Titian's Women

Goffen shows how female images relate to Titian's professional self-image and to his concern with larger themes: matrimonial images are linked to the means by which women attained and relinquished visibility in Italian Renaissance society, devotional images introduce the paradox of subject matter with a sexual component that both stimulates and inhibits, and mythological images are connected to the artist's use of the female body to demonstrate "divine" craftsmanship. Titian portrays his female subjects as fully conceived individuals whose psychological attributes arc as important as their bodily charms. Through his paintings Titian invites the male beholder to respond to female emotions, Goffen contends (male, because in the act of viewing such erotic images, the viewer becomes male). And more than this, Titian's women imply his own absorption of female identity as a figure of artistic creativity.

"Goffen opens the way for richer, more complex interpretations of the female figures bythat most celebrated conjurer of female bodies, Titian". -- Mary Pardo, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Amazon.com Review
Just as the Italian peninsula itself was a patchwork of widely divergent city-states up until the 19th-century risorgimento, so the art and artists of the Italian Renaissance differed according to the regions in which they flourished. If Florence is the city most often associated with Renaissance art, Venice runs a close second; and of all the artists associated with the Venetian style, Titian is arguably the greatest. In Titian's Women, art historian Rona Goffen examines the role of women in the great man's work. Whether painting a bride or a goddess, Titian brought a degree of respect and empathy to his portraits; though his models may have been prostitutes, Goffen argues, the finished subjects were indisputably ladies. Combining art history with a remarkable command of the period's social history, Goffen crafts a fascinating discussion of Titian's work, his times, and his particular genius.