The exhibition of Titian’s six great so-called poesie for King Philip II (c. 1551-1562) that I helped organise at the National Gallery in London, and which showed in modified form at the Prado earlier this year, has now opened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston under the title Titian: Women, Myth & Power.
From what I’ve seen in the press and online, I’m greatly impressed with their installation and didactic material they’ve put together, and it pleases me greatly to see these great Titians united in my American home away from home in Boston. I can’t wait hopefully to see it later in the autumn.
If you’re anyway near it, do go see it. It is truely and without hyperbole a once-in-a-lifetime chance. These are some of the great paintings of the Western tradition and they haven’t been seen together since the 1570s.
I sidste uge måtte vi sige farvel til Kurt Westergaard, manden der tegnede Profeten Muhammed med en bombe i turbanen og dermed var med til på godt og ondt at ændre verdens gang. Thomas, Frederik og jeg diskuterer tegningen, manden og krisen i den seneste episode fra Radio Rackham og jeg synes vi kommer både godt og vidt omkring.
Karikaturkrisen har påvirket os Rackhamitter meget, så det var en episode vi længe har haft i os. Og ligesom de fleste andre danskere, er det stensikkert ikke gjort med det: de tegninger er på sin vis mareridtet, der aldrig går væk. En torn i siden, der aftvinger stillingtagen og sjælekvaler. Læs mere på Nummer9 og lyt her!
Den her episode er tæt på. Frederiksbergmuseerne har besluttet sig for at udskille den unikke tegneseriesamling, de i form at Storm P.-museet i 2012 have overtaget fra Anders Hjorth-Jørgensen og hans Tegneseriemuseet i Danmark. Jeg var, samme med Louise C. Larsen og Søren Vinterberg med til at forhandle aftalen på plads dengang og vi troede den hellige grav var velforvaret — at samlingen var sikret for eftertiden og at Storm P.-museet nu havde grundlaget for skabelsen af et egentlig tegneseriemuseum i Danmark.
Det viste sig ikke at være tilfældet. Storm P.-museet fusionerede under Frederiksbergmuseerne i 2013 og det blev efterhånden tydeligt, at midlerne og viljen manglede. i 2018 besluttede bestyrelsen sig så for at udskille Anders Hjorth Jørgensens samling, som de til både vores og Anders Hjorth Jørgensens store overraskelse alligevel ikke havde forpligtet sig til at beholde og udvikle. Der er tale om to fundamentalt forskellige læsninger af overdragelsesdokumentet, som vi oplevede som forpligtende på museumsloven, mens de ser det som en hensigtserklæring. Det eneste bindende i den aftale, er åbenbart at Frederiksbergmuseerne har den fulde råderet og derfor nu arbejder på at afhænde samlingen på bedste vis.
Det er hele dette problemfelt vores episode analyserer nærmere, med venlig deltagelse af inspektør ved Storm P.-museet Nikolaj Brandt, forlægger Carsten Søndergaard og John Kenn Mortensen fra Dansk Tegneserieråds desværre snarligt afgående bestyrelse. Vi stiller os selv spørgsmålet om hvad et dansk tegneseriemuseum kunne være og hvilke konkrete muligheder, der er for fremtiden. Det er grove løjer, men hvis episoden kan inspirere folk til at engagere sig — helst som ny kandidat til bestyrelsen i Dansk tegneserieråd, som jeg stadig opfatter som den bedste mulighed for at formidle en redningsplan — vil noget da være nået.
Postponed by Covid, the exhibition La forma del tempo (‘The Shape of Time’) at the Poldi Pezzoli in Milan finally opened last month and runs till 27 September. Centred around the museum’s extraodinary collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century clocks, it examines conceptions of time in the renaissance as expressed in the visual arts. The National Gallery has lent Titian’s Allegory of Prudence, a picture that grapples with issues of family, succession, memory and time through a creative interpretation of a traditional iconography that represents time in the form of three heads, either human or animal. Anyway, I wrote the entry for the painting and would encourage readers who are in MIlan or find themselves there to go see the show. It looks fascinating. Check our Works section for info on the catalogue.
One of Lorenzo Lotto’s greatest altarpieces can be found in the small church of Santa Maria della Pietà in the town of Monte San Giusto in the Marche. Painted in 1528-29, it is a stunningly ambitious representation of the Crucifixion, conceived by a master at the height of his powers, but also an artist who was increasingly struggling to find work in his native Venice leading him to seek employment elsewehere, especially in the Marche where many of the greatest of his later works can still be seen today.
Over at Apollo, I’ve reviewed Florent Ruppert, Jérôme Mulot and Bastien Vivès’ comic The Grande Odalisque, which mobilises the art heist subgenre as a commentary on shallow elitism. The glamour of the old masters and commodification of art themtised in a modern action comic. The review also gives me the occasion to formulate a few thoughts on the emerging subgenre of museum comics and didactiic artist’s biographies in comics form.
