How the culture of Renaissance Venice shaped Titian’s timeless paintings of women.

A new ideal of feminine beauty arose in 16th-century Venice, as women acquired new rights of inheritance and more social power. As a result, through the writings of poets and humanists, the construction of the desired, beloved woman began to acquire civic significance. The crucial impetus for the visual realization of this ideal came from Venice’s greatest artist: Titian. For him, artistic beauty was identical with female beauty. He was less interested in the canon of exterior beauty than in a woman’s character, in femininity as such. Titian elevates every depiction of a woman into a celebration of womanhood. Hardcover, 368 pages.