Dionysus was a madman, especially when he saw Ariadne, who was so beautiful and miserable, he jumped out of his car like a gymnast.
The two looked at each other, and time seemed to have passed ten thousand years.
Dionysus and Ariadne
As mentioned last time, the reason why Titian left posterity without painting was not only reflected in the comprehensive techniques he mastered, but also in the diversity of subject matter.
In addition to altarpieces, historical themes and portraits, he left behind a large number of works with mythological themes.
Earlier such subjects include the Field Ensemble, completed around 1510 (some believe to have been written by Giorgione), and Divine and Secular Love (also translated as Love on Earth and Love in Heaven), written around 1514-15, in which the dressed witch Medea is placed in the same frame as the naked goddess Venus, behind whom is an idyllic landscape, sitting quietly on an ancient Roman-style sarcophagus with a little angel playing with the water in the pool in the coffin.
The order for the painting came from a Venetian official, custom-made for his own wedding. As for the multiple symbolic allegories in the paintings, which have aroused the reverie of countless researchers, although there is no unified conclusion today, no one denies that the two female figures are brilliant and are regarded as masterpieces of female beauty in the same period.
During this time, Titian also collaborated with his teacher Giovanni Bellini on the Feast of the Gods, which has been described in a previous article.
When Bellini died in 1516, Titian soon conquered Venetian audiences with two huge altarpieces, The Assumption of the Virgin mary and the Virgin of Pesaro. During the time of the creation of our Virgin of Pesaro, he made a trip to the Duchy of Ferrara around 1522.
Ferrara's geographical location, sandwiched between the Republic of Venice in the north (including Padua), the Marquis of Mantua and Florence in the south, in the seventy-second article "Isabella, the First Lady of Europe: The Origin of the Patron and the Venetian School", we have learned about the famous patron of the arts at that time, the Marquise of Mantua, Isabella. morality. Isabella d'Este (1474–1539), the eldest daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, grew up in the Ducal Palace of Ferrara and married Mantua in 1490.
Administrative map of Italy in 1494
When Titian came to Ferrara around 1522, the duke was Alfonso I d'Este (1476–1534), the younger brother of Isabella de Este.
Like his sister, Alfonso I was an art lover, and he had planned to have Raphael paint a series of frescoes of the "Dionysian Parade" in a private room in the Palace of Ferrara, and had paid for it in advance.
When Raphael died suddenly in 1520, only a few sketches remained. So Alfonso I invited the famous Titian to fulfill the order.
In 1522-23, Titian completed this painting for Alfonso I, Bacchus and Ariadne.
Bacchus and Ariadne, Dionysus, Detail 1
Bacchus and Ariadne, Dionysus, Detail 2
The story comes from Greek mythology, and although the painting is crowded with a large number of characters and animals, the core plot of the story takes place in the blonde beauty in a blue coat on the far right of the picture, and the man in the red cloak who jumps up in the air to look at her. The male protagonist is Bacchus (Dionysus of ancient Greece) and the female protagonist is Ariadne.
With the aim of combing through the knowledge points about ancient Greek mythology, we can slightly force this story to combine this story with the content of the "Tempest" by the master brother Giorgione (see article seventy-sixth).
If, according to the speculation of some critics of the last century, "The Tempest" may depict the story of Zeus and the princess of Thebes, Semele, it can be seen as a prequel to the story of this painting.
Hera used a ruse to get Semele to be burned to death by Zeus's lightning, Zeus rescued the baby who was less than a month old, sewed him into his thigh, and gave birth to a boy, which was Bacchus, the god of wine, and another version of Zeus who swallowed Bacchus's heart to another lover and gave birth to Bakus.
The heroine Ariadne is the granddaughter of Zeus, who transformed into a white bull and united with Europa, giving birth to the future king of Crete, Minos, who was the daughter of Milos. She helped Thesis, the son of the King of Athens, kill his half-creature, minotaurs, a half-man, half-cow.
That night, the two of them fled together to Naxos, but Theseus had a dream at night—the goddess of destiny told him not to unite with Ariadne, and when he woke up, he left Ariadne, who was still asleep, and sailed away from Naxos.
Ariadne, awakened, waved to the departing ship in the distance, hoping to save Theseus. Just then, a dionysus wearing a corolla woven with ivy and grape leaves arrived.
The ending of the story is beautiful, but it still carries a poignant and tragic tone.
Bacchus found his brother, Hephaestus, the god of fire who was responsible for striking iron, and ordered a golden crown for his lover, which was inlaid with seven crystal clear gems. They spent some quiet years together, but Ariadne, who was mortal in the flesh, eventually died.
When Ariadne died, the golden crown flew into the sky and transformed into the northern corona in the starry sky.
If you want to find Ariadne's crown in the night sky, you can follow the curve of the Big Dipper and extend southwest to see the orange-yellow Horned Star in the constellation Ofeves, and on the straight line from this Arcturus star to Vega, there are two constellations, the first of which is the semi-circular North Corona consisting of 7 stars.
In the upper left corner of the picture, we can also see the ring constellations in this group of shining skies, which still shine even in such a clear sky.
