Room 1
21 July – 20 September 2009
Admission free

This exhibition will showcase Titian’s painting The Triumph of Love (probably mid-1540s), following its recent rediscovery and cleaning. Last exhibited in 1960, it has since remained out of sight in a private collection. Moreover, the painting’s true quality was obscured by dirty varnish and overpaint, leading to doubts being cast on its authorship.

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, acquired The Triumph of Love in 2008 through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) with an additional grant from independent charity The Art Fund and other private donations made to the Ashmolean. The painting was brought to the National Gallery to be conserved. Research by Ashmolean curator Catherine Whistler has traced its provenance back to the famous Venetian patrician and art collector Gabriel Vendramin, a friend and patron of Titian. Vendramin had a room in his family palace in which he displayed works by Titian, and this would have once been the location of The Triumph of Love. The research also revealed the painting’s function as a ‘cover’ for another painting – a female portrait. As such it represents an extremely rare survival of the type.

Cleaning has shown that beneath the dirt and overpaint is a picture of extremely high quality and masterful creativity. In The Triumph of Love Cupid is represented with his bow and arrows taming a crouching lion, depicting the theme – familiar from Classical art and literature – of love’s conquest of the wilder passions. The commission allowed Titian to use his skill and inventiveness to create a playful image for his friend. Removal of the overpaint has restored the imaginative illusionism of the original composition by revealing a fictive round window frame – out of which the lion is about to leap. Examination with infrared reflectography has brought to light Titian’s free and spontaneous under-drawing, where he has repeatedly rethought the details of the composition.