IFA, NYU | Sublime Truth and the Senses: Titian’s Poesie for King Philip II of Spain

Please join the Institute of Fine Arts for a conversation between author Dr. Marie Tanner and Edward J. Sullivan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, as they discuss Dr. Tanner’s new book, Sublime Truth and the Senses: Titian’s Poesie for King Philip II of Spain.

Between 1554 and 1562 Titian, the unequaled Venetian Renaissance painter, worked on his series called the Poesie – six paintings of mythological themes with deeply sensual content. They were commissioned by King Philip II of Spain and are now dispersed in museums in Europe and the United States. These works (currently together in an acclaimed exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston) are key monuments of the Italian Renaissance and also served as inspiration for artists of later generations such as Peter Paul Rubens and Diego Velázquez. In her timely study, Marie Tanner offers a nuanced and often surprising reassessment of one of the great picture cycles of Western art.