Philip II Poesie

Philip II in Full Amour by Titian

In 1549, in Northern Italy, Titian first met Philip II, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, when he painted a full-length portrait of the prince in armor.  Philip II had a solid foundation in philosophy, theology and classical culture as well an impressive training in arts, which led him to become a connoisseur of music, a respectable poet and an outstanding patron of the visual arts.  Additionally, Philip II was thoroughly cultured in the languages of Spanish, French, Italian and Latin and read the classics by Vergil, Livy and Horace and later owned Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an Italian translation by Lodovico Dolce.

A year later, at the invitation of Philip II, Titian revisited Augsberg and established a relationship with him that would last a quarter of a century.  The arrangement made would produce about twenty-five large pictures, some mythological and some religious, in return for a secure and substantial income (even if it was not paid on time), which placed Titian in a more privileged position than any other artist of his age (now in his sixties) along with the freedom to choose his own subject manner.

The most famous of Philip’s paintings are the Poesie (as Titian called them), which are six subjects taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses; however, none of the six works truly illustrates the passages upon which they are supposedly based.  Icongraphically, the Poesie are considered the most complex and enigmatic of Renaissance paintings and stylistically, they combine classical ideals and mannerist distortions as well as rejecting the normal Renaissance ideals of painterly and intellectual clarity.  However, the Poesie reveals Titian’s deep understanding of contemporary art theory and classical sources, and stands as a fundamental expression of his thoroughly Renaissance creative genius.  Titian displays all of his classicism through luminous highlights, atmospheric shadows, and broad fields of vivid color, which creates the effect of a euphoric sensation of life.

It has surprised some historians that Philip II, considered a straitlaced, strict Catholic, should have acquired such obviously sensual and erotic paintings.  However, several of Titian’s other aristocratic patrons - Alfonso d’Este (Bacchanal of the Adrians and Bacchus and Ariadne), Roman Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Danae), Archbishop and Guidobaldo della Rovere (Venus of Urbino) - had received paintings of similar character.  Mythology was an established and respectable genre, one that gave artists an opportunity to display their skill by illustrating the great poets and in this case Ovid, Metamorphoses.

Danae

When Titian first started sending the mythological paintings, Philip was still a young man and had not assumed the responsibilities of the Catholic monarch. Philip’s Poesie was painted in two pairs for a total of six, which shows the female figure from different points of view and each work refers primarily to its pendant, beginning with Danae and Venus and Adonis, the interrelations of Diana Discovered by Actaeon and Diana and Callisto, followed by Perseus and Andromeda and Rape of Europa.   For the most part, the stories were concerned with the loves of the gods and Titian was clearly interested in portraying dramatic action, conflict and tragedy and expressing a wide range of human emotions with its prevalent mood of self-indulgence.

Venus and Adonis

My research blog will be focused on four of the six poesie, Danae and its pendant, Venus and Adonis followed by Perseus and Andromeda and its pendant, Rape of Europa.

Perseus and Andromeda

Rape of Europa