Customer Reviews

Titian: The Last Days

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This book could have started half way through, or changed the title from something other than "Titian: The Last Days," since the book's scope is considerably wider than just when Titian died of the plague in 1576. I sincerely enjoyed the last three chapters, and appreciated the analysis provided in these pages. However I felt that the first half of the book was not nearly as strong, and readers would be better served by reading another source if you want to learn about Titian's life.

Not an art history or even a history book, but rather a travelogue on Hudson's mostly failed attempt to track down facts and place to illuminate a story on Titian's last days during the Venetian plague.

Titan: The Last Days offers art libraries a survey of one Tiziano Vecillio, also known as Titan, who worked on a number of paintings that vanished when his studio was looted after his death. This considers his relationships with his mentors, rivals and patrons and offers a biography of Titan's life and times, re-creating 16th century Venice for any who would study his life and works.

Great subject, but written in a fake dramatic manner: made-up dialogue and completely fabricated scenes in which, for instance, imagined smells and events from Titian's studio are concocted by the author: a cheap mentality that is not in keeping with the greatness of the paintings Hudson tries to discuss.

As someone who looks and a picture and rapidly loses interest because it aint moving, it has always been something of a surprise that in days before video a painting could evoke the sort of response amongst the public that say a trip to see Avatar in 3D can nowadays. Fusty old painting hung in gloomy rooms or even contemporary art works hung in garish art centres financed by some arts council or other, have always provoked a rapid movement to the souvenir shop and the tea room and contemplation of my Philistine soul. I'm an arty person, a creative individual, deeply entrenched in esoteric histories, world-cultures, and well dug into the trenches of artistic creation, and yet paintings often seems little more than interior decoration. So it is refreshing to read a work of art criticism and history, that does not just deal with the biographical details, but the response to the art both then and now, along with their own personal relationship with it. It flies in the face of pretension while at the same time maintains their capacity for awe at the achievement and relish at some of the banality of the business of art. The Last Days Of Titian gives one another pair of eyes to look at these things and explains why anyone bothers. Art here is both a window into another world and a mirror reflecting oneself in one's own. Multi-point perspective is the term that comes to mind when reading this trip into the renaissance.