Tea at Trianon: Titian: Women, Myth & Power

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Titian: Women, Myth & Power

Will Titian be canceled? From WSWS:

In The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty, Alexander Lee points out, “Mercenaries and their commanders were violent, unpleasant human beings inured to war and accustomed to violence. Even among the ‘better’ condottieri, savagery was a way of life. Their campaigns were often waged with a brutality that went far beyond any strategic justification.” These are the circumstances in which Titian produced his masterpieces.
With this historical context in mind, one can only regard the treatment of “The Rape of Europa” by the New York Times ’ Holland Cotter, in his article “Can We Ever Look at Titian’s Paintings the Same Way Again?,” with derision and contempt. Glancing at the headline, one’s first thought is that this is a piece in some satirical magazine. The author is pulling our leg, no one could be this stupid …
In answer to the question in his headline, Cotter replies, essentially, “No, we cannot,” and then absurdly calls for Titian to be given the #MeToo treatment! “In fact, the whole cycle, with its repeated images of gender-based power plays and exposed female flesh,” Cotter writes, “raises doubts about whether any art, however ‘great,’ can be considered exempt from moral scrutiny.” What will this “moral scrutiny” consist of? Will it “cancel” or even destroy the paintings, which have survived the tumult of the Spanish wars of Succession and Independence as well the French Revolution, changing hands multiple times between aristocratic collectors in Europe, finally to be swept off across the Atlantic by new industrial fortunes like that of Isabella Stewart Gardner who could far out-bid the old aristocracy for its treasures? Is it not ironically analogous to the painting’s subject—the seizure of an unwitting beauty as a trophy—that when Gardner acquired the “Rape of Europa” in 1896 for $100,000, the equivalent of $3.2 million today, it became the most expensive painting in the US, enhancing her status as a preeminent collector of European art.
Or would the likes of Cotter and the New York Times, who do not seem morally outraged by an ongoing and entirely preventable death toll of the pandemic, now entering its third year and claiming several thousand lives a day, have the “immoral” Greek and Roman myths censored?
In the present politically diseased situation, even though “The Rape of Europa” has been prominent in the Gardner Museum’s collection for a hundred years, the museum defensively included the disclaimer that “In presenting these exhibitions, the Gardner does not condone this violence, nor suggest that gender discrimination and sexual assault live in the annals of history alone. Rather, we ask audiences to consider what Titian’s paintings meant in their time and what they mean today, and to confront the persistent issue of sexual assault.” It then goes on to list the numbers of six (!) sexual assault hotlines. (Read more.)