Displaying items by tag: Titian

Opening on Sunday, December 16 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado, will present over 100 masterpieces from one of the world’s most renowned collections of European paintings. Spanning from the 16^th century through the 19^th century, the exhibit explores the evolution of painting in Spain through the works of artists such as Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), El Greco (1541-1614), and Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). There will also be works on view by non-Spanish artists who influenced the country’s artistic development including Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), and Titian (circa 1488-1576).

The exhibition marks the first time that Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado has lent such a considerable selection from their permanent collection to a museum in the United States. The loan is part of a new initiative by the museum to broaden access to its illustrious holdings.

The works, which include both paintings and works on paper, are mainly courtly and spiritual paintings that explore the realms of society, culture, politics, and religion in Spain. The exhibit was previously on view at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia, but ended its run last month. Portrait of Spain will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston through March 31.

Titian’s Saint John the Baptist entered Madrid’s Museo del Prado’s collection in 1872 but rather than being credited to the Italian painter of the 16^th century, it was said to be by an anonymous Madrid School artist of the 17^th century. Fourteen years later, the painting was sent to the parish church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen in Cantoria in the province of Almeria where it remained on loan until 2007.  

The Prado held an exhibition of Titian’s work in 2003 and published an accompanying catalogue in which Miguel Falomir, Head of the Department of Italian and French Paintings at the Museum and the exhibition’s curator, suggested that the painting in Cantoria was a copy of a long-lost Titian painting. In 2007 the Museum embarked on a study of the work only to find that the piece was not a copy but an original Titian painting. The work’s preparatory layer of white lead and calcium carbonate and the similarities between that painting and two other depictions of Saint John the Baptist done by the artist in the early 1550s helped researchers to date the painting and bolstered their decision to re-attribute the work to Titian.

The work arrived at the Prado in poor condition and underwent thorough restoration by Clara Quintanilla. The will be on display alongside the two other versions until February 10, 2013.

There might be less money to organise exhibitions in many US museums, but by borrowing one masterpiece, putting it on display, and so turning a single work into a star attraction, several are stretching their budgets a long way.

Titian’s La Bella, 1536, a portrait of a noblewoman in a blue dress, has been borrowed by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, from the Galeria Palatina at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence (“Woman in a Blue Dress”, until 18 September). It is due to travel to the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno this month (24 September-20 Novem­ber) and then on to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.

The Capitoline Venus by Praxiteles, around 360BC, has spent the summer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, on loan from Rome’s Musei Capitolini (until 5 September). In November, The Medusa, 1630, Bernini’s baroque masterpiece, is due to be displayed at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, also on loan from the Capitoline museums (19 November-19 February 2012).

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa, looked to the Brooklyn Museum for its first single-work show, borrowing Charles Willson Peale’s portrait of George Washington, around 1779-81, billed as “An American Masterpiece” (until 31 December).

New York’s Frick Collection, combining the trend for single-work shows with another recent phenomenon, the collection-based exhibition (The Art Newspaper, March), displayed its re-cleaned St Francis in the Desert, around 1475-78, by Giovanni Bellini, under the title “In a New Light” this summer.

Creative use of smaller budgets for exhibitions is one driving force behind this trend. The directors we spoke to said that loan fees, design, insurance and transport costs for a single work are minuscule compared to a big thematic or an in-depth show for a single artist. Marketing tends to be the main expense, leaving museums in control of spending as much or as little as their budget allows.