22/01/2010

Titian: The Last Days by Mark Hudson

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Towards the end of his life Titian didn't finish his paintings. The elderly artist kept them in his studio, never quite completing them, as though wanting to endlessly postpone the moment of closure. Created with the fingers as much as the brush, Titian's last paintings are imbued with a sense of final, desperate effort - a rawness and immediacy that weren't to be seen again in art for centuries. But what did Titian, art's 'first rock star - Elvis with a paintbrush', mean by these works? Are they a harrowing, final testament or simply a collection of unfinished paintings? In the outbreak of plague that finally killed him (or did it?), Titian's studio was looted, and many paintings taken. What happened to them is not known. This book is a quest - a journey through Titian's life and work, towards the physical and spiritual landscape of his last paintings. Looking at Titian's relationships with his artistic rivals, his patrons - including popes, kings and emperors - and his troubled dealings with his own family, the narrative moves from the artist's hometown in the Dolomites to the greatest churches and palaces of the age. Parallel with these physical travels is a journey through the paintings, following the glittering trajectory of Titian's life and career, the remorseless formal development that led to the breakthroughs of his last days. Titian: The Last Days is an exploratory history of the artist and his world that vividly recreates the atmosphere of sixteenth-century Venice and Europe, a narrative in which the search for the subject becomes part of the subject itself. The result is a brilliant and compelling study of one of Europe's greatest artists that is at once passionate, engaging and deeply personal.
 
Reviews
 
'His book is a deeply passionate, engaging portrayal of genius - and the inscrutability that comes with inordinate talent.'
Daily Telegraph

'Hudson reveals `himself' in the process of finding out about Titian...Hudson is modest and often every humorous...When we are at Hudson's shoulder, the writing can be vivid, atmospheric and authentic...Hudson positively revels in his quest to rise above ideology and bureaucratic scholarliness.'
Literary Review

'More than a personal anecdotal examination of the painter's famous late work: it manages to evoke the atmosphere of 16th-century Venice as well.'
Sunday Times
 
'Less a biography than an atmostpheric meditation on the artist and what he intended with his art.'
Serena Davies, The Daily Telegraph

'Hudson allow[s] readers to buckle up and ride shotgun through some pretty fascinating territory.the book takes us places we could never go on our own.and though he never finds the holy grail he was seeking, there is much to be enjoyed in the hunt.'
Christian Science Monitor