I saw this and thought that members in No. Calif. might be interested.
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This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate.
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Saturday, October 29, 2011 (SF Chronicle)
'Masters of Venice: Renaissance Painters': review
<a class="email fn" href="mailto:sw...@sfchronicle.com";>Steven Winn, Special to
The Chronicle</a>
In its early galleries, "Masters of Venice," which opens today at the M.H.
de Young Memorial Museum, lays down some deep, somber chords from the
Italian Renaissance. Surrounded first by five portraits of imposing male
figures dressed in black, the viewer steps into an alcove to find a small
masterpiece by Mantegna. The chiseled martyr "St. Sebastian," posed
against a classical colonnade, suffers his multiple arrow piercings with a
fixed, far-off gaze that seems to peer back toward some classical ideal of
sacred content and form.
Then, in the rooms of Giorgiones, Titians, Tintorettos and other 16th
century Venetian painters that follow, light, color, sensuality and a
sense of full-body immersion in the natural world break through like a
sunrise, illuminating the landscape as if for the first time.
"What we call painting was invented by the Venetians," said Paul Cezanne.
In its artful and instructive deployment of 50 paintings on loan from
Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, "Masters of Venice" makes the case for
a consciousness-altering moment in art history that's every bit as
dramatic as the one documented in the de Young's pair of Impressionist-era
shows.
Like those two exhibitions, as well as the recent Picasso retrospective,
"Masters of Venice" came about because a European museum was undergoing
renovations that made parts of its collection available for touring. The
de Young has perfected the nimble art of turning someone else's temporary
dilemma into a stream of high-profile and mutually rewarding shows here.
Everybody wins, local art lovers most of all.
"Masters of Venice" is not on the scale of the de Young's other
blockbusters. Its 50 works (plus a clutch of prints from the Fine Arts
Museum's own collection) compare with 100 and 127 in the two Impressionist
shows and 150 Picassos. The Venetian paintings have plenty of room to
breathe in their San Francisco installation. But no one's about to
complain of being undernourished by this absorbing procession of masterly
oil paintings.
The Giorgiones alone would merit an excursion. In "The Three
Philosophers," the seated figure (possibly Pythagoras) sends his
contemplating gaze swimming into a deep, velvety shadow that falls across
the landscape. A fretwork of bare tree limbs and trunks renders palpable
the mysterious calculations of his two companions.
Two nearby portraits are as lovely and haunting as anything in the show.
The meltingly warm eyes, becalmed self-possession and tender affect of
Giorgione's "Youth With Arrow" collapse the centuries between subject and
viewer. He's in the room with us. "Portrait of a Young Woman (Laura)" is
more of an enticing mystery, with the sitter's rather stony expression set
off by a sweep of translucent drapery across one bared breast and a flare
of leaves standing at alert attention around her.
Titian could do anything, it seemed, including painting like the German
precisionist Lucas Cranach if he wanted to. "Portrait of Johann Friedrich,
Elector of Saxony" proves it. But the prolific Titian may have answered
his greatest calling as a visual storyteller, whether he was catching an
assassin in the act ("The Bravo"); zeroing in on the suicidal,
dagger-wielding Lucretia just as her husband comes darting in over her
shoulder; or capturing the vanity and furtive compulsion of a collector in
"Portrait of Jacopo Strada."
The three large Titians that feature female nudes are sure to get plenty
of attention, as well they should. The wonder of these canvases, with
their mythical subjects and expanses of flesh, is how different and
powerful the artist's use of the female form could be. You can almost feel
the ruddy flush of his Venus as she turns into an open-mouthed kiss with
Mars. In "Danaë," the figure glows with marble-like perfection. The
ambivalent heroine of "Nymph and Shepherd" seems half enchanted by her
rustic suitor and half by the murky and menacing landscape beyond.
A section on the lesser-known artists of Veneto serves a bland breather
before the dynamic Tintorettos take over. Several of his portraits reward
close attention, but nothing rivals the erotic tension of "Susanna and the
Elders," where two voyeurs spy on the sublimely innocent bather who has
one leg plunged in the water while her sweet face dreams away into a
mirror.
"Masters of Venice" reaches its climax in the complex chords of Veronese's
"The Anointing of David," a large frieze of figures in warm chromatic
tones and cunningly interlocking poses. A pair of Veronese beauties with
violent streaks - "Judith With the Head of Holofernes" and another
self-destructive "Lucretia" - confirms the marvel of caressing light, lush
color, polished technique and expanding horizons that blossomed and
flourished in that magical Cinquecento city.
Masters of Venice: Renaissance Painters of Passion and Power From the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: Opens today. Through Feb. 12. M.H. de
Young Memorial Museum, Golden Gate Park, S.F. $10-$20. (415) 750-3600.
www.famsf.org. E-mail comments to datebooklett...@sfchronicle.com.
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Copyright 2011 SF Chronicle
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