Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1516-18,

Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1516-18, oil on wood, 22' 6" x 11' 10" (Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice)
More free lessons at: http://www.khanacademy.org/video?v=2M...

Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker & Dr. Beth Harris

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Closed Caption:

(piano playing)
Beth: We're in the church of
Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice
looking at the giant altar piece by
Titian of the Assumption of the Virgin.
Steven: It's 23 feet
tall, it's a big painting.
Beth: So that means that the
figures at the bottom, the apostles,
who gesture up toward
Mary are over life size.
Steven: There's a frenetic
quality to those apostles.
We don't even see the figure
on the right in red's face,
but he reaches up creating this
wonderful entrance place for our eye,
as he reaches up to Mary so
our eye reaches up to Mary.
She has her arms open in exition
of prayer but also of acceptance
to God the Father above her, whose
arms are even more outstretched
as he receives her in Heaven.
That's precisely what the
subject of the Assumption is.
It is her moving from the
physical world at her death
and being assumed into Heaven.
Beth: And you get the sense
of the earthbound figures
wanting to lift against
the force of gravity
and move with her up to Heaven.
Steven: There's an interesting
play of scale here.
As we look up to God, who is even
further away, the scale doesn't change
so he is even more massive
and expands across the sky.
Beth: And the Virgin Mary
looks somewhat foreshortened.
We're looking at her from below
and Mary is encircled by a halo
of golden light and surrounding
that are figures of angels
supporting her on clouds.
It is like a burst of spiritual
golden light that emerges
from the alter of this church
and it's surrounded by Gothic windows.
So this circle of light is framed
by yet another circle of real light.
Steven: There's a wonderful
way that Titian has taken
a straight on composition, remember this
is over the high altar in the church,
it is completely central.
When you walk in you look
straight down the nave,
right at this massive painting
and because it is so large,
because you look at it so
directly, it could become somewhat
a symmetrical structure but
what the artist has done instead
is to create asymmetry even
in the freeze of figures below
because they gesticulated
so many varied ways.
And Mary is a series of
soft arcs and diagonals.
Look at the way the shadow of her
drape moves around her left arm
and then moves diagonally
across the front of her body
becoming a diagonal that offsets
the centrality of this image.
Beth: When you walk into the church you
look directly at it, down at the nave.
And in addition it's framed by a choir
screen that has an arched opening,
and so your gaze is directed
toward this painting,
especially difficult to experience
this painting and the other painting
that Titian made for this church, the
Pesaro Madonna, in the reproduction.
These are paintings that
need to be seen in situ.
Steven: They need to overwhelm
you, from their scale,
from the richness of their color
and from the complexity of,
not only their theological programs
but also their compositions.
(piano playing)