The Cambridge Companion to Titian

Patricia Meilman's volume on Titian is a compilation of eleven essays by eminent scholars of Renaissance art and music.As one of a number of recent additions to the Cambridge Companion to Art series, Meilman's shares the Cambridge Companion's goal of being both scholarly as well as introductory-"a fundamental resource for specialists and students".The volume is divided into three sections, "Titian's Diverse Genres", "Titian and His Art", and "Titian Interpreted", followed by an Appendix of Titian's life and commissions.The essays of greatest interest to scholars of confraternity studies are chapters two entitled "A Lifelong Passion: Titian's Religious Art" by Meilman, and chapter seven entitled "Music in Titian's Venice" by Iain Fenlon.Meilman's essay treats Titian's religious commissions in broad strokes, but also includes valuable specific discussions of his work for confraternities in Venice and the Veneto.While structuring her article chronologically, Meilman's reading is primarily formal, as she weaves her narrative around four major themes: established Venetian tradition, Lutheran Reform, the Counterreformation, and the artist's own spirituality.The confraternities that Meilman discusses are the Scuola di San Antonio in Padua, the Scuola di San Pietro Martire, and the Scuola Grande della Carita, both in Venice.These scuole commissions derive from the early to mid-part of Titian's career.Meilman contextualizes Titian's work for the Scuola di San Antonio in Padua (1510) and the Scuola Grande della Carita (1534-1538) within Titian's oeuvre, and also within the tradition of large-scale Venetian narrative paintings in the mold of Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio (59).The Saint Peter Martyr Altarpiece (1525-1530) for Santi Giovanni e Paolo, destroyed by fire, is read as a response to Lutheran attacks on orthodoxy, as it depicts the martyrdom of a saint-hero against unorthodoxy (63).Meilman's article gives a concise overview of the pictorial tradition and shifting theological climate that impacted Titian's religious works.Her formal readings are thus a good startingoff point for scholars interested in Titian's confraternal commissions.Fenlon's essay is quite a contrast to Meilman's, not merely for his ostensible subject matter, but also because of his depth of study.Fenlon focuses on the musical context in which Titian worked-the religious festivities including musical processions and performances that enforced the "myth of Venice" (164).Although his essay is not focused on Titian per se, it is surprisingly useful for its discussion of confraternities that patronized Titian, and helps us to conceptualize the role that they, and he, would have had in Venetian life and celebrations.Fenlon discusses the scuole grandi, and to a lesser extent the scuole piccole, and their participation in the andata, or ducal procession, which had become "an image of the city itself" (166).The procession emphasized Venice's apostolic heritage and its history of liberty, peace, and republicanism.Scuole and guilds