From Vienna to Florence: the portrait of Jacopo Strada by Titian arrives at Palazzo Pitti
Florence, 5 October 2021 – From today to January, in the palace of Palazzo Pitti will live a very illustrious tenant: he is the cultured and dynamic Lombard antiquarian and scholar of the sixteenth century, Jacopo Strada, painted by Tiziano Vecellio: it is one of his most famous works. Accepted since the seventeenth century in the art collections of the Habsburgs in Brussels and then in Vienna and today among the masterpieces of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in the Austrian capital, the work was exceptionally loaned to the Uffizi Galleries for the exhibition entitled A guest from Vienna: Jacopo Strada by Tiziano, set up in the Sala Bianca from 5 October 2021 to 16 January 2022.
Antique dealer, architect, goldsmith, writer, collector, art dealer, Jacopo Strada (Mantua, about 1515 – Vienna, 1588) was undoubtedly one of the most culturally energetic and multifaceted figures in sixteenth-century Europe. Born into a noble Mantuan family, he trained in the humanities in the shadow of the refined cultural circle gathered around the Gonzaga court; then, in 1546, he went to live in Germany, where he started a fruitful activity as an art consultant to the major collectors of the time, including the powerful banker Jakob Fugger, the emperor Ferdinand I of Habsburg and the Duke of Bavaria Albert V. His numerous trips to Italy, in search of ancient sculptures, medals, drawings and paintings by the greatest masters of the Renaissance, led him in particular to Rome and Venice, where in 1567 he tried in vain to buy the collection of Senator Gabriele Vendramin, a friend and commissioned by Titian. The meeting with Titian and the realization of the painting now exhibited in the Sala Bianca at Palazzo Pitti dates back to this occasion.
It is one of the last portraits made by Titian, who had long since abandoned this pictorial genre in which he had also given very high proofs, many of which can be admired in the former Medici palace, in the halls of the Palatine Gallery, and also in the Uffizi. Titian manages to interpret the protagonist’s personality in an original way, giving up posing him and choosing to represent a fragment of his life. In the foreground, very elegant in the red dress completed by the black velvet doublet, the gold chain, the sword and the fur on the shoulder casually, Jacopo has just bent down to lift a statuette of Venus from the table on which others are resting ancient finds: a torso, a bronze statue, coins of Roman emperors. With a snap, he turns his head to the right, directing a determined gaze to interlocutors outside the scene, and Tiziano makes us feel all the vitality of that movement, both in the contrast between his arms and face, and in the lightning intensity of his blue eyes. Many other precious objects, arranged books in the small room, combine to define an ideal and celebratory scenography of the wealthy antiquarian: i, a bronze statue of Hercules, a pomegranate, the sumptuous cartouche with the Latin inscription in which Strada is defined Civis Romanus ( title conferred on him by the pope in 1555) and imperial “antiquarian”. The relationship with the Venetian painter, which was probably also an understanding of business, is finally reaffirmed in the header of the letter in the foreground, on which we read “to Mag (nifico) Sig (nore) il Sig (nor) Tit (iano ) Vec (ellio).
The exhibition places the portrait in dialogue with a small ancient Venus sculpted in marble, similar to the one held in the hands of Strada in the painting. This work, although in size, boasts a long and prestigious collecting history. Archival papers testify to its presence on the boxes of the Tribuna from the beginning of the 18th century. From ancient times, the figure retains only the torso with the upper part of the legs. The fragment, however, was cleverly integrated by a sculptor of the sixteenth century who gave life to an image of the goddess Aphrodite with, in her left hand, the pommel that is imagined to have just received from Paris. The director of the Uffizi Galleries Eike Schmidt: “With the exhibition of the portrait of Jacopo Strada – one of Titian’s most famous masterpieces, here contextualized with two works from our collection to testify the mania for antiquity in the sixteenth century – the autumn season of events opens with a bang exhibition areas of the Uffizi Galleries. In the coming months, exhibitions will be added ranging from childhood in ancient Rome to contemporary art, from the most ancient pictorial representation of Dante’s Count Ugolino to the commitment against violence against women ”. The director of the Kunstistorisches Museum Wien, Sabine Haag: “I am sure that this wonderful painting will stimulate interesting discussions and entertain the guests of the Uffizi in the coming months”.
Maurizio Costanzo
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