Europa Europa

Another Gardner thunderbolt: Titian and Rubens

by Jeffrey Gantz

"TITIAN AND RUBENS: POWER, POLITICS, AND STYLE," At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, through April 26.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has always been a exquisite rose bush in the arboreal shadow of its neighbor, the Museum of Fine Arts. And while the MFA continues to give us bigger in its search for better, the Gardner is proving that small can be supreme. Last year's "Botticelli's Witness: Changing Style in a Changing Florence" -- all 12 pieces of it -- was a match for the MFA's gargantuan (and admittedly splendid) early-Picasso exhibition. The current Gardner effort is smaller still -- two paintings by Titian, two paintings and one drawing by Rubens -- but it's already a leading candidate for best art show of 1998.

"Titian and Rubens: Power, Politics, and Style" is offering up Titian's 1562 masterpiece Europa (the painting that eluded the Gardner thieves back in 1990); the loving copy that Rubens finished in 1629 as The Rape of Europa (the title by which Titian's painting is widely but not accurately known); Titian's 1537 Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino; and the 1629 Rubens portrait it inspired, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, plus a study for the Howard. There's also an DVD-based interactive kiosk at which you can study Europa.

Some may wonder what all the fuss is about. We've got a woman -- distinctly zaftig by contemporary standards -- balancing precariously on the back of a god posing as a bull while assorted putti look on. Twice. Then there are a couple of dead white guys, a drawing of a dead white guy, and some computer images. Big deal. Besides, Europa and the Howard portrait are resident at the Gardner, so you can see them any time, right?

Well, not exactly. By the terms of Mrs. Gardner's will, Europa's permanent home is a dimly lit wall on the third floor, where the painting is hung so high, it's practically on the ceiling. We've never had a good look at the details -- and Europa is all about details. Rubens's Rape of Europa is on loan from the Prado, in Madrid; this is its first trip ever to North America, and the first time in 300 years that the two paintings have been seen together. It's not likely that even the youngest of us will have this opportunity again. Neither is Titian's Duke of Urbino -- visiting from the Uffizi, in Florence -- likely to return anytime soon.

As for the computer images, they actually are a big deal. The Gardner's DVD (Digital Video Disk) kiosk allows you to take any element of Europa and blow it up to full-screen size without sacrificing resolution. The Gardner staff have divided the painting into 20 "nuggets" (you can get a list by touching KEY): Europa, the bull (Zeus in disguise), the fish, the putti, the mountains, etc. -- each with its own lucid accompanying text. The "black hole" area toward the lower left is the "Death" nugget; it tells how Titian died, in 1576, from the Plague. Don't miss "Echoes," which shows how Titian unifies the painting by repeating thematic elements: the angle of legs, the swirling of drapery, the preponderance of eyes.

You could easily enjoy an hour at the kiosk, but even five minutes before going in to the show will have you poised to compare what Titian and Rubens have done. At first it seems that Rubens has made an extremely faithful copy; his version is just a little sunnier. In fact there are salient differences. The mouth of Titian's Europa is shadowed, sphinx-like, caught between exultation and panic. Rubens's girl hints at a smile, as if this were some lark. In the Titian her body hovers between classical austerity and voluptuous plenitude; Rubens opts for plenitude. The muzzle of Titian's bull is as inscrutable as Europa's expression -- as if both god and girl were having second thoughts. The more sharply outlined muzzle of Rubens's bull looks merely bovine.

Everywhere that Titian is ambiguous, Rubens is (but only by comparison) pedestrian. The sfumato of Titian's mountains (modeled on his native Dolomites) dissolves into the sky in an apocalyptic whirlwind of red and blue and yellow and gray (think Turner) -- if this weren't a classical subject, you might expect to see Elijah descend. Rubens's mountains have sensible Flemish outlines, and his yellowish sky is full of harmless cirrus clouds. Toward the lower left we see Europa's horrified friends and some cattle, shown crystal clear by Rubens but in the Titian always on the verge of turning into something else. At the bottom right, Titian's fish (a sea bream?) is at once black and bright, abstract and sensuous -- characteristics of the Veneto region, where he grew up. You can scarcely tell where the fish leaves off and the water begins. Rubens's fish is a marvel of realism, but it's just a fish.

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Read Jeffrey Gantz on Homer (Winslow) and the Romans at the Worcester Art Museum.

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Rubens's portrait of Thomas Howard is an homage to Titian's Duke of Urbino, not a copy -- but the same characteristics emerge. Rubens is scarcely wanting for psychological insight. There's a faded quality about Thomas's armor, glittery yet gray. And Thomas himself looks grizzled -- despite his upright posture he seems world-weary, and perhaps older than he'd like to admit. You can feel the energy of this centrifuge radiating outward, spending itself at the edges. Titian's portrait gives nothing away; it's a dark star about to implode. Francesco's armor is all blacks and highlights; where Rubens draws in his outlines, Titian creates illusions with his brush -- like any genuine Italian artist, from Giotto to Pirandello, he asks us to consider whether what we experience is real. Thomas's face betrays everything; Francesco's masks everything. Rubens is a great painter who occasionally penetrates to the heart of human nature; Titian is a great artist who, like the universe, goes in circles.

The Gardner has chosen to focus on Titian and Rubens as political animals. Europa is certainly a political statement: the ruler of the gods falls for, carries off, and mates with the continent of Europe. Titian's Europa was executed as one of six paintings on classical mythology for Philip II of Spain; Rubens did his Rape of Europa (which for accuracy's sake should be called The Abduction of Europa) for Philip IV, to suggest that just as Rubens is Titian's heir, so Philip is his grandfather's. Europa is also a mythological matrix: Europa's granddaughter is Pasiphae, who conceived a passion for a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur.

The catalogue for this show ($25 and worth it) explores some of these ideas, in essays by Gardner curator Hilliard T. Goldfarb, Professor David Freedberg, and Prado curator Manuela B. Mena Marqués. If I have explored in a different direction, that's because I believe that the "dialogue" between Titian and Rubens goes to the core of art -- and life. Most art shows are about looking -- most of life these days ("Image is everything") is about looking. "Titian and Rubens," like "Botticelli's Witness," gives you the power, and the opportunity, to think. That's what should make it the show of the American art year.