We’re very lucky Philip II was so indulgent with Titian

In Venice, around 1552, Titian began work on a series of six paintings for King Philip II of Spain, each of which reinterpreted a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The resulting work proved to be the apogee of his career and became what may be the most influential group of paintings in post-Renaissance European art. Studied, absorbed and channelled by successive generations of artists, from Velázquez and Rubens through to Gainsborough and latterly Freud, the impact of these works and their stylistic legacy was profound.

Three of these paintings, ‘Diana and Actaeon’, ‘Diana and Callisto’ and ‘The Death of Actaeon’ are now on display in Edinburgh in the new exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Art. The first two are, after a long fundraising campaign, now jointly owned by the National Galleries in Edinburgh and London, while ‘The Death of Actaeon’ makes its first foray outside London since 1972. It is quite a collection.

This exhibition hangs the three masterpieces together and demonstrates emphatically why Titian was regarded as the greatest artist of his time and why his influence was so immense. Context for the work is offered by other paintings in the show, three earlier Titians flanked by work from notable contemporaries — Lorenzo Lotto, Paris Bordone, Jacopo Bassano, Tintoretto. There’s a handsome Veronese by the door and a room of drawings and prints too, including a fluid figurative chalk on paper, acquired by the gallery in 2007 and recently confirmed as a Titian.

Tintoretto trained briefly in Titian’s workshop — legend has it that he was expelled for caricaturing the master; certainly a mutual dislike emerged. His ‘Christ Carried into the Tomb’ is an eerie scene, the dead Christ grey of skin and long of body.