Titian: Love, Desire, Death: The National Gallery’s exhibit
Words by Florence Chadwick
Titian: Love, Desire, Death is a relatively small exhibit but none-the-less ground-breaking. Reunited for the first time in over three centuries and spanning collections from Boston to Madrid to London, the exhibit as described on the National Gallery's website is an inspiring collection of relatable emotion, despite the subject being predominantly gods and goddesses. The display is Titian's 'poesie', six paintings inspired by Ovid's Latin poetry and an additional seventh. Having its origins in classical myths, the curator drives home the all-consuming themes of love, lust, and retribution and how in essence, Titian's work is poetry in paint.
Titian: Love, Desire, Death exhibition room
I saw this exhibition a few months ago and I was incredibly unsure of what to expect with Coronavirus dominating the news and our social media feeds. Plus, at five foot three if someone walks in front of me in a crowded exhibit...I am done for - so when I went at 5.00pm and pretty much had the display to myself, I was relieved both not to have to break out my best impression of an angry Londoner on the tube in rush hour, but also that I could get up close and personal with each painting.
The first room I walked into had a teal and peach colour scheme with black and white silk banners hanging from the ceiling, each highlighting a different detail from the paintings on display. In the dim light, the initial idea of painter and patron were introduced - explaining how Prince Philip of Spain commissioned Titian to paint pieces based on Ovid's poetry collection entitled 'Metamorphoses', showcasing the divine whims of the classical pantheon. You then progress down a darkened corridor sprinkled with Ovid quotes - there was a small cinema set off to one side but unfortunately that was closed due to COVID-19.
Danaë, Titian, 1546
“This theatre of human flesh hasn’t been experienced in the way you can in this show for more than 300 years. It is Titian’s answer to the Sistine Chapel”.
Jonathan Jones. The Guardian.
Just as Jonathan Jones states above, the exhibit opens into a large room and the first thing that becomes clear is that the female nude figure acts as the common thread throughout all the pieces, playing the starring role in Titian's erotic fairy tale retellings. The first piece is Danaë, the isolated princess is lying, reclined on a bed with Zeus above her in the guise of a shower of gold. She is vulnerable, love and desire personified in paint. However, it is also here that the potential undercurrent of Titian's mockery is first uncovered.
Prince Philip of Spain, later King of a large and extensive empire was definitively pious. Titian is a famed member of the 16th Century Renaissance Venetian school and during this period Venice was infamously and irrevocably tied to the sex trade. Titian preferred to paint from life - most of his models were sex workers, a fact that was mythically disguised in his poesie leaving Philip in the dark. In this particular painting where Danaë conceives Perseus, Zeus' shower of gold is almost payment-like in appearance, raining down upon the nude female. In contrast, on the next wall hanging side by side were Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto. Here Titian trades love and lust for death and despair. In the first, the mortal hunter Actaeon sees the goddess Diana and her nymphs bathing. Diana in a fit of fury curses Actaeon to become a deer and he flees in fear. In the second, Diana banishes her nymph Callisto who had been concealing a pregnancy. In both, Titian explores the darker consequences to desire with Actaeon cowering in fear and Callisto's collapsing form.
Diana and Actaeon, Titian, 1559
Titian's Venus and Adonis hang alone on one side of a doorway, emitting desperation from Venus' twisted torso and upturned face, hopelessly trying to keep her lover with her. On the other side of the doorway is Perseus and Andromeda. While the first reflected despair and futility of fleeting love and desire - even for the goddess of love - Perseus and Andromeda links love with heroics with Perseus swooping down to save Andromeda from the clutches of a deadly sea monster.
On the third wall The Rape of Europa shows a much darker depiction of desire alongside violence, with Europa being swept out to sea away on the back of a disguised Zeus from land and her friends, painted in miniature in the lower left corner, in complete juxtaposition to the painting that came before it. The final painting hanging alone is slightly separate and not strictly part of the 'poesie'. The Death of Actaeon depicts the grisly end for Actaeon who's myth we saw in Diana and Actaeon and is one of the last paintings Titian worked on right up until his death in 1576. As the last painting the viewer would naturally end on, the curator starts the exhibit with the conception of Perseus and desire and then ends on a bittersweet note with the portrayal of death as a result of desire in the case of the ill-fated Actaeon.
The Rape of Europa, Titian, 1562
Although small, the exhibition was worth seeing with love, death and desire portrayed in rich technicolour altogether for the first time in over three centuries. The exhibit is open for booking for visits between the 6th -17 January 2021, see more info here: Titian: Love, Desire, Death
