Portland Oregon Exhibit: Titian's La Bella

Titian's La Bella
Masterworks | Portland Oregon
NOV 25, 2011 – JAN 29, 2012

"This fall, the Museum’s popular Masterworks|Portland series continues with an exceptional painting of Renaissance Venice, Titian’s La Bella (Woman in a Blue Dress). The luminous La Bella is a classic portrait of a beautiful woman that illustrates the continually evolving and infinitely elusive ideal of beauty. La Bella has never been exhibited in the United States and Portland is her only West Coast appearance. The painting was recently cleaned and conserved in Florence, returning La Bella to her original glory.

A color catalogue accompanies this single-painting exhibition and not only describes the historical significance of the work but also details the recent conservation project.

This exhibition is organized by the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, in collaboration with the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture, New York, and is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Art and Humanities".

~From Wiki~
"Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490– 27 August 1576 better known as Titian) was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (inVeneto), in the Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth.


Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the famous final line of Dante's Paradiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.


During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically but he retained a lifelong interest in color. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of polychromatic modulations are without precedent in the history of Western art"

For more information on this exhibit check out the Portland Art Museum's website.
~Lizzie~