Rome, at the Borghese Gallery an exhibition-focus on Titian, nature and love

The art of Titian Vecellio (Pieve di Cadore, c. 1490 - Venice, 1576) is at the center of a small focus exhibition at the Galleria Borghese in Rome: in fact, from June 14 to September 18, 2022, the museum presents the exhibition Titian. Dialogues of Nature and Love, curated by Maria Giovanna Sarti, created on the occasion of the loan of the Nymph and Shepherd, an autograph work created by the Venetian master around 1565, granted by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna as part of a cultural exchange program between the two institutions. The encounter between the work in Vienna and Titian’s paintings in the Gallery, starting with the celebrated Amor sacro e amor profano, created an opportunity to connect the works around some constant themes in the painter’s production: Nature, understood as landscape but also as a place of human action; Love in its different forms, divine, natural, matrimonial; and Time, which punctuates man’s life, regulates its cycle and assimilates it to the harmony of the Universe.

Nature and Love are linked by a harmonious relationship, part of the cycle of Life, alluded to in the loving and musical allegory of Nymph and Shepherd, among the master’s last works, considered by some to be the summa of his artistic aspirations. The exhibition finds its natural place in Room XX, on the second floor of the museum, where paintings by the Venetian school and Titian are already on display. The current arrangement of Amorsacro e Amor profano and Venus blindfolding Amore, placed opposite each other, suggested the placement of Nymph and She pherd along the other axis, opposite The Three Ages on the opposite wall, here proposed in Sassoferrato’s replica, which during the seventeenth century copied (in all likelihood precisely for the Borghese) a version present in Rome of Titian’s painting. The Nymph and Shepherd, which arrives after being loaned for the exhibition on Titian and Women held in Milan’s Palazzo Reale, was thought to be the perfect pendant to the painting on the opposite wall: it is the same reflection, but at the end of the old painter’s life, on love, on time passing and all devouring.

Commenting on this dialogue, the audience will find Marco Basaiti’sAdam and Eve, two pseudo-Giorgionesque cantors, and two other paintings by Titian, Christ Scourged and Saint Dominic, chronologically close to the painter’s later paintings in the room. Completing the exhibition is the problematic painting, first referred to as a prototype by Veronese but now believed to be a late derivation from a lost Titian model, depicting Venus, Cupid and a Satyr, placed as a commentary on Venus blindfolding Cupid.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Art’em, with a preface by Borghese Gallery director Francesca Cappelletti and texts by curator Maria Giovanna Sarti. On the occasion of the exhibition, the first issue of the Galleria series (De Luca editore) will be published, which aims to explore themes and works from the Borghese collection in a monographic manner. The first issue is dedicated to Titian, especially the painting Venus Blindfolding Love and the production of his last years, on which recent diagnostic investigations have been conducted, the results of which are presented for the first time.

The Borghese Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Last admission at 5:45 p.m. The ticket office is open from 8:30 a.m. until 1 hour before the museum closes. Since visits, due to the conformation of the gallery, are limited in number (two-hour tour shifts for a maximum of 180 people each), reservations are strongly recommended. For information visit the Borghese Gallery website.

Image: Titian, Nymph and Shepherd (c. 1570-1575; oil on canvas, 149.6 x 187 cm; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum)

Rome, at the Borghese Gallery an exhibition-focus on Titian, nature and love

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