Leseprobe

9 Ill. 1 Titian “Girl with Fruit Bowl” c. 1560, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Titian was one of the most prominent portrait artists in Renaissance Venice. In addition to a large number of historical and altar paintings, he created many por- traits in which he captured emperors, doges, princes, members of the aristocracy, scholars and merchants on his canvases. At first glance, it also appears that the picture of the lady in her white clothes could also be a portrait (frontispiece). 1 The young woman is shown in half figure in front of a diffuse dark back- ground and the clothing of silk satin and her light skin- color rise dazzlingly out of it. The white pearls she wears as a necklace, earrings and as ornaments in her hair coordinate perfectly with the color of her robe. The flag fan in her right hand continues with these variations in white. Flag fans of this kind, which were already known in the Mediterranean region in ancient times, developed into extravagant fashion accesso- ries in Venice in the 16 th century. The fan shown here is a luxury article; threads of gold, with a precious stone in the center of each lozenge, are wound around its silver-coated handle. The fan leaf itself has a diag- onal woven pattern. Additional accents of color, pro- vided by the golden bracelets, ruby ring and ornamen- tal girdle, flatter the tone of her blond hair – it is well known that, after the middle of the cinquecento, it became fashionable for Venetian women to dye their hair to give it the color of gold. After the restoration carried out by Günter Ohlhoff from the Painting Res- toration Studio of the State Art Collections Dresden in the year 2007, the viewer once again became able to fully experience the artistic refinement with which Titian executed this late work, the exquisitely bal- anced nuances of the white palette, the pasty, confi- dent brushstrokes, as well as the effective suggestion of the various materials in the picture. The clothing and jewelry show that the person por- trayed was extremely well-off and, for this reason, it could easily be assumed that she belonged to one of the Venetian upper-classes, the cittadini (wealthy merchants, high state officials, doctors, lawyers, etc.) or nobili (nobility). However, the question of whether this is actually a portrait needs to be asked. First doubts arise when one considers that the female fig- ure Titian used for his portrayal of the “Lady in White” can be found in several works in the artist’s oeuvre. This fact would seem to indicate that he did not per- ceive the protagonist as a concrete person but, much more, conceived her as a super-personal ideal. A tra- dition of depicting ideal beauty had become estab- lished in Venice in the early 16 th century when Gior- gione painted the first belle donne veneziane. It seems most likely that the Dresden painting belongs to this genre. However, people in Dresden were originally certain that the lady dressed in white must have been Titian’s lover. The first printed catalog of the Royal Picture Gallery, which was published in 1765, therefore de- scribes the work as the “Portrait of Titian’s Mistress, capped with hair & dressed in white, holding a kind of fan; the figure half-length.” 2 In the meantime, this rather romantic interpretation as the artist’s lover has become obsolete, but it characterized the history of the picture for a long period. And, there are still con- flicting ideas about who the woman with the fan in her hand actually is today. She is thought to be a courtesan, Titian’s daughter Lavinia, an illegitimate child or the ideal portrayal of beauty, in turn. The painting has been in Dresden since 1746 when Friedrich August II, Elector of Saxony – who was also King of Poland as August III – purchased the work from the Este Collection in Modena. There is broad consensus among scholars that a connection exists between the painting in Dresden and a letter that Tit- ian sent to Alfonso II d’Este, Count of Ferrara, in 1561. The letter itself has been lost, but it is paraphrased by Francesco Scannelli in his treatise on Venetian painting. According to this, Titian assured the ruler of Ferrara that he would send him a portrait of a person who was dearest to him. 3 Scannelli continued that nobody could doubt that this was one of the artist’s finest works. The young lady was portrayed “in a graceful pose and, in a becoming manner, shows Andreas Henning A Vision of Absolute Beauty Titian’s “Lady in White” in Dresden