Form and expression are brought here into full harmony to create one of the great and rare examples of Venetian Renaissance drawing. Only 35 to 40 drawings attributable to Titian are extant, although he was a tirelessly prolific painter. This famous drawing belongs to an early moment in Titian’s work, not far removed from that of the Concert Champêtre (Musée du Louvre, Paris), which was painted around 1509. The concern for rendering both, the spirit and the physical form, of landscape is central to this great period of Venetian art. Titian's use of the pen-and-ink technique is exquisitely pictorial, with varied and freely applied strokes and small dabs of luminous white gouache, lending movement, texture, and tonal unity to the scene. His superb mastery of the pen is everywhere apparent, from the foreground figures built with broadly sculptural effects of chiaroscuro, to the background landscape in which the forms of architecture and nature ineffably dissolve in the distant haze of the horizon. The poetic quality of the drawing is achieved through this subtlety of technique and a certain elusiveness of mood. The two satyrs are entwined, but look away into the distance beyond the astrological disk prominently displayed at the right.
(Carmen C. Bambach, 2014)
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Artwork Details
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Title:Two Satyrs in a Landscape
Artist:Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (Italian, Pieve di Cadore ca. 1485/90?–1576 Venice)
Date:ca. 1505–10
Medium:Pen and brown ink, highlighted with white gouache on fine, off-white laid paper
Dimensions:8-1/2 x 5-15/16 in. (21.6 x 15.1 cm)
Classification:Drawings
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1999
Object Number:1999.28
Inscription: Annotated in pen and brown ink at the lower right by a later hand, "Lovini Milanese" (Bernardino Luini)
Possibly acquired by Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke (British); Henry Herbert, 10th Earl of Pembroke (British), by 1772-73 (was in Pembroke volume XU.1., dated Nov. 23, 1773); by descent to Reginald Herbert, 15th Earl of Pembroke (British); Pembroke sale, Sotheby's, London, July 5-10, 1917, lot 318 (as Venetian school); Henry Oppenheimer (British); his sale, Christie's, London, July 10, 13–14, 1936, lot 42 as Domenico Campagnola; E. and A. Silberman(New York, by 1936); Curtis O. Baer; Yvette Baer Collection; Vendor: Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. "Five Centuries of Drawings," October 1953–November 1953.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. "Venetian Drawings from American Collections," September 29, 1974–November 24, 1974.
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. "Venetian Drawings from American Collections," December 7, 1974–February 9, 1975.
Saint Louis Art Museum. "Venetian Drawings from American Collections," February 6, 1975–April 6, 1975.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection," May 3–July 25, 1999.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions," October 24, 2008–February 1, 2009.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Paper Chase: Two Decades of Collecting Drawings and Prints," December 9, 2014–March 16, 2015.
Frankfurt. Städel Museum. "Tizian und die Renaissance in Venedig," February 13–May 26, 2019.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance," April 1–July 7, 2024.
Sandford Arthur Strong Reproductions in Facsimile of Drawings by the Old Masters in the Collection of the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery at Wilton House. London, 1900, part VI, no. 54, repr. (as Venetian school).
Hans Tietze Tizian: Leben und Werk. vols. 1, 2, Vienna, 1936, cat. no. p. 319, fig. no. 7, pp. 84, 156, 239, ill.
Hans Tietze, Erica Tietze-Conrat "Tizian Studien." Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien. vol. 10, Vienna, 1936, pp. 137-192.
Hans Tietze, Erica Tietze-Conrat The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries. New York, 1944 (reprinted 1970, 1979), cat. no. no. 1948, pp. 322-323.
Erwin Panofsky Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic. New York, 1969, pp. 192-193.
Konrad Oberhuber, Jay A. Levenson, Jacquelyn L. Sheehan Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art [Published in conjunction with the Prints of the Italian Renaissance, an exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art, June 24-Oct. 7, 1973]. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1973, p. 415.
Terisio Pignatti Venetian Drawings from American Collections. A Loan Exhibition. Exh. cat., The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Kimbell Art Museum, Forth Worth, and Saint Louis Art Museum. Washington, D. C., 1974-75, pp. 9-10, no. 8 (listed as collection Yvette Baer).
