Titian and the Venus of Urbino

Granted, I don't know much about Titian, other than how to pronounce his name. But his impact of relationships between patron and painter and his deep understanding of hue and chroma when painting sets him apart as one of the masters of the Renaissance.

The reading this week focused quite a bit on Titian's painting style and how progressive it was, so bear with me while I articulately recap and share my thoughts on everything. 

One of the really cool things about Titian was his working relationships with his patrons at the time. Titian, often at the request of his patrons, was allowed to choose his own subject matter when painting, and was allowed to present these works as commissions. This was an astounding level of freedom at the time, when painters were commonly stuck in business transactions where the subject matter of their art was chosen for this. This was an unprecedented amount of artistic freedom, and we really wouldn't see it again until modern times. 

Now, on to Titian's paintings themselves. This dude is totally a pro. Here, don't just take my word for it. check out the Venus of Urbino;

She's gorgeous, and a completely new kind of nude than what was previously seen in painting. This is one of the first times we see a nude like this in such an intimate setting, (something I believe we don't really see pushed and played with again until the Impressionists, with their sassy, human, almost vulgar nudes.).We see Titian playing with the conventions of the time, putting her in a contextualized, intimate bedroom setting, with the model herself displaying less modesty than most nude goddesses of the time. Her face is turned to us, staring at us pointedly instead of turned in profile. Is neat and it's in your face, and it's also very, very bright and colorful, which is another thing we see Titian do frequently. Titian likes to contrast bright, amorphous forms of free-flowing color with very bright, precise forms and then placing them right next to each other. As is pretty common at the time, we see a very idealized form of beauty, with her very pale skin and long slender limbs and neck.
This idealized form of beauty brings us to the next point in the reading, namely the misogyny that this and other nudes may or may not represent. And honestly, I'm...not sure how I feel about that. "Not every culture distinguishes the erotic from the pornographic," as Fidlen states, but I really don't see the Venus of Urbino as a pornographic representation. Titian's nudes have an undeniable air of class and grace, despite the whole "laying there naked whilst giving you the eye" thing, and while there's certainly an erotic subtext, I wouldn't necessarily argue it as a pornographic one. At least not one that was meant to be deliberately pornographic.