(piano playing)
Dr. Steven Zucker: By the time Titian painted
Christ Crowned with Thorns, he was towards
the end of his very long career.
He was the greatest artist of the Venetian Renaissance
and he was applying paint in a way
that artists had never done before.
Dr. Beth Harris: And you could imagine
after decades of painting that you have
a familiarity and an intimacy with your materials.
It was said that Titian used his hands
to paint at the end of his career.
Steven: We actually have a sense that
that might have been the case here.
Look how heavy that paint is as it moves
across the surface.
Beth: We see torches in the upper right
and you can see the thickness of the white
and gold paint, gives us a sense of flickering light
and of the chaos of this moment.
Steven: You have these figures that emerge
from darkness.
He's able to convey a kind of aggression,
a kind of energy.
This is not the static Renaissance any longer
and there's a dynamism and power that is
really at odds with the way in which
we think about the Renaissance.
Beth: It's almost proto baroque, meaning
that it looks toward the baroque and
it's interest in movement and also in the way
that everything is taking place very close to us
and seems to move out into our space.
Steven: The drama is something that I associate
with a baroque and he is achieving that,
not only by the use of diagonals,
not only by the activation and the violence
that's being rendered, but also by the really
stark contrast between light and dark.
Beth: It's funny that you use the word violence
because to me, this painting isn't all that violent.
We know that we're looking at Christ
having the crown of thorns, this painful thing
put on his head.
Steven: Right, this is the passion, that is the events
at the end of Christs life that culminate in the crucifixion.
Beth: Right, these moments of Christ's terrible suffering,
but I don't see Titian focusing on the blood and gore
of the event like someone like Rubens will do.
Steven: That's true.
Look at the figure of Christ.
Even for all the activity, there's also
a kind of static quality, at least
in that central figure.
Beth: We see Christ twisting his body
in an unnatural way and he seems very resigned.
Steven: I'm interested in the way in which
it is both violent and elegant simultaneously.
Look at those diagonal sticks.
A figure in the back right really is plunging
that stick and there is a real sense of violence
and yet the stick is not actually catching the thorns,
it's not actually catching Christs head.
It's somehow moving past.
Beth: Their positions seem dance like
instead of serious violent movement.
Steven: That's the perfect word, dance like.
Look at the figure on the extreme left.
He couldn't be rendered in a more brutish way
and yet he's elegantly up on the balls of his feet,
his knees are bent, there is a balance and lightness
that is really at odds with what he's meant to represent.
Beth: Well, look at that figure in the lower right
who strides up these stairs with a stick in one hand
and an ax in the other, but his arm curls up,
his head leans to the right.
This is a position that looks more like choreography
than actual movement and these are all characteristics
that remind us of mannerism and this is 1570.
After all, mannerism begins in the 1520's, 1530's, 1540's,
right at the time of the reformation.
This is a time of real spiritual upheaval in Europe
and perhaps we're seeing that reflected here.
Steven: It's a kind of anti-naturalism.
There is something very theatrical about it.
There is something very invented about it.
Beth: And in some ways we can't even read
the forms of the bodies.
Not only has Titian embedded everything in darkness
and the shallow space, but for example,
we can't read the right leg of that standing figure
on the left or similarly the right leg
of the figure who's striding up from the lower right.
So, space becomes incomprehensible,
which is also a characteristic of mannerism.
Steven: When you look at a painting like this
you can see the tremendous impact that this artist had
on later painters.
I'm looking at Velazquez Rubens Rembrant
and, of course, Caravaggio.
All these artists are looking back to Titian
and this extraordinary achievement,
in a sense, the freedom that Titian is allowing
for generations of artists.
Freeing them from the strictures of balance
and harmony and clarity that had been hallmarks
of the Renaissance.
Beth: So, this is an interesting moment of transitioning
from the Renaissance.
We see elements of mannerism and we also see
elements of the baroque that is just to come.
(piano playing)