Analysis of Titian’s Concert and Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time

Analysis of Titian’s Concert and Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time

Becca Elinger
March 6, 2010
Art History 6B

Formal Analysis of Titian’s Concert and Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time
A comparison of Titian’s 16th century Concert, from Venice, and Poussin’s 17th century Dance to the Music of Time, from France, illustrates the development of the Pastoral theme in Europe. Idealized pastoral landscapes, possibly inspired by classical ancient texts, were revived in the Italian Renaissance as a means to celebrate and reflect upon an ideal life of ease, love and poetry. Although Titian’s piece is the epitome of what the pastoral style embodies, Poussin, an artist who had studied and admired Titian’s work, clearly develops innovative treatments of the theme, with a focus on recapturing classicism in order to make serious art of authentic emotional intensity.
Titian’s painting, Concert, depicts two young men, one sumptuously dressed in crimson garb playing the lute, the other a rustic and humble Sheppard with bare feet, exchanging glances atop a grassy hillside bathed in sunlight and apparently fail to notice the two naked females mere feet away, on either side of the men. The contrast between the rustic and urban men leads to thoughts of city versus country, cultured versus rustic and art versus nature, all which illustrate Titan’s love of the pastoral idiom. The woman on the right has apparently stopped playing her flute and has turned her back to us, so as viewers see the length of her naked body (a naturalistic approach), as well as the length of the other woman’s body on the left, who seems as if she has stood up while allowing the blanket that had surrounded her to crumple to the floor as she pours water into a well. The luscious background contains rolling green hills, soft trees and an exquisite blue sky, speckled with clouds.
Dance to the Music of Time is a depiction of Poverty, Labor, Wealth and Pleasure, 4 barely clothed women, dancing in the foreground, intertwined by linking hands to form a circle. To...

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