Art

It has been argued by scholars that Tiziano Vecellio, better known to most as Titian, is the most accomplished and valuable painters of the High Renaissance.  He studied under the direction of prominent mentors “Sebastiano Zuccati (d 1527), and then successively to Gentile Bellini, Giovanni Bellini and finally was associated with Giorgione”,# and managed to adapt the stylistic methods of fellow artist’s aesthetics with his own.  That is not to say the Titian was merely a commercial artist, who jumped at whoever threw him a commission.  If anything, he borrowed technique from admiration of his acquaintances.  Titian he managed to combine his Venice schooling, under the guidance of Bellini, with his admiration of lofty, didactic and didactic paintings and frescos common in Florence and Rome.   His approach to painting grew away from the intensely ordered and symmetrical works of a generation before him, yet he managed to maintain a dialogue with his predecessors.  Though, Titian held this dialogue with a variety of painting styles that he found interesting or noble.  The painting examined here, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist is a work completed at a transition in Titians artistic approach.

With the passing of Giorgione and Bellini, Titian became the most renowned painter in Venice, known for his soft, emotive and poetic scene rendering.  Born between 1485 and 1490, Titian lived in, or around, Venice most of his life, until his death in the sinking city in 1576.#  At the beginning of his career, he challenged the accepted artistic practices.  He was inspired in creating a new sense of convention, a modern take on art.  These techniques he had been collaborating with Giorgione before his death in 1510, and immediately after.  Five years later, at the time of Salome’s rendering, Titian still shows signs of his ‘Giorgione-esque’ style.  Or, arguably, Giorgione is demonstrating a ‘Titian-esque’ style. In the meantime, he also began to show signs of influence from Raphael and Michelangelo in particular, as the sway of Bellini and Giorgione fell away.  Salome catches him in transition between his esteemed and engrained Venetian method of painting, as he embellishes it with the touches of the High Renaissance masters, who have already made names for themselves in Florence and in Rome.

Titian’s first documented work dates to 1508, in which he was commissioned to complete some frescos for the exterior of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi with his fellow student Giorgione.  The pair worked together on a number of projects.   his naturalistic and embodied Venetian landscapes, is known primarily for his poetic brushwAs a result, their styles began to intertwine as they learned from each other.  Giorgione, who had already had some acclaim withork and the airy, lightness of his canvases.  If Giorgione personified the Venetian style at the turn of the 16th century, it is because he learned it from his, and Titian’s teacher, Bellini.  In fact, Bellini himself had created a portrait of John the Baptist a generation before Titian’s Salome, in which Titian both alludes too, and rejects with his canvas.  The story of Salome and John the Baptist is a popular narrative of the Old Testament which has fallen in and out of favor with artists interpreting sacred texts.  In the story, Salome, at the urging of her Mother, seduces the King Herod Antipas with her dancing.  In return, he promises her anything she desires, to which she requests the head of John the Baptist.   While the stories themes of greed, vengeance and vengeance ring evident, the manner of displaying the icons of the narrative allow the artists to derive whatever meaning they wish from their interpretation.

In Bellini’s Head of John the Baptist, the beheaded saint is shown in close portrait style.  Bellini’s paint was applied in a number of thin applications, giving the skin a cold, lifeless appearance.  Where Leonardo and Raphael imbued their figures with an effervescent light, Bellini instills one of death.  The portrait of John is presented cleanly though.  His head is the focus of the circular canvas, which wraps around his hair in an iconographic halo.  John’s head is titled backwards, away from the viewer, but this only reaffirms his lifelessness, as his head appears freshly cut from the body, his face frozen in mortality.  Bellini’s work has a somewhat Flemish quality to it, in its muted colors, up front deposition and icy meticulousness of detail. Bellini keeps his Head of John the Baptist clean and free of any blood, opting to severe his body at the neck in a clean, fleshy tone rather than a graphic display of blood and gore.  This is fitting, as the Head of John the Baptist would have served as a reliquary painting, one that people who surely pray to, if not contemplate religiosity before.    

Being Bellini’s student, it would not be unheard of if Titian took reference from this painting in his own Salome.  John’s head in Salome does resemble Bellini’s, turned upon its side.  Titian also applies the same Venetian painterly technique of thin applications of paint, and too uses muted colors in his work.  Yet his picture also has some decidedly different leanings in it as well.  The focus of the canvas shifts away from simply John the Baptist, and onto Salome, who stands at the painting’s center.  To the left of her is an unidentifiable boy, who perhaps belongs within the story of Salome, but does not present himself as a character of prestigious importance to the narrative scene.  His presence is there to direct attention back to Salome, leading a diagonal line of focus to the center.  “Throughout Titian’s career, diagonal placing and diagonal views will be used in increasing intensity to break up the traditional symmetry of High Renaissance pictures.# Salome in turn, has her gaze shifted on the plated head she has just received. The canvas is assembled asymmetrically, allowing the eye to wander between the characters and even into the outside world of clouds off in the distance.  He monochromatically washed his painting away of lively coloring, except the vivid of red on Salome’s dress.  While John’s head lays on the plate cold, pale and clean, Salome’s dress hints at the murderous consequences of her actions.

