Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius

The work that Titian produced during the first decade of his career is beautiful and varied, but it has raised many questions of attribution and chronology. This book-the first thorough and coherent account of this period in Titian's life-reconstructs what he painted, when he painted it, and what these paintings mean. Paul Joannides begins by discussing the probable course of Titian's early career and his relations with Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. There are excurses on Giorgione and on Sebastiano del Piombo, whose work has often been confused with his. Joannides then offers new interpretations of some of Titian's paintings, emphasizing their poetic and dramatic qualities. Among other topics, he associates for the first time the paintings in Saint Petersburg, Venice, and Houston; lays out Titian's part of the Fondaco; connects the privately owned Risen Christ with the Fogg Circumcision; integrates the Dresden Venus and the Berlin Portrait of a Young Man into Titian's work; and establishes the dynamism and inventiveness of the great Assunta of 1516-18. Joannides provides detailed arguments in support of both new and familiar attributions, proposes a more closely reasoned and precise chronology than has been attempted hitherto, and shows the artist to be one of the most sensitive and profound of all interpreters of modern and classical narratives.