A painting of The Risen Christ has now officially been identified as the work of the sixteenth century Venetian artist Titian. Given how rare it is for paintings belonging to masters like the Italian to surface, the art world is abuzz with this confirmation.
Believed to have been executed by Titian sometime in 1511, the oil on canvas painting, which measures 144 centimetres high and 116.5 centimetres wide, depicts the resurrected Jesus standing almost triumphantly on top of what we understand to be his tomb.
Behind him is a backdrop of a cloudy morning making way for an optimistic sun, a morning of hope and, more poignantly, rebirth. In his left hand he holds a flag – symbolising that he has risen from the dead – while his right hand is held up, as if to say I am the son of man.
Artur Rosenauer, emeritus professor of art history at the University of Vienna in Austria, who has confirmed the painting to be the majestic product of Titian, remarked that the work was still extremely well-preserved. Professor Rosenauer’s findings are documented in the current edition of The Burlington Magazine.
“In this spectacular detail, the medium of paint is exploited to its highest potential,” he was quoted by the Guardian as saying. “It is as if the light embodies a supernatural energy causing the shroud to billow and Christ’s pennant to flutter.”
The work, in its unattributed form, has had quite the history and enjoyed by many prominent individuals over the years. It belonged, for example to the von Bulow family in the nineteenth century, which ended in 1926 when the German chancellor Bernhard Heinrich von Bulow passed away in 1926.
It then travelled across the Atlantic, where it stayed in South America for a great part of the twentieth century. It has since returned to Europe and is now on display in a private collection in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo.
Titian is considered to be one of the foremost painters of his generation, and one of the first artists to garner fame all around the world. What stands him out, aside from his expert brushstrokes, is his inimitable use of colour.
His more famous works include A Man with a Quilted Sleeve (1509), the Assumption of the Virgin (1516–1518) Diana and Callisto (1556–1559), and Diana and Actaeon (1556–1559).
Cadogan Tate can ship works of art from anywhere in the UK to most destinations around the world.