Art Of The Day Weekly

Titian on the rocks

MADRID – One has to know Latin well - or review the old notebooks - to understand the title of this exhibition. In lapide depictum: by using Google translation, one does not even pick up the Oxford dictionary. We understand we are referring to works painted on rocks. The Prado museum presents only a few - nine to be precise - not for being stingy but rather due to the choice of having to take out of its own collection and the relative scarcity of these objects. The interpreters brought together are not among the least known, judge for yourselves: Sebastiano del Piombo, Daniele da Volterra or Titian. Stone had the virtue of being eternal, of being solid, and of catching light in a most particular manner. While these trials were nothing more than isolated tests in the careers of artists who were inventive and curious of all that is new, they left some surprising results. One being the Ecce Homo on slate by Titian.
• In lapide depictum. Pintura italiana sobre piedra 1530-1555 at the Prado museum, from 17 April to 5 August 2018.

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