Event | Discussion

Online Event | Sublime Truth and the Senses: Titian's Poesie for King Philip II of Spain

With Marie Tanner, independent scholar and author, and Edward J. Sullivan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art

Part of The Roberta and Richard Huber Colloquium

Wednesday, September 29, 2021, 6:30pm - EST
This event was ONLINE and in ENGLISH

Institute of Fine Arts conversation between author Dr. Marie Tanner and Edward J. Sullivan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, as they discuss Dr. Tanner’s new book, Sublime Truth and the Senses: Titian’s Poesie for King Philip II of Spain.

Between 1554 and 1562 Titian, the unequaled Venetian Renaissance painter, worked on his series called the Poesie - six paintings of mythological themes with deeply sensual content. They were commissioned by King Philip II of Spain and are now dispersed in museums in Europe and the United States. These works (currently together in an acclaimed exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston) are key monuments of the Italian Renaissance and also served as inspiration for artists of later generations such as Peter Paul Rubens and Diego Velázquez. In her timely study, Marie Tanner offers a nuanced and often surprising reassessment of one of the great picture cycles of Western art.

Dr. Marie Tanner received a Ph.D. and an M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (1976; 1970). She specialized in Renaissance Art and Architecture, studying with Erwin Panofsky, Richard Krautheimer, Ludwig Heydenreich, Colin Eisler and other distinguished Professors. She took a related minor at Columbia University in Italian Literature and Philosophy, studying with Paul Oskar Kristeller, Maristella de Panizza Lorsch and John Charles Nelson.

She is the author of Sublime Truth and the Senses: Titian’s Poesie for King Philip II of Spain, London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2018; Jerusalem on the hill: Rome and the vision of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Renaissance, London & Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2010; The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1993, “Titian’s Poesie for King Philip II of Spain,” (Ph.D. New York University, 1976). Her articles include “Concordia in Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ;” “Passion Booty in Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation of Christ;” Imperial Themes in Piero della Francesca’s True Cross Cycle;” and articles on Giorgione’s Fête Champêtre; Titian’s Diana and Actaeon, and several articles on St. Peter’s Basilica. Her recent talks include The Bull with the Fiery Eye: Titian’s Europa for Philip II and Statecraft (Renaissance Society of America, Boston 2017); Donatello and Lucretius (Renaissance Society of America, New York; 2014); Pope Nicholas V and Jerusalem Imagery in Mid-Quattrocento Rome (Renaissance Society of America, Venice, 2010); Lucretius and Leon Battista Alberti, (Renaissance Society of America, 2021).

She was awarded the Wittenborn Prize for The Last Descendant of Aeneas (1993) and the Kingsley Porter Prize, for “Chance and Coincidence in Titian’s Diana and Actaeon” (l974).

She received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1993), and the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, (l978-79). She was the Paul Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery, Washington, D.C. in 1996.

She was Associate Professor of Art History at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and at Queens College of the City University of New York. She is currently an independent scholar.

Edward J. Sullivan is Deputy Director of the Institute of Fine Arts where he is the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art. His fields of research, teaching and curating concern the Americas, especially the Spanish, Portuguese and French-speaking countries of North and South American and the Caribbean, as well as Latinx art. He is the author of more than thirty monographs on art and visual cultures from the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas and beyond, to the Philippines in the Spanish colonial era.

Organized by NYU Institute of Fine Arts. Co-sponsored by KJCC.

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