FROM THE PUBLISHER

The greatest of all Venetian painters, Titian achieved a worldly success and an artistic influence unsurpassed in his own lifetime and later equalled only by Rubens. His matchless technique and brilliant use of colour won him the patronage of the most powerful men in Christendom, and led to the acceptance of a revolutionary change in the role of the painter the consequences of which are still felt today. In freeing the art of painting from its traditional subservience to drawing, he emphasised the importance of colour and brushwork as means of self-expression, establishing a tradition that can be traced through the work of countless artists from Velazquez to the Impressionists and beyond. In this major and scholarly study, Charles Hope presents an authoritative account of Titian's remarkable rise to fame and sustained pre-eminence, basing his arguments extensively on unpublished information and convincingly challenging many accepted ideas about the painter's career and development.

The author sheds light on the meaning of Titian's paintings, on the role of his studio, his influence on contemporaries and on the changes in his own ideals and technique. With many images in colour, this book covers every aspect of Titain's art and demostrates his status as the last great painter of the High Renaissance. It includes portraits, the epitome of the aristocratic ideals of the period, as well as erotic mythologies, which created an enduring and pervasive image of the world of the pagan gods, and large-scale religious compositions, whose innovations laid the foundations of the baroque art of Catholic Europe. This book, drawing on a massive compilation of manuscript sources, is considered by many, a standard one-volume work on the subject.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal