The Gypsy Madonna
The Gypsy Madonna | |
---|---|
Artist | Titian |
Year | c. 1510–11 |
Medium | oil on panel |
Dimensions | 65.8 cm × 83.8 cm (25.9 in × 33.0 in) |
Location | Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
The Gypsy Madonna is a
It is close to compositions by Titian's former master
The right background is occupied with a
Appreciation
The "Gypsy Madonna" is a 19th-century name for the painting, because of the Virgin's supposed "dusky complexion and her dark hair and eyes". She seems young even by the standards of Madonnas, and the hands of the Child are unusually engaged, respectively with his mother's fingers and her dress (this is a difference to the Bellini).[8]
According to
the effect of sensuous existence Titian makes by his command of optical device is of an extreme virtuosity. No picture before this attains a comparable sense of presences existing palpably within an atmosphere, reflecting coloured light but also absorbing it to saturation point, so that each pore of flesh or drapery makes texture.[9]
Despite the debts to Bellini and Giorgione, the painting shows Titian, who was then around twenty-one, developing his own independent character and style.[10]
Technical
Technical examinations show that it was originally even closer to the Bellini in Detroit, and that many changes were made in the course of painting. Unlike Bellini's usual careful underdrawing, Titian "used as his guidelines only summary strokes made with a fairly wide brush with thin wash shading".[11] Among several other changes, the head of the Child originally looked out at the viewer.
Provenance
Like several other important early Venetian paintings in Vienna, the work was (very likely) in the Venetian collection of Bartolomeo della Nave and in 1636 sold in Venice to the Duke of Hamilton, who brought it to London. In 1659, after Hamilton's execution, it was acquired by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in Brussels, whose collection soon passed to the imperial collection in Vienna.[12]
See also
Notes
- ^ Jaffé, 74: "about 1511"; KM: "um 1510"
- ^ Jaffé, 74; Brown, 56, 58
- ^ Brown, 31; Hale, 64
- ^ Freedberg, 145, quoted; Jaffé, 74; Hale, 64
- ^ Jaffé, 74; Hale, 64
- ^ Jaffé, 74; Hale, 64
- ^ Brown, 58
- ^ Jaffé, 74
- ^ Freedberg, 145
- ^ Freedberg, 144–146; Hale, 64; Jaffé, 74
- ^ Hale, 64
- ^ KM; see Bartolomeo della Nave for a fuller account.
References
- Brown, David Alan (ed), Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, 2006, National Gallery of Art, Washington / Yale
- ISBN 0300055870
- Hale, Sheila, Titian, His Life, 2012, Harper Press, ISBN 978-0-00717582-6
- "KM": "Zigeunermadonna", Kunsthistorisches Museum
- Jaffé, David (ed), Titian, The National Gallery Company/Yale, London 2003, ISBN 1 857099036
Further reading
- Joannides, Paul, Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius, 2001, Yale University Press, ISBN 0300087217, 9780300087215