Titian, Madonna of the Pesaro Family

In an important religious work, Titian broke decisively with tradition. The Madonna of the Pesaro Family was commissioned for a side aisle altar in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. The scene is set outdoors, but with the portico of what must be intended to represent the Virgin’s heavenly palace as the setting. An armored warrior holding an olive-crowned flag with the arms of the Pesaro family presents St. Peter, in the middle, with a captured Turk. This is a reference to the Battle of Santa Maura, which was won in 1502 by Jacopo Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos and commander of the papal galleys. Jacopo himself kneels at the left, accompanied by the turbaned Turkish prisoner, while at the right kneel five male members of his family.

Titian’s break with tradition is seen in the composition. An artist in the conservative Venetian tradition would have given us a symmetrical arrangement, but Titian deployed diagonals and triangles in depth and height. After turning the palace at a sharp angle to the picture plane, Titian set the Virgin so far to one side that her head forms one corner of a triangle of which the other two points are provided by the kneeling chiefs of the Pesaro clan. The off-center composition created by Titian’s experimentation with the illusionistic architecture as he painted relates the painting to its original setting. The columns soar beyond the arched frame, and at the top a cloud floats in, bearing putti holding a cross. Titian’s pictures of the 1520s have all the harmony of the High Renaissance, but with the power of dynamic compositional patterns and shapes rather than muscular action.^[1]