The "Furias". From Titian to Ribera
Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid 1/21/2014 - 5/4/2014
- Curator:
- Miguel Falomir, Head of the Department of Italian and French Painting (up to 1700), Museo del Prado
Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid 1/21/2014 - 5/4/2014
Room A and B. Jerónimos Building
Monday to Saturday from 10am to 8pm. Sunday and holidays from 10am to 7pm.
Before 1548, when Titian began to paint the “Furias”, the only important earlier depiction of Tityus was the drawing that Michelangelo gave to Tommaso de’Cavalieri in 1532. On the reverse, Michelangelo transformed the mythological figure of Tityus into a Risen Christ.
Michelangelo believed that only classical sculpture offered a formal repertoire appropriate for recreating the myths of antiquity and his principal source of inspiration was the Laocoön, which became a key reference for any painter depicting the Furies from this date onwards.
Beatrizet’s engraving resulted in the immediate dissemination of Michelangelo’s composition. Gregorio Martínez produced an original version of it, placing innovative importance on the giant’s suffering face and adding a cloth to cover the figure’s genitals. This is one of the very few Spanish Renaissance mythological paintings.
The “Furias” were part of the iconographic programme for the Great Hall in the palace at Binche (in modern-day Belgium), which included other paintings, sculptures and tapestries and conveyed a dual message: firstly, the punishment meted out to those who rebelled against established order; and secondly, the start of a Golden Age after the battle of Mühlberg. Distinctive within the Hall’s decoration was the use of allegory, which was unusual for the Habsburgs but was considered appropriate for conveying the timelessness of the Golden Age.
The “Furias” offered Titian a challenge. Conceptually, this was his first imperial commission that was not a portrait and his first incursion into political allegory. Formally, these were enormous, single-figure compositions which demanded a monumentality and dramatic pathos for which classical sculpture and Michelangelo were obligatory references, particularly after Titian’s period in Rome in 1545-46.
In the late sixteenth century, painters saw the “Furias” as an outstanding vehicle for responding to two artistic concepts previously expressed by Titian: that of varietas (a range of poses and movements), and the depiction of the affetti or states of mind, in this case extreme pain. While Titian’s “Furias” were in Spain by 1558, it was in the Low Countries that they had their earliest impact, both among artists who could have studied them in situ, such as Michael Coxcie and Maarten van Heemskerck, or through prints, some executed by Dutch artists such as Cornelis Cort under Titian’s supervision. This awareness took shape in Haarlem in the 1580s in the context of its Academy, the principal promoters of which were Van Mander, Goltzius and Cornelisz. van Haarlem. The Academy’s aesthetic promoted an exaggerated interpretation of Michelangelo, consisting of hypertrophied bodies and improbable foreshortenings, with an interest in varietas.
The political and religious frontier did not prevent artistic contacts between Haarlem and Antwerp, as evident in the mutual influence between Goltzius and Rubens. The latter returned from Italy in 1608 with an artistic idiom that combined an interest in the antique with Michelangelo’s monumentality and Venetian colour, a synthesis that is admirably expressed in his Prometheus.
In the second half of the sixteenth century the idea developed that a work of art could depict an unpleasant subject in an attractive way and that the skilled and effective representation of such scenes counterbalanced their disturbing effect. Caravaggio (1570-1610) was crucial for the “normalisation” of this aesthetic and Rubens became acquainted with it in Italy (1600-08). This fascination with horror reached its peak in Naples between 1630 and 1660 and it is possible to refer to the construction of an “aesthetic of horror” for which the poet Giambattista Marino (1569-1625) was central, championing horror not as a strategy for transmitting a message but as the message itself.
The “Furias” were ideal for this purpose and around 1620 they reappeared in Italy, largely due to Dutch and Flemish painters living in Rome such as David de Haen and Theodore Rombouts. It was, however, Ribera who made the Furies the epitome of horror in painting and Naples the city in which they were most widely promoted. While Ribera only painted Furies until 1635, they were central to the creation of his image as a painter who delighted in violence and horror, thus transferring the subjects of the canvases onto his own personality.
