The Beauty of Venetian Women - Titian's Vision of Women in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna

The »Belle Veneziane«, as whose inventors Titian and Palma Vecchio are considered, shaped the painting of Venice in the 16th century. Individual portraits of women were rare; the depiction as a young, blond beauty was in demand. Regardless of the actual age of the person when the portrait was painted, the ideal image was created, for a beautiful body was considered an expression of a beautiful character. Erotic portraits in the form of ancient goddesses were also popular, often as Flora, the goddess of flowers.

Venice's inhabitants were considered culturally open-minded and granted women rights regarding dowries and inheritance, which were not taken for granted at that time. Many influential poets moved to wealthy Venice and declared women and love to be a main theme of their writings. Titian and other painters used mirrors in some paintings to show beauty from all sides, trying to surpass poetry in the competition.

In this exhibition, the portraits of women by Titian and his contemporaries such as Jacopo Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese are placed in the context of the literature of Venice in the 16th century. The spread of printing in the humanist-influenced city-state established everyday language as the language of literature. More and more bourgeois women read, wrote, and composed their own poetry, demanding new perspectives on women in terms of content. In this context, »Titian's Vision of Women« with its analyses of fashion, hairstyle, and other details in the paintings, promises new insights into a multi-layered era of the time.