Though Titian thoroughly employs the Venetian style of painting, with its emphasis on color, light and sensuous rendering of the canvas, Salome was completed at a time where Titian was the last remaining ‘master painter’ in Venice.  As a result, he began looking elsewhere for inspiration and technical theories of mannerist application.  Bellini had died but a year earlier, and Giorgione four years before that.  Though, following Giorgione’s death, Titian upheld his friends painting techniques, finishing a few of his works so seamlessly that it is only until recently that their authorship has been questioned.  Titian’s style has still been stylistically removed from his friend, showing more grandeur, lofty visions, rather than Giorgione’s lyrical ones.  “Titian is no dreamer; he does not process qualities of Giorgione.  When he is genuine, the real Titian is lofty and powerful. . . . The light which flows about his figures is not sultry and sensual, but cold and clean.”#  After Bellini’s death, Titian became the official painter to the republic, where he became to break free from the stylistic influence of Fiorione and Bellini, and develop a manner of his own that experimented with Venetian technique while also borrowing from artists of other cities.  For the first time in the Renaissance, painters were painting for to impress their contemporaries, rather than commercially for the church.

Though he had not traveled to Rome or Florence yet, Titian certainly must have been aware of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael, all producing their masterworks in the 1510’s, while Titian completes Salome.  While it is not until his Assumption that one can clearly trace a connection between the Venetian painter and other High Renaissance artists, Salome does allude to some progression in the grandiose, allegorical manner.    Two Renaissance masters in particular, Raphael and Leonardo, seems to have had a stylistic effect upon Titian, who makes visual reference to his style repeatedly throughout Salome.  One can find artistic sources for Salome in some of Raphael’s depictions of women, for example, Madonna of the Meadows (1505), which presents the styles quintessential to Raphael.  The idealized woman, stands with a small face with large eyes, turning her head majestically to the side to watch her children.  The personification of grace and beauty, she watches Christ and John the Baptist play innocently at her feet.  In comparison to Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, Titian also appears to utilize some of these techniques in making a woman who contradicts the values of the Virgin Mary.  In Leonardo’s work, the palette is dreary and dark, the organizational scheme focuses the attention of viewer inevitably towards Christ.  Titian seems to take both of these works, and combines them to make an anti-Mary.  Salome, who uses her sexuality to get what she wants, even if it’s morally wrong, is shown with the facial appearance and structure as Raphael’s Madonna, even turning her head in the same whimsical manner.  But while Raphael’s picture demonstrates her grace and majesty, Titian’s application of these qualities onto a morally unjust figure creates a character that appears aloof, mischievous and distant.  Titian’s background resembles more of Leonardo’s work, in its nearly abstract flatness behind the principle characters. Only the small shred of lights and clouds allude to a world outside of this unfortunate scene.  Yet, where Leonardo’s Madonna brought light to his dark canvases, Salome’s scene must be lit by an outside source.  Interestingly enough, by using visual comparisons with other artists’ depictions of the Madonna, Titian created a mood that is undeniably different when applied to a morally reprehensible character.  The grace and beauty of the Virgin Mary had been reinterpreted by Titian to form a grating contradiction.  To be sure this is clear; Titian outfits his Salome in jarring red, instead of the peaceful, serene blue often associated with the pure Mary.

Arguably, Titian does not truly expand the depths of High Renaissance painting until later in his life, where he ingrains his Venetian methods with the Florence and Roman emphasis on sculpted form, dynamic composition and religious themes.  Salome with the Head of John the Baptist demonstrates Titian at the threshold of transition from an exclusive Venetian methodology as he slowly adapted tendencies of the various established masters of Italy.  “Titian was inspired to create his own Venetian version of the High Renaissance style,” argues Frederick Hartt.#  This seemingly perpetuates an assisted amount of interpretation for Titian’s selection of the Salome theme and the inclusion of a Raphael-esque boy, possibly an homage to The School of Athens, as the painting’s elusive character.  Salome stands in between the two figures, one resembling Raphael’s own portrait, and the other a reinterpretation of Bellini’s Head of St. John the Baptist.  If this were so, Titian makes a subconscious, yet intriguing statement about his position in the Venetian art world.  As if Raphael himself were watching as Titian (Salome) holds the head of his recently deceased master (John the Baptist).  While this interpretation is open for debate, it offers an interesting elucidation between the storied narrative of what Titian was painting in Venice in 1515, compared to his social situation and creative influences upon this and later Titian works.