David Bowie's Tintoretto returns to Venice

On the occasion of the exhibition From Titian to Rubens. Masterpieces from Antwerp and Other Flemish Collections , organized by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia in collaboration with Flemish Community, the City of Antwerp, and VisitFlanders, three iconic paintings of Venetian painting will return to Venice, including the one considered by the press to be David Bowie’s Tintoretto, namely theAngel Announcing Martyrdom to St. Catherine of Alexandria.

In addition to the latter, Jacopo Pesaro presented to St. Peter by Pope Alexander VI and the Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter, both by Titian, will return.

Tintoretto’s work was commissioned by the Scuola di Santa Caterina in the 1660s as an altarpiece for the church of San Geminiano in St. Mark’s Square in Venice; the masterpiece was kept here until 1807, when Napoleon had the building demolished. The altarpiece was one of the last paintings purchased by David Bowie: the famous singer is a great lover of Tintoretto’s art, so much so that he named his record label Tintoretto Music.

“The preview of David Bowie’s collection held at Sotheby’s in 2016 had a record number of attendees than any other auction house in London. When Tintoretto’s painting was displayed at the Rubenshuis shortly after the sale and was dubbed Bowie’s Tintoretto by the press, the number of visitors increased by 30 percent. For many of them it was their first time inside a museum. The fact that a new audience is discovering the paintings of the great masters through a rock icon of the 20th century, which is also one of the reasons why the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia invited us to hold this exhibition at the Doge’s Palace, is, to quote J.J. Norwich, a reason to celebrate,” commented Ben van Beneden, director of the Rubenshuis in Antwerp and curator of the exhibition at the Doge’s Palace.

The Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter, on the other hand, was painted by Titian in 1550 but remained unfinished. After the artist’s death in 1576, Titian’s son Pomponio had the subject painted again, transforming it into Tobiolo and the angel. When Pomponio sold his father’s studio to Cristoforo Barbarigo in 1581, the painting remained in Palazzo Barbarigo until 1859, when it was acquired by Tsar Nicholas I along with other paintings by Titian. Traces of Tobiolo and the Angel were lost, as much of the tsar’s collection was sold; it was rediscovered in the 1920s when it was purchased by French art dealer René Gimpel. The latter, however, was arrested by the Nazis and died in a concentration camp, but he had previously managed to hide his collection in London: it was his sons who found the works, including the Titian painting. But the story did not end there: in 1948 Jean Gimpel commissioned a technical examination at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and this revealed a portrait underneath Tobiolo and the Angel, which depicted a young woman looking tenderly at her mother. Once the painting was restored, the portrait was brought back to light.

The exhibition From Titian to Rubens will be on view from September 5, 2019 to March 1, 2020.

David Bowie's Tintoretto returns to Venice

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