In the summer of this year, at the end of June, an exhibition of Titian opened at the Pushkin Museum. It was planned to complete its work at the end of September, but because of the extreme excitement of visitors and giant lines that began to accumulate at the entrance, they decided to extend it until early October. What exactly did art historians demonstrate to Muscovites and visitors to the city? In total, eleven paintings were exhibited by one of the most amazing and mysterious painters of the Renaissance.
But each of them is unique not only in that it belongs to the brush of Titian. These paintings were brought from different
cities of Italy before they entered the Pushkin Museum. We can say that there was no exhibition like this before.
More than four hundred thousand people saw paintings in Moscow for the sake of which museums would have to go round almost all of Italy. Almost all of these works are in small towns - one at a time. Before appearing in Moscow, these paintings were shown in Rome in the famous Quirinal Palace. However, statistics show that they aroused less interest than in Russia. Titian's exhibition at the Pushkin Museum opens with the work "Madonna and Child" from the Bergamo Museum, created in 1507. This is one of the earliest works of the painter. They say that the image of Our Lady with a divine child (which is also named after Count Lochis) was written by him at the age of eighteen, when he was still influenced by the style of Giorgione.
The mysterious painting "The Baptism of Christ" is also a landmark for the artist. Titian's exhibition at the Pushkin Museum allows the viewer to see a strange man in black clothes, who is watching the main stage. On his hand are two wedding rings, one of which is a sign of secret vows given to them. Perhaps this is the customer of the canvas. Whatever it was, but this work already has all the characteristics characteristic of Titian, including the so-called “sphumato” effect.
The image of a young, but already experienced in passion girl, combining innocence and sensuality, you can admire the picture "Flora". Already here we see a typical "Titian" woman - strange and attracting.
Such images became muses for artists of the next generations, for example, Rembrandt. Titian's exhibition at the Pushkin Museum reveals another similar face for us. “Beauty” - in this later picture we see the same golden-haired type of an unknown lady in rich blue robes. In addition, three more portraits are presented at the exhibition, which embodied the artist’s gift to uniquely convey the structure of the fabric, facial features and, at the same time, deep psychology.
Since the artist loved themes that were fashionable during the Renaissance and related to the mythology of antiquity, Titian's exhibition in Moscow provided viewers with two canvases of this kind - “Danae” and “Venus that Blinds Amur's Eyes”. On the first topic, the artist wrote several variations, one of which is in the Hermitage. The painting exhibited in Moscow was commissioned by the Spanish king. The second picture - playful and at the same time peaceful, painted with inimitable sense of color and light in large strokes - is considered one of the peaks of the artist. And, finally, Titian’s exhibition in Moscow ends with two religious works - the Annunciation and the Crucifixion. The last work is a part of the altar made for the Dominican church in Ancona. The tragic extravaganza of suffering and hope is conveyed here by the play of color, shadow and light. And the connection of times is expressed in the figure of St. Dominic, who fell to the crucifix. Previously, the picture outside of Italy was not exhibited.