À la recherche de Titien
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Irina Artemieva [1]
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[1] Hermitage
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- Localización: Revue de l'art, ISSN 0035-1326, Nº. 197, 2017, págs. 43-48
- Idioma: francés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
A cautionary tale of over-enthusiastic conservation and ambition, in which the desire to find a 'genuine' Titian led to thoughtless and careless intervention and the destruction of a work of historical significance. A "Danae" produced in Titian's circle, formerly in the Picture Gallery of Königsberg Palace, is now in the hand of a private collector. Numerous reworkings visible in X-ray led the owner to insist on a deep clean in order to 'excavate' the 'true' composition, which he hoped might be by Titian himself. Successive layers of paint were removed, destroying the finished work but resulting only in the discovery of numerous fragments of previous compositions and leaving the female figure with three heads and four hands. Research by this author demonstrates that the work so thoughtlessly erased had a long and fascinating history, having been in the celebrated collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. The author investigates the 'uncovered' elements to suggest the stages through which the composition developed: from a Venus, through a Jupiter and Antiope, to a Danae and then to Cleopatra. She suggests this last might have been in part the work of Titian and dates its conception to between 1545 and 1553. Never finished, the Cleopatra was painted over by a pupil with another "Danae", which eventually found its home in the gallery of Leopold Wilhelm.