The subject of the “Furias” spread from Naples to the rest of Italy through works by Ribera and the travels of painters close to him such as Salvator Rosa, who introduced himself in Rome in 1639 with a depiction of Tityus. In Genoa, however, the Neapolitan contribution combined with a local interest in this subject evident since the early seventeenth century and associated with the monumental treatment of bodies deployed by painters such as Luciano Borzone (1590-1645) and with patrons such as Giovan Carlo Doria. A friend of the poet Giambattista Marino, a collector of Rubens and the owner of various “Furias”, Doria’s palace housed an Accademia dei nudi. Assereto trained in this environment, confirming his interest in the “Furias” following his visit to Rome the year after Rosa’s triumph with Tityus.
The “Furias” saw their final moment of splendour in Venice, again thanks to the arrival of Neapolitan paintings and of painters such as Luca Giordano, which disseminated both the subject and the associated aesthetic of horror. Its principal exponent was the Genoese painter Langetti, who combined echoes of Assereto with a profound knowledge of Ribera. Arriving in Venice in 1655, Langetti became the principal representative of the tenebrosi: painters who found Caravaggio and Ribera’s tenebrism the best aesthetic option for expressing their own interior dramas.
Michelangelo Buonarroti Charcoal and black chalk on paper, 33 x 19 cm 1532 London, Royal Collection Trust / ©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014
Anonymus Italian( Nicolás Beatrizet) Engraving, 30.5 x 45 cm XVI Century Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España
Giulio Sanuto Engraving, 44.2 x 34.1 cm 1565 Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum
Cornelis Cort Engraving, 45 x 37 cm 1566 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España
Cornelisz van Haarlem Ink on paper, 36 x 26.8 cm 1588 Vienna, Albertina
Goltzius Oil on canvas, 125 x 105 cm 1613 Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum
Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders Oil on canvas, 242.6 x 209.5 cm c. 1611 Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Cornelisz van Haarlem Oil on canvas, 192 x 152 cm 1588 Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Cornelisz van Haarlem / Goltzius, Heindrick Engraving, 31 cm diameter 1562 - 1638 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Cornelisz van Haarlem / Goltzius, Heindrick Engraving, 33 cm diameter 1562 - 1638 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Cornelisz van Haarlem / Goltzius, Heindrick Engraving, 33.5 cm diameter 1562 - 1638 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Cornelisz van Haarlem / Goltzius, Heindrick Engraving, 34.2 cm diameter 1562 - 1638 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Theodoor Rombouts Oil on canvas, 154 x 222.5 cm Brussels, Royal Museum of Fines Arts of Belgium
José de Ribera Engraving, 13.9 x 21.3 cm 1622 Private collection
Antonio Zanchi Oil on canvas, 110.4 x 119.8 cm 1660 - 1665 The Hague, Mauritshuis
Giovanni Battista Langetti Oil on canvas, 97 x 118 cm Venice, Ca Rezzonico
Giovanni Battista Langetti Oil on canvas, 193.6 x 258.4 cm Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte de Ponce
Luca Giordano Oil on canvas, 186 x 132 cm Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum
Salvator Rosa Oil on canvas, 344 x 212 cm 1646 - 1648 Galeria Nazionale d´Arte Antica Palazzo Corsini
Gioacchino Assereto Oil on canvas, 117 x 101 cm Graz, Universalmuseum Joanneum
Gioacchino Assereto Oil on canvas, 83 x 69.5 cm Douai, Museé de la Chartreusse
José Trilles (framer) Plaster copy, 282 x 170 x 100 cm 1887 Valladolid, Museo Nacional de Escultura
The accompanying catalogue is entirely written by Miguel Falomir, curator of the exhibition and Head of the Department of Italian and French Painting (up to 1700) at the Museo del Prado. It includes the following chapters: “Titian, Mary of Hungary and Political Allegory: on monarchs, traitors and vengeful lovers”; “The Artistic Challenge. Improbable foreshortenings and exaggerated expressions”; and “Originality and Imitation: classical and modern artists”.
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