Here, by the way, is the Laurent de la Hyre painting that gets confused with a Titian in the comic, after which it is machine-gunned:
Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1559-62, Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
This week, the Museo del Prado in Madrid opened their exhibitions Passiones Mitológicas, or Mythological Passions. The show is their version of the exhibition I helmed at the National Gallery, which gathers for the first time since the sixteenth century Titian’s six mytholgical paintings, so-called poesie, originally painted for the Spanish king Philip II between around 1551 and 1562.
The show at the Prado is a kind of homecoming for these masterworks, a return to the royal Spanish collection to which they belonged and in which they became a cornerstone, influencing generations of artists. The Prado is therefore uniquely positioned to tell a broader story of the development of European painting in the early modern era and Titian’s crucial role in it. They have also taken the opportunity to tell the story of the development of secular, mythological genres of painting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as kind of liberating format that encouraged experimentation.
Diego Velázquez, Las hilanderas (The Spinners), 1655-60. Madrid, Museo del Prado
It is of course incredibly difficult to travel at the moment, but if you’re in Madrid this exhibition is a rare treat, showing as it does the great poesie with masterworks by Veronese, Velázquez, Poussin, Rubens, Ribera and others. It is on until 4 July, so I for one am hoping for a summer visit! In the meantime, I believe they will be offering a virtual tour.
It seemed to come out of nowhere. Thought lost, Giorgio Vasari’s Allegory of Patience of 1542 popped up on the art market. It was acquired by the Klesch Collection in London where I first went to see it. Greatly impressed with the picture, we expressed an interest in taking it on loan at the National Gallery and the owners kindly agreed: it has been on display at Trafalgar Square since March last year, finding a natural place among the Florentine sixteenth-century pictures and significantly complementing the collection. In my opinion, it’s as good as Vasari gets as an easel painter — a monumental picture with great wall power. This may in part be due to the probable involvement in its design by Michelangelo, but it is in any case a bravura piece of painting.
Now, the Klesch Collection has published a small book on it, authored by the distinguished scholar of Florentine renaissance art Carlo Falciani. He, my colleague at the Gallery Caroline Campbell, and I also contributed to a short film on it. Check it out, and do come see the picture if you’re in London when the Gallery is open again!
The video posted here is my contribution to a lecture series on Raphael, organised to mark the 500th anniversary of his death in 1520 by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of Toronto. Partly by happenstance, it turned into a series of lectures on Raphael and his relationship with or significance for other Italian renaissance artists, all of them Venetians. My talk, given in early October, was on his fraught relationship with Sebastiano del Piombo, who became Raphael’s main competitor in painting after he arrived in Rome in 1511, not least because he quickly allied himself with Raphael’s most severe rival, Michelangelo. Anyway, do check it out.
Do also tune into the contributions by my colleagues Thomas Dalla Costa and Giorgio Tagliaferro who talked about Raphael and Titian and Raphael and Paolo Veronese, respectively.
This November, we staging a large virtual conference devoted to Titian’s late mythological paintings at the National Gallery. Organised by Thomas Dalla Costa and myself on the occasion of the exhibition Titian: Love Desire Death, which is still on view at Trafalgar Square (until 17 January), it will bring together scholars, conservators and scientists from Europe and North America to speak on a wide variety of topics relating to Titian and his mythological paintings, from technique to meaning and the wider context: from politics and identity to sex and violence!
The conference It will also feature four artist’s talks, with Nalini Malani, Michael Armitage, Phoebe Gloeckner and Tom de Freston — all reflecting on what Titian means to their practice and how they grapple with the enduring issues so central to his work.
The dates are 3, 10 and 17 November. You can see the full programme and register here.
Min anmeldelse af Peter Wandel og Rasmus Meislers tegneserie Den magiske spinel kan læses i fredagens bogtillæg til Information eller online her, hvis du betaler. Det er en kompetent men McGraphic novel-agtig tegneserie, der primært er sat i verden for at højne opmærksomheden omkring Davids samling i København, hvilket bestemt er en værdig sag — Davids samling er en perle i dansk kulturliv, en samling på absolut internationalt niveau. Besøg!
The BBC2 documentary Titian Behind Closed Doors, directed by Matthew Hill, aired on the BBC on Saturday night. It’s a treatment of Titian’s relationship with Philip II, the king of Spain, and the series of mythological paintings, the so-called poesie, that he painted for him. It coincides with our now-shuttered exhibition, Titian Love Desire Death, at The National Gallery. I was involved in pitching it to the BBC and gave an interview for it, but have not otherwise been involved. I recommend taking a look if you’re interested in the subject — it covers a lot of ground on a complex and rich topic. If you have access to the BBC iPlayer, you can watch it here for the next twenty-odd days.
