Week 4:
“A
Sense of Wonder: Titian and Cervantes’ Don Quijote”
Readings: Cervantes, Don Quixote
Vasari,
Life of Titian
Ridolfi,
Life of Titian
Carlo
Ridolfi published the The Maravels of Art to rival Giorgio Vasari’s The
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. While the
latter had neglected Venice and its
artists, Ridolfi sought to enhance the fame of the city and its foremost
artist, Titian. Against the usual objections to oil painting and the
preeminence of color over design as inferior and “womanly,” Ridolfi evokes the
sense of wonder in Venetian art. And yet, unlike Vasari who exalts the artist’s
individuality, Ridolfi sees the artist as servant of the state. These different
perspectives of Venetian art reappear in Cervantes’ fiction. In his novella, El
licenciado Vidriera, Cervantes describes Venice
as an enchantress, a new Calypso. In Don Quixote the enchantments of
Titian appear through images of his Tarquin and Lucretia. In at least
two instances the novel parodies the opposition between female beauty and male
aggression as depicted in the painting. The enchanting and feminine colors of
Venetian art as found in this novella and in parodic portrayals in Don
Quixote contrast with Cervantes’ use of Titian in the first chapters of the
novel where the mad knight is portrayed in ways reminiscent of Titian’s Charles
V on Horseback. Discussions this week will center on the gendering of art
and its literary representations; on the role of the artist as individual or
servant of the state; and on the political contexts of Don Quixote – its
imperial referents. In the galleries, we will study the Smart’s impressive Milos
of Croton Attacked by Wild Beasts by Pordenone,
with its Giorgionesque landscape, classical subject, and violent, “masculine”
manner.