Harold E. Wethey The Paintings of Titian, III, The Mythological and Historical Paintings. London, 1975, p. 56.
Terisio Pignatti "Disegni di Tiziano: tre mostra a Firenze e a Venezia." in Arte Veneta. vol. 30, Venice, 1976, p. 268.
William R. Rearick Tiziano e il disegno veneziano del suo tempo Exh. cat. Florence, Gabinetto disegni e stampe degli Uffizi. Florence, 1976, pp. 40-43.
Terisio Pignatti "Fondazione Giorgio Cini. Esposizioni: Disegni di Tiziano e della sua cerchia. Tiziano e la silografia veneziana del Cinquecento." Pantheon. 1977, p. 168.
William R. Rearick Tiziano nel quarto centenario della sua morte, 1576-1976 Titian's Drawings, 1510-1512. Venice, Ateneo Veneto, 1977, pp. 182-185.
Michelangelo Muraro Grafica tizianesca. Tiziano e il Manierismo europeo. Ed. by Rodolfo Pallucchini, Florence, 1978, p. 140.
Konrad Oberhuber Tiziano disegnatore di paesaggi. Tiziano e il Manierismo europeo. Ed. by Rodolfo Pallucchini, Florence, 1978, pp. 112-113.
David Rosand "Titian Drawings: A Crisis of Connoisseurship." Master Drawings. vol. 19, no. 3, New York, 1981, p. 307 (n. 17).
Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel Incisioni da Tiziano, Catalogo del fondo grafico a stampa del Museo Correr Exh. cat. Venice, 1982, p. 8 (n. 13).
E. Saccomani "Domenico Campagnola disegnatore di "paesi" dagli esordi alla prima maturità." Arte Veneta. vol. 36, Venice, 1982, pp. 81, 93.
Harold E. Wethey Titian and His Drawings with Reference to Giorgione and Some Close Contemporaries. Princeton, 1987, pp. 18, 151, 159, 167-68, no. 54.
Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel "Per un catalogo ragionato dei disegni di Tiziano." Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell'Arte. Vol.16, Italy, 1988, pp. 29, 38, no. 6.
David Rosand "Eidos" L'Assunta. vol. 3, 1988, p. 74.
Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel Tiziano. Corpus dei Disegni Autografi. Milan, 1989, pp. 14, 82-83, no. 6.
William R. Rearick "Titian Drawings: A Progress Report." in Artibus et Historiae. vol. 12, no. 23, Venice and Florence, 1991, p. 17.
Konrad Oberhuber, Terisio Pignatti, William R. Rearick Le siècle de Titien: L'âge d'or de la peinture à Venise. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (9 March - 14 June, 1993). Paris, 1993, p. 109, no. 99 (entry by Konrad Oberhuber), ill.
Alessandro Ballarin, Alessandra Pattanaro, Vittoria Romani, Sergio Momesso Dosso Dossi: la pittura a Ferrara negli anni del Ducato di Alfonso I. Vol. 1, Cittadella (Padua), 1994-95, (vol. 2), fig. 253 (as Titian, circa 1511, Stone Mountain, collezione Yvette Baer).
Carmen C. Bambach, Colta Ives, Perrin Stein, Nadine Orenstein "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1998-1999." in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 57, no. 2, Autumn 1999, p. 26 (entry by Carmen C. Bambach).
William R. Rearick Il disegno veneziano del Cinquecento. Milan, 2001, pp. 10, 41, 44, 53, 69, 141, 215, fig. 17.
William R. Rearick Il disegno veneziano del Cinquecento. Milan, 2001, pp. 41-44, fig. 17 (as Titian).
Alessandro Ballarin Il camerino delle pitture di Alfonso I. Padua, 2007, p. 374.
Furio Rinaldi "Bernardino Luini 'Mediolanensis', Aurelio Luini e Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo: Disegni firmati tra autografia e documento" Horti Hesperidum, vol. 2, 2014 ('Studi sul disegno italiano tra connoisseurship e collezionismo'). Ed. by Francesco Grisolia, Rome, 2014, p. 12n.
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