Exposition : “Titian and the female image: beauty, love, poetry”, Milan, Palazzo Reale, 23 février-5 juin 2022

This exhibition focuses on the women painted by Titian and his contemporaries: their beauty, elegance, sensuality and the particular status that their representation acquired in Venetian society at that time.
(Sylvia Ferino)

In sixteenth-century Venice, the female image acquired unprecedented importance in the history of painting. To celebrate this theme, Palazzo Reale opens its 2022 programme with the “Tiziano e l’immagine della donna” (Titian’s Vision of Women) exhibition.

From February 23rd to June 5th, 2022 approximately a hundred works comprising 47 paintings, juxtaposed with sculptures, objects of applied art such as jewels, a beautiful dress by Roberto Capucci created as a homage to Isabella d’Este (1994), books and illustrations will entice the visitors on a journey through the beauty and grandeur of women seen through the eyes of the great artists.

For Titian, artistic beauty corresponded to feminine beauty: he considered external beauty to be less important than a woman’s personality and femininity as such. Regardless of context, narration or representation he always eulogised female dignity. In the eyes of the beholder, the women portrayed by the artist all appear as very strong personalities, like goddesses.

Masterpieces by Giorgione, Lotto, Palma the Elder, Veronese and Tintoretto flank 16 of Titian works. Commencing from the theme of the realistic portrayal of women from different social classes and moving on to the strongly idealized context of the so-called “Venetian beauties”, we gradually encounter famous heroines, saints, courtesans and poetesses, divinities of myth and allegories.

See below some of the works on display and immerse yourself in the beauty of the sixteenth-century world.

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