The Muddied Mirror: Materiality and Figuration in Titian's Later Paintings [Hardcover]

Jodi Cranston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2010

Ideal painting in the Renaissance was an art of illusionism that eliminated for the viewer any overt sense of its making. Titian's paintings, in contrast, with their roughly worked and open surfaces, unexpected glazes, and thick impasto brushstrokes, made the fact of the paint increasingly visible. Previous scholars have read these paintings as unfinished or the product of lesser studio hands, but in The Muddied Mirror, Jodi Cranston argues that this approach to paint is integral to Titian's later work. Rather than presenting in paint a precise reflection of the visible world, the artist imparted an intrinsic corporeality to his subjects through the varying mass and thickness of the paint. It is precisely the materiality and disfiguration of these paintings that offer us the key to understanding their meanings. More important, the subjects of Titian's late paintings are directly related to the materiality of the body they represent physical changes wrought through violence, metamorphosis, and desire.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Cranston has enormous insight into not only the artist's brush and its application onto the surface perhaps no other Renaissance artist was as tactile as Titian but also the underlying meaning of themes chosen by artist and patron. --Patricia Meilman, author of The Cambridge Companion to Titian

About the Author

Jodi Cranston is Associate Professor of Art History at Boston University. She is the author of The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance (1999).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press (February 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271035293
• ISBN-13: 978-0271035291
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,386,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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