Titian: His Lifeand The Golden Age Of Venice

Description

The first biography since 1877 of Venice's greatest artist - a towering work which captures the genius of Titian, beautifully illustrated throughout with full colour plates. Devoted father and loyal friend, Titian was notorious for disregarding authority and was an international celebrity by his late fifties. He was famously difficult but his stubbornness and horrendous timekeeping did nothing to deter his patrons who included the Hapsburgs, the Pope and his family and Charles V. During his career, which spanned more than seventy years, Titian painted around five or six hundred pictures of which less than half survive. His work has been studied by generations of great artists from Rubens to Manet and he is often seen as having artistically transcended his own time. Sheila Hale not only examines his life, both personal and professional, but how his art affected his contemporaries and how it influences artists today. She also examines Venice in its context of a city at the time of the Renaissance, overshadowed artistically by Rome and Florence and growing into the famous historical city it has become. Fully illustrated with four colour plate sections (including his famous works 'Reclining Venus', 'Death of Actaeon' and 'Three Ages of Man'), this is an astonishing portrait of one of the most important figures in the history of Western art and a vivid evocation of Venice in its 'Golden Age'.

Reviews

'A scrupulous and exhaustive account that is informed by the latest scholarship, but admirably free of academic cant' Daily Telegraph 'A huge and exceptional new study of the painter...a superb portrait of the artist - an example of measured scholarship, judicious opinion, and telling framing detail' Guardian 'The depth of her research is both impressive and astonishing...enriched by vivid anecdotes and gossipy snippets...it all makes for compelling reading' Independent 'Scholarly, erudite, endlessly inquisitive and as clear as can be...many of the bit-part players in the book are brilliantly vivid' Mail on Sunday 'Magisterial... a poised and sincere account of Titian's life and art. A truly triumphal undertaking and a prodigious monument to one of the giants of Western art' The Art Newspaper

Author description

Sheila Hale is the author of many books including a guidebook to Venice which prompted Eric Newby to declare she 'deserves a Nobel Prize' and by David Lodge as 'the best guidebook I have ever used'. VENICE went into four editions and was translated into seven languages. She has written an architectural history of Verona and has written extensively about Venice and the Veneto for a number of magazines and articles, including the New York Times. She is the widow of the late, great John Hale with whom she worked on RENAISSANCE VENICE and the classic THE CIVILISATION OF EUROPE IN THE RENAISSANCE. She is a trustee of Venice in Peril and her last book, THE MAN WHO LOST HIS LANGUAGE was one of the most widely reviewed and highly praised books of 2002. She lives in London.