Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian art

Nice exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery bringing together three of the Titian Metamorphosis pictures and showing them with other Venetian pictures from this time from their collection. 

Pictures around it included a good Bassano “Adoration of the Kings” which included a very good bottom, a “Christ carried to the tomb” by Tintoretto, which had a surprising amount of colour in it for him and a portrait of an archer which might be a Giorgione.

The commentary was also fascinating. I had realised that Venetians were good at colour because they had such great access to pigments through the trade routes but I had never realised they liked using canvas as it was the same material used for the sails of the ships! I had also never thought about the great use of landscape in Venetian art, when they don’t really have any!

There was also a good room of prints and drawings the best being a woodcut by Titian, which is thought he drew on the block and then someone else carved. However he changed his mind about the head of Sebastian and drew a new one on a small block which was inserted. You can see the square around the head on the finished work!

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