My visit to Venice was too short, but very sweet. Having been before I knew what to expect, but it isn't until you arrive again that you get caught up in its magical spell. The canals and paths combine to create a labyrinth that you are almost sure to get lost in. And its art offerings are like the city itself: intimate and spellbinding. And of course, the light is marvelous!
The high point of this visit was visiting the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari church. A massive church completed by the Franciscans in 1338, it is made of brick in the Italian Gothic style and contains two brilliant Titians. The one that took my breath away was the Pesaro Madonna.
"When Titian painted this altarpiece, he broke with a centuries-long tradition of placing the devotional figures (the Virgin and Child) in the center of the painting and the painted space. By doing this, he allowed for a greater sense of movement through the painting, presaging the Baroque period's more complicated compositional techniques."
I took that from wiki, but it matters not what anyone has written or said about it, or that its subjects include the Madonna, baby Jesus and St. Francis. What matters is that it is alive and can arrest every movement in your body with a single glance. Leaving you standing there, more aware of your heartbeat than you were seconds before. For me great works of art are like silent prophets...they speak visually and their messages transcend time and space. It awes me that Titian stood in front of this same painting almost five hundred years ago, took some paint and brushes and created an image that can command my attention and give direction to my life. This is as much a miracle to me, as the Virgin birth is to Christians. And artists like Titian, come along about as infrequently as prophets like Jesus. All of this probably sounds like complete twoodle if you have only seen a reproduction. But alas, it is all I can provide...and this advice: go to Venice and see this painting, and you might just become a believer of the Gospel of Tiziano. You might discover that this painting, though inanimate, can ask you questions, make you feel deeper, and more alive. And by making you feel more alive, illuminate your own mortality and the fleeting nature and meaning of life. If you were wondering, the answer is "Yes", being in Italy does make you prone to the dramatic. It is a dramatic place, with a dramatic history and dramatic people. That is why Italians wear sunglasses all the time: to keep private some of the tears that collect in their eyes as they go about their lives surrounded by such agonising beauty. Or to try and contain their excitement, and keep their cool while driving through Rome at night in a Cadillac with Marcello.
1 comment:
Pesaro Madonna: what a great painting, I had never seen it before.
So the Virgin and Child is placed stage "right"...how brilliant is that. It is infinitely more appropriate for our primal bonds to be off to the side of our internal orientation...informing our center of gravity, but never placed in a dominant role...or calling the shots from the focal point. How true in life.
And what about the frame and backdrop. Those stately pillars that form the border of the viewpoint provide such a sense of the knowable, the reliable. But within the four corners of the sandbox, we want to play don't we? And Tiziano so totally gets it. Look at that sky, what an invitation to explore the full bandwidth of who we might have been, in another life, or another place. Oh to have pillars, but to have the licence to explore the full amplitude of ourselves, freed from all point of reference. Tiziano gives us the paradox and contradiction that we crave but cannot get in the world of the concrete, where truth is defined by absolutes -- and we are weighed down the narrative of our own roles. Yup, I liked this painting BP, a lot. AA
Post a Comment