(lively piano music)
- [Voiceover] We're in the church of the Frari in Venice
and we're looking at Titian's Pesaro altarpiece.
- [Voiceover] Right now where we're looking at it
is in a chapel right next to the altar
but originally and for a long time,
this painting stood on a wall
along the left side of the nave.
- [Voiceover] This is important because
it was in back of the altar of the Pesaro's
and people would come and pray to it
as they walked directly up to it,
but also many people would walk by it
on their way to the high altar.
And so people would see it at a kind of angle
and this is something that Titian took into account.
- [Voiceover] Titian had painted
the Assumption of the Virgin before this
for the altar of this church
so he very familiar with walking its spaces,
and he would have thought about the line of sight
as one approached this painting from the left.
You could see how that makes total sense.
The virgin looks down past Saint Peter
toward the patron Jacopo Pesaro
at the lower left of the painting.
- [Voiceover] Now Jacopo Pesaro was
the leader of the papal navy
and he had won a significant victory against the Turks,
and this was seen as a Christian victory over Islam.
- [Voiceover] You can see the coat of arms
of the pope in the banner that's carried on the left.
- [Voiceover] And there were also the coat of arms
of the Pesaro family.
We can see a prisoner of war wearing a turban.
- [Voiceover] And a soldier behind him
so we can understand this as giving thanks
for a military victory.
- [Voiceover] That solider in the background
has been interpreted by some as possibly
being Saint George.
Saint George is often seen as being
victorious over evil.
So what we have is a Western Christian viewpoint
very much rooted in thinking of the 16th century.
- [Voiceover] When we think about this type of painting
we might remember Bellini's San Giobbe Altarpiece
or San Zaccaria Altarpiece,
both important precedents in Venetian painting.
That idea of the Madonna and Child
surrounded by saints but of course,
this painting also includes the donor,
Jacopo Pesaro on the left
and his family on the right.
So it's different than a straightforward
sacra conversazione.
- [Voiceover] It's different from a traditional painting
by Bellini in a lot of ways in large part
because of the way that it is offset.
Look at the angle that the architecture
comes towards us.
The Virgin Mary is not enthroned dead center
instead she's up high as she has always been
but she looks down to her right
while Christ looks down to his left to Saint Francis
who in turn offers the Pesaro family
up to the Virgin, up to Christ.
On the other side we see Saint Peter,
a key at his feet
and he seems to be making a notation
in a kind of register of those
that are permitted into heaven.
- [Voiceover] And he looks down at Jacopo Pesaro
as a mediator or intercessor
between him and the Virgin.
The parrying of the Virgin's head moving one way
and Christ moving the other
giving us that sense of divided attention
between these two important groups in this painting.
We think that the two columns
which are so large here
were not painted by Titian but were added later.
- [Voiceover] And what they do is obscure a barrel vault
that would have rose up the right wall
and then disappear
somewhere near the apex of the painting.
What is important for me is the color.
Look at the vividness of that blue,
look at the vividness of the gold
especially worn by Saint Peter.
That gold is right in the center near that white book.
And then on three sides of that
we have this brilliant red.
- [Voiceover] Unlike the spiritual figures
in this painting who sit on those stairs,
in the court of heaven, Mary high up on the top step
but so on the throne of heaven,
the spiritual figures in the painting
are all filled with movement and dramatic energy.
But the patron and his family are in profile.
They have a flatness to them.
They register to our eye as
occupying a different world,
except of course for the youngest member
of the Pesaro family who looks out at us.
- [Voiceover] That's Leonardo Pesaro.
- [Voiceover] And you can see that
the way that Mary moves, the way that Christ moves,
and even the way that Peter moves in their elegance
and in the complexity of their bodies
is very high renaissance
and can remind us of the work of Raphael or Leonardo.
There's a fluidity there.
- [Voiceover] There's also a wonderful playfulness.
Look at the Christ child.
The way that he lifts Mary's veil
and encloses himself in that.
- [Voiceover] Like a halo.
- [Voiceover] Like a halo and
the way a child really would play
around his mother.
- [Voiceover] And he does look as though
he needs to be held back,
and perhaps that's a metaphor for Mary's
anxiousness for Christ's future.
- [Voiceover] If you look closely
Christ's left foot is up.
He's about to take a step out of Mary's palm.
And some art historians have seen that
stepping as a precursor of the moment when
Christ steps out of the tomb.
So even shown here as a child
we have this view forward of the triumphant end
when Christ is resurrected.
- [Voiceover] And look at that brilliant illumination on
Saint Peter and on Mary,
the light coming from the left,
from the direction of the entrance of the church,
from the direction we would approach this painting
which unified our space
with the spiritual space of the figures.
- [Voiceover] That's done in part through
a really complex geometry of this painting.
This is pyramidal composition
that brings our eye not only up towards
the Virgin Mary and Christ,
but also deeper into this
pictorial space of the painting.
- [Voiceover] Or you could see also a pyramid
with Peter at its apex too
with the donors on either side.
And a compositional shape is often used
in the high renaissance.
- [Voiceover] And look at the way
that the mast of the flag helps to
offset and balance the mast of the Virgin Mary.
- [Voiceover] The sense of illumination,
the depth of the color,
all of these only possible of course
with oil paint which Titian is a master of.
- [Voiceover] There is another painting
that Titian must have seen.
It's just off the nave in a side chapel
near the cloister by Paolo Veneziano.
- [Voiceover] A painter from the 14th century in Venice
and it shows a very similar image
with the Virgin and Child,
two saints and two donors.
And like the Titian,
Mary and Christ tilt their heads
and move in different directions.
- [Voiceover] There's also just like
in the Pesaro altarpiece an image of Saint Francis
who is shepherding the donor
to Christ and the Virgin Mary.
Titian would have been familiar with this painting,
and we see a painting that looks
in no way like the Titian
but it has subject elements that are very similar.
(lively piano music)