Titian’s Diana: Poetry in Paint
Caroline Campbell
Titian is considered to be one of the most inspired colourists of the Renaissance. His epic paintings Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto (both 1556-1559) are amongst the best-loved works in the National Gallery.
Curator Caroline Campbell talks us through the narratives of tragedy, lust and betrayal which unfold across these canvases and how the Venetian artist was inspired to paint the poetry of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. These works are his attempt to represent the unruly supernatural forces of the ancient world and the strife they inflict on human beings, which remain as relevant as ever.
I first saw these paintings as a 19-year-old. I walked in off the street in Scotland. I was absolutely entranced by them and I sat and watched how the pictures changed as the light moved across them. What I love about these pictures is that they take us to the heart of what it is to be human and how artists make us think about our place in the world. They were made by Titian, the greatest Venetian painter who’s ever lived. Titian is somebody who I think really understood women and the human condition in a way that few male artists have and I find that, as a woman, really extraordinary.
They’re both stories of deep tragedy, Acteon was a hunter, and one day when he was hunting, he came across a grotto filled with beautiful women who were bathing. One of them was Diana who was the queen of hunting, the goddess of chastity, and she was incredibly angry to have been discovered. She condemned him to being turned into a stag and he was chased and killed by his own hounds. The other painting represents Diana and Callisto. Like Acteon, Callisto’s fate is not her own. She is one of Diana’s nymphs and she’s got to be sworn to chastity as she follows her through the forest hunting, but one day she is raped by Jupiter, the king of the Gods. She’s horrified by her body changes in the next nine months. Callisto is thrown out of her group of companions, Diana casts her off, she wonders in the forest, she gives birth to a child and then she is turned into a bear.
[Voiceover: excerpt from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book II, as translated by A. S. Kline]
Nine crescent moons had since grown full
When the goddess faint from the chase in her brother’s hot sunlight found a cool grove
Out of which a murmuring stream ran, winding over fine sand….
And there her shame was revealed with her naked body.
Terrified, she tried to conceal her swollen belly.
Diana cried ‘Go, far away from here: do not pollute the sacred fountain!’
and the Moon-goddess commanded her to leave her band of followers
The text behind them is Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Now today that may seem sometimes a rather erudite source, but in the 16th century it’s often called the painter’s bible.
[Voiceover: excerpt from Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid (London: Faber & Faber, 1997)]
… He peered
Into the gloom to see the waterfall –
But what he saw were nymphs, their wild faces
Screaming at him in a commotion of water.
And as his eyes adjusted, he saw they were naked,
Beating their breasts as they screamed at him.
…
The goddess
Poured a shocking stream of panic terror
Through his heart like blood…
…
No words came. No sound came but a groan.
It wasn’t just that the inspiration was Ovid’s poetry but that he, through his brush, through his extraordinary use of colour, was painting something that was equivalent to a poem. He’s doing that by thinking about what you can do in paint that you can’t do with words. Titian tells that story in one moment, by showing the minute of Acteon’s discovery and he does it by concentrating attention on the gazes of people in the picture. We see Acteon putting up his hand, saying ‘Oh, I’m not quite sure about this’, we see Diana looking very cross and very imperious, we see her nymphs in all sorts of stages of undress and then when we look very carefully, we see the skeleton of a stag, and we know, if we know the story, that that’s what Acteon is going to become. You might be able to see there are two dogs in the painting, Diana has a little lap dog, and Acteon has a hunting dog and the lap dog is barking really, really vigorously at Acteon’s hunting dog. So almost in the picture you see what’s going to happen between the interaction of the two animals. Titian often uses animals to tell things more explicitly than the humans do.
There are two factors that made Titian’s paintings so remarkable, and they’re his use of colour and his use of light. Colour is the way in which Titian tells stories. He makes us understand what is going on. Titian spent most of his life in Venice, and Venice was the place where you got better colours than anywhere else in the world. In the 16th century, Venice is the biggest port in Europe, and it’s where all sorts of extraordinary pigments arrive, from Afghanistan, from the New World, from all over Europe. Titian could take his pick, making his pictures look as full of colour as possible.
Titian really thinks about light more than any other painter I can think of. Now, if you’ve ever been to Venice you’ll know how wonderful it is when you see the light glittering off the canals, and how everything responds to this combination of sun and water, its creates all sorts of strange optical effects, and he so responds to that in his work.
I think this is a painting that has meant more to me as I’ve got older, and also as I’ve had children because looking at Callisto’s body, she’s totally vulnerable and I feel there’s something so unbelievably tragic about her face. She’s in darkness unlike everybody else and you might also see that she’s wearing some really wonderful red shoes and they then draw you when you look at this picture closely to her eyes which are also red because she’s just red with crying. It’s the sense of not being in control, these things happened to these people, and they just have to get on with it. And I think that’s something which can resonate with us all very strongly today.
Nobody needs anything to look at these paintings except themselves because they’re paintings about what makes us human. I’d encourage people to look at the human figures, to look at the agonised face of Callisto, to look at her pregnant belly and to look at the indecision on Acteon’s face and even more his body as he tries to stop himself from turning to see the goddess Diana. And I’d encourage people to just enjoy the pictures for what they are, not to try and necessarily find an explanation for them but make that up in their own minds as they look and as they think.
With thanks to
The National Gallery
Archive
Alamy Stock Photo
Museo Nacional del Prado
Pond5
Shutterstock
The Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Museum of the Fine Arts, Houston
The National Gallery of Scotland
Voice
Garry Cooper
Music
9 Lives
Audio Network
Full list of images shown:
Diana and Actaeon
Titian, 1556-1559
The National Gallery
Diana and Callisto
Titian, 1556-1559
The National Gallery
Ovid’s Metamorphosis
Translated by A.S. Kline
© Copyright 2000 A.S. Kline, All Rights Reserved
Tales from Ovid
Ted Hughes, 1997
© 2012 Estate of Ted Hughes reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Title-page to Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Antonio Tempesta, 1606
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)
Assumption of the Virgin
Titian, 1515-1518
Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
The Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and an unidentified Saint
Titian, 1515-1520
The National Gallery of Scotland
Danae Receiving the Golden Rain
Titian, 1560-1565
© Museo Nacional del Prado
The Pesaro Madonna
Titian, 1519-1526
Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
- ‘Titian’s Diana and Actaeon’, The National Gallery Research
- ‘Titian’, The National Gallery
- ‘Titian: Diana and Castillo’, The National Gallery (collections online)
- Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, ‘Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne’, Smarthistory, 25 November 2015
- ‘Titian’, Art UK
Recently Watched
Watch Next Video
Gerhard Richter: Doubt
Gerhard Richter: Doubt 12:00 mins
‘He disturbed my sense of what art should be.’ — Robert Storr on Gerhard Richter
Cézanne: ‘The Father of Modern Art’
Cézanne: ‘The Father of Modern Art’ 14:15 mins
Jacky Klein discusses how a recluse from the French countryside became the first Modern painter.
Metamorphosis of Narcissus: When Salvador Dalí met Sigmund Freud
Metamorphosis of Narcissus: When Salvador Dalí met Sigmund Freud 15:03 mins
Dawn Adès tells the story of the historic meeting between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud, and unpacks the mind-boggling painting the artist took with him.