Titian "Woman at the Mirror"

From: Denver Art Museum
Limited Edition: 25
Exhibition: Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from the Louvre
Material: Printed vinyl
Dimensions: 30" x 89" (76cm x 226cm)

Hanging Hardware Included

Summary

Forget Snow White, the fairest of them all is surely one of the beauties painted by Venetian Renaissance master Titian (c. 1488-1576). From the Louvre's Italian collection comes Titian's Woman at the Mirror, on 25 banners from the Denver Art Museum's recent exhibition Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from The Louvre.

Description

The Louvre museum in Paris is one of the word’s most visited museums, attracting some 1.2 million American visitors alone each year – more than many American museums draw. So, the Louvre has now formed partnerships with several American museums to broaden exposure to its world-class collections on this side of the Atlantic. One of the museums to benefit from this is the Denver Art Museum which recently hosted its first such show, Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from the Louvre.

Banners from the exhibition feature a variety of show highlights, including Titian’s Woman at the Mirror from around 1513. As the museum describes, “When this picture was painted, viewers would have understood that this man and woman are lovers—married men did not help their wives dress. Here, the man holds up a flat mirror so the lady can see herself simultaneously from the front and the back. Notice how the convex mirror also reflects a bright square of white: a window. And if you look at the bottom of the painting, you’ll see that the woman is daubing her finger with a perfume bottle, which is sitting on a ledge of a window. We are watching this intimate scene through an open window, as if we were voyeurs.”

Above and below the image on the banner are periwinkle blue bands that pick up the blue of the woman’s shawl. Text in black above the image reads “Artisans & Kings/Selected Treasures from The Louvre”; the museum’s name and exhibition dates are printed below the image “Denver Art Museum/October 6 – January 6”. Both sides of the banner are identical.

Provenance

These banners were displayed around Denver, Colorado from October 6, 2007 through January 6, 2008 to promote the exhibition Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from the Louvre at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition featured works from the collection of The Louvre museum in Paris that were also seen at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.