Titian, Christ Crowned with Thorns, c. 1570–76, oil on canvas, 280 × 182 cm (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] By the time Titian painted “Christ Crowned with Thorns,” he was towards the end of his very long career. He was the greatest artist of the Venetian Renaissance. He was applying paint in a way that artists had never done before.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:22] You can imagine after decades of painting that you have a familiarity and intimacy with your materials. It was said that Titian used his hands to paint at the end of his career.
Dr. Zucker: [0:30] You actually have a sense that that might be the case here. Look how heavy that paint is as it moves across the surface.
Dr. Harris: [0:38] We see torches in the upper right, and you can see the thickness of the white and gold paint. Gives us a sense of flickering light and of the chaos of this moment.
Dr. Zucker: [0:48] You have these figures that emerge from darkness. He’s able to convey a kind of aggression, a kind of energy. This is not the static Renaissance any longer, and there’s a dynamism and power that is really at odds with the way in which we think about the Renaissance.
Dr. Harris: [1:04] It’s almost proto-Baroque, meaning that it looks toward the Baroque and its interest in movement and also in the way that everything is taking place very close to us and seems to move out into our space.
Dr. Zucker: [1:16] The drama is something I associate with the Baroque, and he’s achieving that not only by the use of diagonals, not only by the activation and the violence that’s being rendered, but also by the really stark contrast between light and dark.
Dr. Harris: [1:31] It’s funny that you used the word “violence,” because to me this painting isn’t all that violent. We know that we’re looking at Christ having the crown of thorns, this painful thing, put on his head.
Dr. Zucker: [1:43] Right. This is the Passion, that is the events at the end of Christ’s life that culminate in the Crucifixion.
Dr. Harris: [1:51] Right, these moments of Christ’s terrible suffering, but I don’t see Titian focusing on the blood and gore of the event like someone like Rubens will do.
Dr. Zucker: [1:58] That’s true. Look at the figure of Christ. Even for all the activity, there’s also a static quality, at least in that central figure.
Dr. Harris: [2:07] We see Christ twisting his body in an unnatural way and he seems very resigned.
Dr. Zucker: [2:13] I’m interested in the way in which it is both violent and elegant simultaneously. Look at those diagonal sticks. A figure in the back right really is plunging that stick and there is a real sense of violence. And yet, the stick is not actually catching the thorns, it’s not actually catching Christ’s head, it’s somehow moving past.
Dr. Harris: [2:32] Their positions seem dance-like instead of serious, violent movement.
Dr. Zucker: [2:38] That’s the perfect word, dance-like. Look at the figure on the extreme left. He couldn’t be rendered in a more brutish way. Yet he’s elegantly up on the balls of his feet. His knees are bent. There is a balance and lightness that is really at odds with what he’s meant to represent.
Dr. Harris: [2:55] Or look at that figure in the lower right who strides up these stairs with a stick in one hand and an axe in the other, but his arm curls up, his head leans to the right. This is a position that looks more like choreography than actual movement. These are all characteristics that remind us of Mannerism.
[3:16] This is 1570, after all. Mannerism begins in the 1520s, 1530s, 1540s, right at the time of the Reformation. This is a time of real spiritual upheaval in Europe. Perhaps we’re seeing that reflected here.
Dr. Zucker: [3:31] It’s a kind of anti-naturalism. There is something very theatrical about it. There is something very invented about it.
Dr. Harris: [3:38] In some ways, we can’t even read the forms of the bodies. Not only has Titian embedded everything in darkness and this shallow space, but for example we can’t read the right leg of that standing figure on the left. Similarly, the right leg of the figure who’s striding up from the lower right. Space becomes incomprehensible, which is also a characteristic of Mannerism.
Dr. Zucker: [4:00] When you look at a painting like this, you can see the tremendous impact that this artist had on later painters. I’m looking at Velázquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, and of course, Caravaggio. All these artists are looking back to Titian and this extraordinary achievement.
[4:16] In a sense, the freedom that Titian is allowing for generations of artists, freeing them from the strictures of balance and harmony and clarity that had been hallmarks of the Renaissance.
Dr. Harris: [4:32] This is an interesting moment of transitioning from the Renaissance. We see elements of Mannerism and we also see elements of the Baroque that is just to come.
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