David Ekserdjian

The most Shakespearean of painters

Titian’s paintings have always been both loved and revered, and he is without question the most influential artist who has ever lived. In the 17th century, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velázquez and Rembrandt were all under his benign spell, but even more remarkably over 400 years after his death his power continues to impress. It is not by chance that both the National Gallery and the Royal Ballet are currently celebrating Titian as a source of inspiration for newly created art, ballet and music, because he remains in so many ways the most contemporary of the Old Masters.

In the world of art history, the study of Titian has given birth to a massive bibliography, which includes a host of brilliant detailed contributions, but nothing even remotely approaching a wholly satisfactory full-dress monograph or catalogue raisonné. The precise contours of his output — are individual pictures autograph or workshop, finished or unfinished? — have provoked violent differences of opinion among scholars, and appear set to continue to do so for the rest of time. The same goes for the interpretation of the subject matter of a perhaps surprisingly large number of his works, with some wanting virtually every detail to be pregnant with profound significance and others regarding Titian’s iconography as almost moronically straightforward.

The last serious account of his life and works was published in two mighty volumes in 1877 (the second edition dates from 1881) by Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, who were arguably the greatest authorities on renaissance art of their period. Sheila Hale is scrupulously up to date on current debates within the discipline, but paradoxically one of the many merits of her monumental biography is precisely that she is not a professional art historian.

Perhaps as a result, she is incredibly good at seeing the wood from the trees, is immune to the lure of factional trench warfare, and tends to discuss thorny problems with a sure grasp of the pros and cons of both sides of the argument.

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