Madonna and Child

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) Italian

Not on view


Dating to about 1508, this devotional painting of the Madonna and Child is one of Titian’s earliest. Technical study has revealed that the artist first posed the figures sitting erect and in the center of the canvas, in a manner closer to those by Giovanni Bellini, the artist with whom he studied. The transparent cloth in which Mary places her son and the marble slab on which she is seated engage the beholder to meditate on Christ’s birth as well as his eventual fate. The German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), who was in Venice from 1505–7, made frequent claim to having absorbed the rich, saturated color of Venetian paintings.

Madonna and Child, Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (Italian, Pieve di Cadore ca. 1485/90?–1576 Venice), Oil on wood

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