Before the world went sideways, I was working on an exhibition, Titian Love Desire Death, uniting seven masterpieces of mythological paintings by Titian (about 1488-1576) at the National Gallery. We managed to open the exhibition on 16 March. Three days later it closed along with the rest of the Gallery which was one of the last European institutions of its kind to do so. We have no idea when we will be able to reopen again and therefore whether we will be able to share this extraordinary collection of paintings with the public before they have to be packed and shipped onwards. I wrote about this situation for Apollo Magazine last week.
Titian called these pictures poesie in order to emphasise the inspiration he had taken from classical poetry and the ambition to have them work as visual poems. The group of six canvases were executed for Philip of Habsburg, King Philip II of Spain from 1556, between about 1551 and 1562, while a seventh was never sent and only completed towards the end of the artist’s life. The six have not been seen together since, probably, the 1570s, and the seventh has never been displayed with the rest of the group. This was a dream project, not just of mine but any Titian or Italian renaissance enthusiast for generations.
I have been privileged to play a part in its realisation and hope you will want to take a closer look, if not in person at the National Gallery, then perhaps at one of our partnering venues: the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, the Museo del Prado in Madrid or the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, to where the paintings will tour, if all goes well and the pandemic doesn’t get in the way of that too. And if not there, then perhaps virtually — we will doing our best to share our knowledge and appreciation online over the next months, in part under the #MuseumFromHome tag. Also, there will be a documentary dedicated to Titian and the poesie, in which I participate, broadcast on BBC 2 on 4 April and I believe Mary Beard will be featuring the works on Front Row Late sometime soon as well. Will post links in here when and if.
Our exhibition film is based on the BBC’s footage, a taster of which can be seen in the following short video on the paired Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto:
Here is a Facebook Live I did on 16 March, before we opened to the public. It was done under the worrying shadow of Covid-19 so bear with the slight incoherence. In the run-up to the exhibition my colleagues and I also did a series of FacebookLives on the individual paintings — they can be accessed here.
A creative decision that we made early in the process and which I was particularly happy with was to reframe Philip’s six pictures in matching frames in order to harmonise the display. Handcarved in the National Gallery framing department by Peter Schade, our Head of Framing and his team, they are based on the original sixteenth-century frame around Titian’s late Pietà at the Accademia in Venice. Check out this nice video the Gallery produced on the project:
Studier af et barn med en kat, ca. 1478-81, London, British Museum
I dagens bogtillæg til Information kan man læse min anmeldelse af inspektør ved Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York og Leonardo-ekspert Carmen Bambachs monumentale bogværk Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered. Det har været små 25 år undervejs og er en forskningsmæssig bedrift af de sjældne, sprængfyldt med detailobservationer og filologiske synteser, men det er også en anelse tungt at danse med og mangler en rød tråd. Jeg skriver blandt andet:
…Bambach er ikke maleriekspert, hun er specialist i renæssancens tegnekunst, et område på hvilket der kun er få, hvis viden kan måle sig med hendes. Den genopdagelse af en af verdens mest berømte kunstnere, som bogværkets titel lover, ligger i hendes objektnære behandling af mesterens arbejder på papir. Hun er ikke interesseret i store overordnede teser og konklusioner, men snarere i den rigdom, der findes i detaljen. Hun ser ting, ingen andre har lagt mærke til, og i modsætning til mange kolleger, som går mere selektivt til stoffet, skyer hun ikke de ofte dybt komplicerede tekniske eller filologiske spørgsmål, det kaster af sig.
Alt dette gør hendes arbejde tungt at danse med for den alment interesserede læser, men uvurderligt for fagfolk – selv om formatet er monografisk og præsentationen kronologisk, fungerer det således bedst som opslagsværk.
Læs hele min anmeldelse her, mod betaling. Eller giv dig i kast med projektet, der dannede grundlaget, Bambachs store katalog til den fantastiske udstilling hun arrangerede om mesteren på Metropolitan Museum i 2003.
Raphael’s Portrait of Lorenzo de’Medici
The Metabunker summarizes the problems of attribution surrounding the Raphael portrait sold at Christie’s in 2007
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Radio Rackham: Kurt Westergaard
I sidste uge måtte vi sige farvel til Kurt Westergaard, manden der tegnede Profeten Muhammed med en bombe i turbanen og dermed var med til på godt og ondt at ændre verdens gang. Thomas, Frederik og jeg diskuterer tegningen, manden og krisen i den seneste episode fra Radio Rackham og jeg synes vi kommer både godt og vidt omkring.
Karikaturkrisen har påvirket os Rackhamitter meget, så det var en episode vi længe har haft i os. Og ligesom de fleste andre danskere, er det stensikkert ikke gjort med det: de tegninger er på sin vis mareridtet, der aldrig går væk. En torn i siden, der aftvinger stillingtagen og sjælekvaler. Læs mere på Nummer9 og lyt her!