedeschi at Venice, having already done similar work on the exterior of the Casa Soranzo, the Casa Grimani alli Servi and other Venetian palaces. Very little of this work survives today.
Giorgione also introduced a new range of subjects. Besides altar pieces and portraits he painted pictures that told no story. Innovating with the courage and felicity of genius, he had for a time an overwhelming influence on his contemporaries and immediate successors in the Venetian school.
Portrait of a young man, Giorgione
Il tramonto, Giorgione
Tullio Lombardo (1455 –1532),
Also known as Tullio Solari, he was a renaissance sculptor and member of the Lombardo family who worked together to sculpt famous chirches and tombs.
I find this work to be exquisite
Bacchus and Ariadne, 1510, Tullio Lombardo
Sebastiano del Piombo (1485 - 1547)
This artist was born Sebastiano Luciani. His nickname derives from the lucrative Papal appointment as Keeper of the Seal (piombo or "lead", as in the metal, means a seal), which he held from 1531.
Sebastiano del Piombo belonged to the painting school of his native city, Venice, but was active for a large portion of his career in Rome. At first a musician, chiefly a soloist on the lute, he was in great request among the Venetian nobility. He soon showed a turn for painting, and became a pupil of Bellini and afterwards of Giorgione, whose influence is apparent in his works.
He painted portraits and religious subjects in oils, and once he was established avoided the large fresco schemes that took up so much of the time of Raphael and Michelangelo. His subsequent influence was limited by his lack of prominent pupils, compared to Raphael at least, and relatively little dissemination of his works.
Sebastiano directed that his burial should be conducted without ceremony of priests, friars or lights, and that the cost thus saved should go to the poor.
The work below is gorgeous
Birth of Adonis, Sebastiano del Piombo
Titian 1488-1576
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio was the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore in the Republic of Venice.
Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars", Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western Art.
During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically but he retained a lifelong interest in colour. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone are without precedent in the history of Western painting.
He was the son of Gregorio Vecelli and his wife Lucia. His father was superintendent of the castle of Pieve di Cadore and managed local mines for their owners.
Titian joined Giorgione as an assistant, but many contemporary critics already found his work more impressive. Their relationship evidently contained a significant element of rivalry. Distinguishing between their work at this period remains a subject of scholarly controversy. A substantial number of attributions have moved from Giorgione to Titian in the 20th century, with little traffic the other way. One of the earliest known Titian works, Christ Carrying the Cross, was long regarded as by Giorgione. Perhaps they collaborated?
Titian's talent in fresco is shown in those he painted in 1511 at Padua in the Carmelite church and in the Scuola del Santo, some of which have been preserved, among them the Meeting at the Golden Gate, and three scenes (Miracoli di sant'Antonio) from the life of St. Anthony of Padua: The Miracle of the Jealous Husband, which depicts the Murder of a Young Woman by Her Husband, A Child Testifying to Its Mother's Innocence, and The Saint Healing the Young Man with a Broken Limb.
From Padua in 1512, Titian returned to Venice; and in 1513 he obtained a broker's patent, termed La Sanseria or Senseria (a privilege much coveted by rising or risen artists), in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and became superintendent of the government works, being especially charged to complete the paintings left unfinished by Giovanni Bellini in the hall of the great council in the ducal palace. He set up an atelier on the Grand Canal at S. Samuele, the precise site being now unknown. It was not until 1516, after the death of Bellini, that he came into actual enjoyment of his patent. At the same time he entered an exclusive arrangement for painting. The patent yielded him a good annuity of 20 crowns and exempted him from certain taxes provided he painted likenesses of the successive Doges of his time at the fixed price of eight crowns each. The actual number he painted was five.
During this period (1516–1530), which may be called the period of his mastery and maturity, the artist moved on from his early Giorgionessque style, undertook larger, more complex subjects and for the first time attempted a monumental style. When Giorgione and Bellini died, Titian was now unrivaled in the Venetian School. For sixty years he was the undisputed master of Venetian painting. He lived to be extremely old by sixteenth century standards.
Immediately after Titian's death, his son and assistant Orazio died of the plague. His opulent mansion was plundered by thieves during the epidemic.
To find out more about Titian see http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tita/hd_tita.htm
I think this is my favourite of the exhibition. Titian's painting of the cheesecloth like textile is fantastic.
Boy with a pipe, 1510, Titian
So, completely satisfied with such wonderful art, I head to the ICA and chill out for a couple of hours with a massive pot of mint tea. And then to my talk on karma and rebirth. That is another story.
Then home. Poor Phyllis has a snapped chain, so we walk. Forty minutes up hill. Poor Phyll.
But not poor me, I am happy nonetheless.
Birth of Adonis, Sebastiano del Piombo
Titian 1488-1576
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio was the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore in the Republic of Venice.
Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars", Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western Art.
During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically but he retained a lifelong interest in colour. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone are without precedent in the history of Western painting.
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