The Cambridge Companion to Titian ed. by Patricia Meilman (review)

REVIEWS 196 The Cambridge Companion to Titian, ed. Patricia Meilman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) xv + 372 pp., ill. As the premiere artist of sixteenth-century Venice, Titian has been the subject of much scholarly attention. His exceptionally long and prolific career has been approached from a variety of viewpoints by historians and art historians alike. In this anthology, studies covering the diverse aspects of Titian’s career, including his paintings, prints, architectural influences, and the historical context of sixteenth-century Venice, are brought together in a comprehensive overview of the artist and his artistic climate. Aside from the insightful introduction and variety of individual studies included in the text, the reader is also presented with a user-friendly index, a glossary of valuable terms, and a documented biography which provides a framework for major commissions and events in the artist’s life. The selected bibliography, although not comprehensive, nonetheless provides an excellent point of departure for further studies on Titian and his art by including many of the major contemporary publications on these topics. Patricia Meilman’s introduction functions as a general outline of Titian’s life and career and introduces the major themes to be discussed in the studies that follow. Significantly, she gives a chronological overview of the most influential studies done on Titian and his art thus far which is highly useful for a student new to the subject. This overview also “points out lacunae in our knowledge” which are valuable to the researcher hoping to break new ground in Titian studies (7). Meilman presents the works that follow as “examples of current sophisticated scholarship” on Titian and the various aspects of his life and artistic production (7). The studies within the anthology are divided into three sections. Part I, “Titian ’s Diverse Genres,” is opened by David Rosand, one of the foremost contemporary scholars on Venetian art. His discussion on the interrelation of painting and poetry in Titian’s work, “… how is the painter a poet?” is valuable in its analysis of textual influences, such as Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in the artist’s secular creations (36). His brief discussion in closing of Peter Paul Rubens as Titian’s “poetic successor,” however, seems rather tacked on and detracts from the overall flow of the discussion. In her essay, Patricia Meilman focuses on Titian’s religious art production and traces chronologically the major commissions and their circumstances throughout Titian’s lengthy career. She finds these works to be consistently emotive and comprehensible and characterized first and foremost by, “clarity and profundity of meaning” (58). Her study, like her introduction, is a useful survey of Titian’s work and functions as a point of departure for more in depth research. Carolyn Wilson looks to a more particularized aspect of Titian’s religious art production in her study on Titian and the cult of St. Joseph. This study takes into account the historical context of early Cinquecento Venice and the role of the patron in some of Titian’s major religious works including the figure of St. Joseph. Her discussion on the rise of the saint’s cult is especially informative . Caroline Karpinski’s study, which concludes part I, looks to the role of prints and print-making in Titian’s art. Her discussion, which moves chronologically through Titian’s career as a draftsman, illuminates an often overlooked or under developed aspect of Titian studies. REVIEWS 197 Part II, “Titian and His Art,” begins with Paul Joannides’s study of Titian and his relation to Michelangelo. At the forefront of this discussion is the disegno vs. colore controversy that so shaped Renaissance discourse on the visual arts and has often been capitulated in the comparison between Michelangelo , the preeminent artist of disegno, and Titian, whose colore has been universally praised. Joannides provides an insightful reading of the influences Michelangelo and the Roman art scene in Titian’s work. Deborah Howard looks to the role of Titian’s various visual surroundings as keys to his painted depictions of architecture. Her analysis of the artist’s sensitivity to and familiarity with architectural forms is methodologically tied into the artist’s biography and the artistic influences of...