Rojas - Object Annotation 2

Titian - Context: Venus and an Organist and a Little Dog by Titian Year made: 1550 Artist context: Titian created this piece in the latter part of his career, having already established himself as a master Venetian painter, and was known for his signature oil on canvas method. Use: While nothing definitive has been attributed to the intent of this piece, it was most likely commissioned by a wealthy patron for private viewing purposes.

Titian - Style The style of Titian’s painting in this piece ranges from delicate brush strokes to broad sweeps of the brush, making the textures across the piece incredibly dynamic and striking. The hues are richly saturated and exude warmth throughout the piece, which facilitates a sensuous atmosphere enhanced by lighting choices that add to the scene’s realism.

Titian - Subject The scene depicted includes an organist, the human embodiment of the goddess, Venus, and a small dog in the foreground, with some other figures and animals present in the background outside the window. What takes place in this painting entails the music played by the organist for Venus being interrupted by the barking of the small dog in the foreground, which pulls Venus and the organist both in visual gaze and attention.

Titian - Connection to Reading Eberhart: When discussing the relationship between the visual gazes of the figures depicted in the foreground and the aural flow of sounds across the scene, we can see the interaction that Eberhart describes as “distance senses” and how the spatiality is not exclusively external to the body (Eberhart, page 84). In this way, the aural landscape determines the visual gazes of the subjects without physical contact or interaction between them.

Titian - Connection to Readings Puglisi: A sense of time is created with the engagement of the scene’s figures with and through the sounds depicted in the piece, such as the organ’s music, the barking of the dog, and Venus seemingly soothing the rowdy little dog. As sound is a sensual experience that inherently involves the passage and movement of time, a still image having been incorporated with the implications of various sounds and sound landscapes introduces time into a “still” medium. The inclusion of depicting sounds serves to resolve the “frozen quality” of the image that is often produced by a fixed or still pose (Puglisi, page 117).

Titian - Connection to Readings Jeffery: While Eberhart discusses the way that sounds within the Titian scene are shaped by the space the figures are depicted in, Jeffery discusses in his reading the instances of physical spaces (churches) being changed in shape and form to accommodate the valued sounds that occur in that space. This is an explicit contrast between the relationships between space and sound as discussed by Eberhart and Jeffery, as exemplified in the painting by Titian and the church in Constantinople that bears the green stripes and lines that follow the path of clergy processions through the church (Jeffery, page 25).

Titian - Questions - What elements of sensory memory from Venus and an Organist and a Little Dog could enable an embodied experience in the viewing of that aural scene? - How could the sensorium (the seat of the soul) be applied to the differences between humanized divinity in this scene experiencing aurality, Venus, and the mortal organist experiencing aurality in the same context? - How can the tactility of the organist’s fingers across the keys represent the nature and sequence of aurality within the scene?