Uncovering beauty: Titian's Triumph of Love in the Vendramin collection

Abstract

An allegory of the power of love by Titian painted about 1543–46 was originally made as a cover for a female portrait in the collection of Gabriel Vendramin (1484–1552) in Venice. This is a rare instance of the survival of a documented canvas cover (timpano) linked to a specific image. My article considers the visual and literary contexts for such covers, and the cultural setting of the Vendramin collection, where sociable viewing involved shared aesthetic and haptic experiences. I suggest that the lost portrait depicted the Venetian patrician Elisabetta Querini Massola (d. 1559) whose virtue and beauty were celebrated in poems by Pietro Bembo, Pietro Aretino and Giovanni della Casa. I link the imagery of the cover to two sonnets by Della Casa in praise of Elisabetta. For reasons of decorum a timpano would have been appropriate for a noblewoman's portrait, but Titian's inventive allegory was designed both to evoke Vendramin's celebrated collection and to recall qualities associated with the image it concealed.

“In Pictura Poesis”: Renaissance Epigrams in Portraits

“…15. Así sucede con la imagen alegórica del Triunfo de Eros, que Tiziano concibió como timpano (o 'cubierta') para el Retrato de Elisabetta Querini Massola (Whistler 2011). aparecían adornadas frecuentemente con imágenes alegóricas, escenas del mito antiguo, elementos heráldicos y, por supuesto, con inscripciones epigramáticas. Pocos años antes de que Ghirlandaio realizara el bellísimo retrato Tornabuoni, Piero de la Francesca había culminado una de sus pinturas más célebres: el retrato doble de Federico de Montefeltro y su consorte, Battista Sforza, duques de Urbino (circa 1473) 16 .…”