The constellation Coronation Norte is made up of 7 stars, but I don't know why Titian drew 8 stars here, and on the ground directly below this set of constellations, there is a copper wine jug placed in a white cloth with Titian's own signature on it, and Titian arranges it this way, perhaps trying to tell people something.
The signature of Titian in the lower left of Bacchus and Ariadne
With a retinue of revelators on one side and the melancholy and lonely Ariadne on the other, Titian unifies such a contradictory and antagonistic scene, completely ignoring any tradition of harmony, harmony, and symmetry of composition, just as he dared to place the Virgin in the center of the painting in The Virgin of Pesaro at the same time.
From the lower left corner to the upper right corner, Titian adopts a dynamic 45-degree composition that divides the sun, sky, sea and the noisy Dionysian procession in the forest, but echoes each other and is dense and dense.
This fully reflects Titian's confidence in his painting skills at this time, and the challenge to tradition comes from his new thinking about color and light. On top of the solid techniques such as basic character modeling and perspective proportions, he uses the colors and light he is good at to organize the scattered visual images into a complete and unified artistic conception.
Bacchus and Ariadne, Dionysus, Detail 3
It is said that the two leopards in front of the Dionysian team in the painting are painted by Titian based on the leopard raised by Alfonso I, and the male human figure in the team whose body is wrapped in snakes and symbolizes desire is a reference to Laocon's group portrait.
II The mythological series for Philip II
In addition to the story of Bakus and Ariadne, Titian also had a wonderful interpretation of the troubles of these two predecessors, Zeus and Europa.
In the preceding article, I introduced Titian's journey north to Augsburg, Germany, in 1548-51, where he painted for the Habsburg family. It was during this time that he accepted an order from Charles V and Philip II, Isabella's son.
The order consisted of 7 works with mythological themes, with Titian delivering 6 pieces to Philip II over the next 10 years, and one undelivered. Today, the seven works are scattered across Boston, Madrid and London.
Originally scheduled for the Titian Exhibition at the National Gallery in London from 16 March to 14 June 2020, titian's seven works were once brought together in one room, but because of the spread of the new crown epidemic at that time, the museum had to be temporarily closed.
Titian's seven works are all based on the ancient Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphosis. Ovid completed this masterpiece of "mythological dictionary" around 7 AD, written in six-tone poems, and contains 250 myths and historical stories in 15 volumes.
The historical span of the content of "Metamorphosis" from the creation of the world to the death of Caesar and the succession of Augustus, the collection of ancient Greek and roman mythology, has had a great impact on the Western culture and thought of later generations. We can appreciate this, both in Shakespearean plays and in the symphonies of Karl von Dietersdorf.
These paintings include The Robbery of Europa, Danae, Perseus and Andromeda, Venus and Adonis, Diana and Aktaion, The Death of Arctaion, Diana and Calisto.
The most famous is "Robbery of Europa".
Part of "The Robbery of Europa"
The lecherous Zeus set his sights on Europa, the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor, and turned himself into a white bull carrying Europa on a cross-sea expedition to Crete, where Europa bore Zeus the brothers Milos, Radamantos and Sarpodon.
Minos later became King of Crete, and thereafter became judge of the underworld along with Radamantos, and Sarpodon became king of the kingdom of Lycaya in Asia Minor.
As he did almost forty years ago in Bacchus and Ariadne, Titian takes a 45-degree diagonal composition, with Europa being forcibly loaded into the sea by zeus, a mad cow, clutching a bull horn to ensure that she doesn't fall into the sea, just like the drag racing scene we often see in police films today.
Europa's mood at the moment was mixed, chief among them panic, a moment of sobriety that it was too late to give her any chance to be shy, and she could also carry a hint of excitement, a hint of ecstasy or confusion. She subconsciously held her red veil with her other hand, and she opened her eyes, but she could not see the other side of the picture at this moment, the relatives and servants standing on the shore that was getting farther and farther away.
If the characters in Bacchus and Ariadne are dynamic, they beat gongs and drums, and they are not hilarious. Then in this painting, it is simply a cannonball, and the whole air is so violent. Titian uses his incredible brushstrokes and colors to render this thrilling scene for the audience.
The Robbery of Europa was completed around 1559–1562 and is now in the Collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, USA.
The other two paintings, Danae and Perseus and Andromeda, can be seen as a coherent set of story elements:
Danae was the daughter of the ancient Greek king of Argos, a place near the Gulf of Agulicos, near Mycenae. Because the prophet prophesied to the king that the king would die at the hands of his future grandson, in order to prevent this ending, the beautiful Danae was imprisoned by the king in a copper tower, but this could not escape the eyes of the old lover Zeus, who turned into a golden rain and fell in the copper tower to meet Danae. Thereafter, Danaeus gave birth to the Greek mythical hero Perseus for Zeus.
Danae Part 1
Danae Part 2
In the second painting, The heroine Andromeda is the princess of the Ethiopian king, and her mother constantly flaunts her daughter's beauty and is jealous of poseidon's wife, poseidon, who descends on Ethiopia and sends a sea monster. In order to be rescued, Andromeda was locked to the reef by his parents with a chain.
Part of Perseus and Andromeda
With imprisoned beauties and vicious sea monsters, heroes are needed.
The hero who came to save The Beauty was Palcius, the son of Danae and Zeus. (To be continued)