Even more so than in his painting “Mary in the Temple,” Titian’s attempt to fill the language of color with elements of Mannerism is clearly evident in this work painted for the now-destroyed church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
The plasticity of the figure, the theatricality of the pose and the strength of the timbre of tones, all the details reflect the dominant taste of the fifth decade of the sixteenth century in Venice, which was increasingly concerned with the problems of form and composition that occupied the “classics” of Central Italy, the ideas that were reproduced in Venice by Jacopo Sansovino, Vasari and Salvati.
But even in this muscular sports body, the formal academic quality of Mannerism, filled with the sensitivity of Titian to color: ‘the application of paints with a thick layer’ of paint seems to almost increase in bright gray color matching to ivory flesh and in brown, green hues and darkened racing stream.
Indeed it was precisely because of his sense of color that in Titian the formula of Mannerism, instead of crystallizing in abstract programmable projects, was translated into enthusiasm for research.
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