Inside Cambridge: Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia c1570
Green Pebble August/September 2010 issue

By Tom de Freston

Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia

For directions to The Fitwilliam Museum in Cambridge and opening times, visit The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

A rape which never ends. It’s not the kind of interruption you expect in the sleepy calm of the Fitzwilliam Museum, but that’s what you get when faced with Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia c1570.

The problem is we are not necessarily immediately arrested, let alone shocked. The reasons for this are twofold. The first is that we have become anesthetised to shock. We see tragedy everyday on the TV and in our galleries in the form of self-mutilation, artists defecating into cans and all manner of increasingly sensationalised acts.

The second is context - a museum is a library-like space in which we will pay quiet homage to images of canonical beauty, grandeur and virtue. This sociological construction has been attacked and deconstructed extensively in the last 30 years, but we still arrive with a series of limiting and false
expectations.

We can gain such pleasantness from Titian’s painting, if we allow ourselves to indulge solely in his exquisite handling of paint or his depiction of flesh and fabric. Yet to do so would be false. If we give the work time (a commodity not afforded to paintings today but essential to their dynamic) then it still has the ability to evoke horror and pity at the highest level.

Titian is the supreme Venetian painter of the Italian Renaissance. He has been consistently labelled the most Shakespearian of all painters for his ability to comprehensively deal with the full breath of human experience. Tarquin and Lucretia is the last documented painting to leave Titian’s studio. It was painted for Prince Phillip II of Spain, who by this time had given Titian an unprecedented freedom in his choice of subject matter......

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(Please note this article appears in the August/September 2010 issue)

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Inside Cambridge: Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia c1570 Green Pebble August/September 2010 issue

Inside Cambridge: Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia c1570
Green Pebble August/September 2010 issue