The show opened in London before traveling to Madrid and is now at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - the final and only U.S. It’s because they are arguably his boldest, most beautiful works because even though they were made to hang together, they have not been physically united since the 16th century and because the exhibition, “ Titian: Women, Myth & Power,” won’t be repeated in our lifetimes: The barriers to doing so - cost, logistics, legal restrictions and the fragility of the works themselves - are simply too great. It’s not just because Titian was the greatest painter Italy ever produced or because the six were painted for his most important patron, Philip II of Spain. Still, why would a display of just six Titian paintings at a small New England museum qualify as the art event of the year, and possibly the decade? Softening outlines, he set smooth, thinly painted passages against textured impasto (paint that stands out from the surface) and laid multiple glazes over his painted brushstrokes so that his complex colors appeared as if seen through tinted glass. He rendered bodies more convincingly than any painter before him. ![]() BOSTON - “Flesh,” said Willem de Kooning, “is the reason oil paint was invented.” Four hundred years before de Kooning, Titian was the first to make that axiom seem true.
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