TY - JOUR
T1 - Titian's Ruggiero and Angelica
T2 - A tribute to Ludovico Ariosto
AU - Freedman, Luba
PY - 2001
Y1 - 2001
N2 - Titian's drawing (25 × 40 cm) in Musée Bonnat (Bayonne), showing a recumbent voluptuous nuda in a lush landscape, depicts an episode from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (×, 94–107). It conveys the very essence of the romance, proclaimed in the famous first lines of the poem. The episode about Ruggiero's rescue of Angelica that Ariosto described and that Titian rendered with acclaimed ‘verisimilitude’ occurred in an imaginary place, in the ‘olden days’. By emphasizing the recumbent nuda, her posture, and gestures, rather than the knights heroic deeds, Titian intimates Angelica's role in Ruggiero's life. The motif of the recumbent nude transcends the subject's boundaries. I suggest interpreting this figure as Voluptas, understood ambivalently in both antiquity and the Renaissance. Titian created a pen-and-ink visual counterpart to Ariosto's literary account of the romance as a whole. The episode serves as an example of what ‘usually’ happens in a romance, as pars pro toto.
AB - Titian's drawing (25 × 40 cm) in Musée Bonnat (Bayonne), showing a recumbent voluptuous nuda in a lush landscape, depicts an episode from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (×, 94–107). It conveys the very essence of the romance, proclaimed in the famous first lines of the poem. The episode about Ruggiero's rescue of Angelica that Ariosto described and that Titian rendered with acclaimed ‘verisimilitude’ occurred in an imaginary place, in the ‘olden days’. By emphasizing the recumbent nuda, her posture, and gestures, rather than the knights heroic deeds, Titian intimates Angelica's role in Ruggiero's life. The motif of the recumbent nude transcends the subject's boundaries. I suggest interpreting this figure as Voluptas, understood ambivalently in both antiquity and the Renaissance. Titian created a pen-and-ink visual counterpart to Ariosto's literary account of the romance as a whole. The episode serves as an example of what ‘usually’ happens in a romance, as pars pro toto.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=60949504888&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1477-4658.00371
DO - 10.1111/1477-4658.00371
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AN - SCOPUS:60949504888
SN - 0269-1213
VL - 15
SP - 287
EP - 300
JO - Renaissance Studies
JF - Renaissance Studies
IS - 3
ER -