Titian is a dog
Some viewers remain convinced that artists subconsciously fused their features into their portraits of other people - as Leonardo misleadingly suggested - even though the evidence is now strong that face fusion was practiced consciously and with meaning. Artists, like writers, composers and mystics, want to answer the fundamental question: "What am I?" Searching inside they tend to identify their creative self with God, Christ and kings and elsewhere they identify with animals and other elements in nature too.1 (See the theme Artists as Animals.) At left Titian has become his dog in the Berlin Venus and Cupid. They share the same "moustache". Manet, I also show, identified with Olympia's cat. This strongly suggests, given the similarities between the cat and dog, that the French painter who visited Berlin when still a student must have seen and understood Titian's reference. When artists search for the essence of their own self, they discover that the true self - the one we all share - is the essence of everything. Please return soon because many more surprises are in store.
To see the full entry on Titian's Venus and Cupid with an Organist and Manet's Olympia click here.
1. Other examples of face fusion can be seen in the Galleries.
Posted 30 Jul 2011: Artists as AnimalsManetTitianPortraitureReligion
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Reader Comments
How about artist as cartographer - in relation to Titian? In 1995 I made a discovery in a Titian painting that went on to form the first chapter of my subsequent MA (an anthropological degree). My professor at the time urged me to publish but I was unwilling, fearing I would be ridiculed or denigrated by conventional art historians as a tyro commenting on a field outside his discipline (which involves cartography!). Since then subsequent piecemeal research seem to confirm my original suspicions, that the painting effectively represents a C16th century satirical political cartoon employing many of the visual devices we are familair with today, but concealed behind a mythological veneer… I’m currently in the process of writing up a rather long and involved historical narrative that is needed to explain Titian’s possible motivations in producing this masterpiece of double meanings, as I’ve finally found a way of explaining it!
Adrian Turgel
22 Mar 2018