Titian (active 1506–1576) produced a masterful group of paintings for Philip II of Spain, celebrating the loves of gods, goddesses, and mortals. Depicting scenes from Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses, Titian named them “poesie” and considered the works as visual equivalents of poetry.
This volume presents a detailed study of the complete series—Danaë, Venus and Adonis, Perseus and Andromeda, Diana and Actaeon, Diana and Callisto, and The Rape of Europa, as well as The Death of Actaeon—lavishly illustrated with details of these emotionally charged paintings. The book explores Titian’s creative process and technique, in addition to his use of literary and visual sources and his correspondence with Philip II.
The artistic legacy of the series for later European painting is also examined in the works of artists such as Rubens, Velázquez, and Rembrandt. Offering the most comprehensive overview of these remarkable works, Titian: Love, Desire, Death is an indispensable resource for scholars and admirers of Renaissance painting.
Five generations after Giovanni Gaja founded his eponymous winery in the Piedmont town of Barbaresco, the family continues to produce some of Italy’s best vintages. Their uncompromising commitment to quality is helping to maintain one of the world’s finest vintners.
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OVERVIEW
The Gaja Winery was founded by Giovanni Gaja in 1859 and has been owned and operated by five generations of the Gaja family. Giovanni Gaja was the great-grandfather of Angelo Gaja, the Winery’s current owner.
In 1994, GAJA acquired its first wine estate in Tuscany, Pieve Santa Restituta in Montalcino. This estate produces three Brunello di Montalcino wines- including the single vineyard Sugarille- from vineyard holdings totaling sixty five acres.
In 1996 Gaja acquired a second property in Tuscany, Ca’Marcanda, located in Castagneto Carducci in Bolgheri. Of the property’s 200 acres, 150 have been planted with new vineyards: primarily Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, as well as Cabernet Franc and Syrah.
Currently, the Gaja Winery owns 250 acres of vineyards in Piedmont, located in the Barbaresco district (Barbaresco and Treiso) and the Barolo district (Serralunga d’Alba and La Morra).
Since its inception, the Gaja Winery has continuously evolved in ways that have always focused on meticulous care of and attention to the quality of its wines.
Here is the new music and film from our Roadtrip to the beautiful island of corse.
On the way we listened together as a family to the poetry from Kali Gibran and the Poem “On Children” really stuck with us, while watching the beauty of Corse unfolding in front of our eyes.
I wrote the song about a year ago and recorded it, but I needed more time to understand my inner thoughts to create the combination of reality and fantasy children have.
Maybe some childhood dreams awake from your side. It’s important to create a great life for your children, but don’t forget. Your children, are not your children.
“On Children” by Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931)
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children. And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
A conversation with the acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin that transports us to two of her favorite cities, Venice and Rome, in a celebration of Italy as the country begins to loosen the longest coronavirus-related lockdown in Europe. The episode features evocative readings from her forthcoming book,Two Cities, which captures the meditative yet constantly surprising nature of travel from a deeply personal point of view.
From acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin comes a deeply personal meditation on two cities, Venice and Rome—each a work of art, both a monument to the past—and on how love and loss shape places and spaces.
Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ—a traveler moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her, we see, anew, the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon, and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. As a poet first and foremost, Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice and Rome vividly to life for the reader.
The sixteenth book in the expanding, renowned ekphrasis series, Two Cities creates space for these two historic cities to become characters themselves, their relationship to the writer as real as any love affair.
ekphrasis
Dedicated to publishing rare, out-of-print, and newly commissioned texts as accessible paperback volumes the ekphrasis series is part of David Zwirner Books’s ongoing effort to publish new and surprising pieces of writing on visual culture.
Cynthia Zarin
Cynthia Zarin is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Orbit (2017), as well as five books for children and a collection of essays, An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History (2013). Her honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship for Literature, the Ingram Merrill Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker, Zarin teaches at Yale University.
Taking every day inspiration from my city, I compose this video with a mixture of techniques, like a tribute to the history and the beauty of the Archeological Park of Appia Antica in Rome.
Camera: Federico Marchi, Lorenzo Giordano
Drone: Tommaso Chiriatti
Music: Gregorio de Luca Comandini
Sound Fx: Inti d’Ayala Valva
Graphics: Sara Taigher, Alessandro Strichner
Actress: Antonella Britti
The latest episode of the Octavian Report – Rostrum coronavirus crisis podcast features Wayne Rebhorn. The latest episode of our coronavirus crisis podcast features Wayne Rebhorn of the University of Texas at Austin. Wayne is the author of an acclaimed translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, perhaps the paradigmatic work of pandemic literature.
The Decameron is set among a group of witty, earthy social isolators who have fled the plague ravaging Florence. We spoke with Wayne about Boccaccio and his most famous work, the conditions that helped birth it, and what we can learn from them in our current situation.
In Ciao, Testino handpicks his favorite images of Italy, a country that has featured heavily in his life, from his friendships and breathtaking vistas to quintessentially Italian iconic fashion shoots and Italians’ ever-evolving allure to their effervescent lifestyle. Featuring three sections, IN GIRO (out and about), ALLA MODA (in fashion), and AL MARE (at sea), the result is a highly personal journey across the country through Testino’s lens paying homage to Italy, and it’s culture as well as a chronicle of 40 years of genre-defining photography.
Widely regarded as one of the most influential fashion and portrait photographers, Mario Testino is responsible for the creation of emblematic images, transmitting emotion and energy in an open and intimate way. Throughout his four-decade career, Testino has been on a journey beyond the world of fashion capturing Earth’s traditions and cultures with unparalleled access and an extraordinarily unique point of view.
Peruvian by birth, Testino’s intimate connection to Italy found its roots in his Italian heritage, but blossomed when he experienced the country for himself. Discovering Italy was, for Testino, synonymous with discovering his passion for fashion. “Rome was all about the hottest, latest trends and fresh new styling, and I loved the way Italians could shed the latest look for an even newer thing without ever losing their own identity.”
The photographer and author
With a four decades career as a leader in the fields of fashion, culture and lifestyle, Peruvian-born Mario Testino OBE has many facets that take him beyond the surface of a photographer and artist placing him as a cultural visionary. Testino’s universe is broad, his impact is uniquely powerful and his lifestyle is completely authentic. Testino’s has seen his works published and exhibited in hundreds of cities around the world. Throughout his career he built unprecedent relationships with editorial and commercial partners such as Vogue, Burberry, and Gucci to name a few. His past and present muses include HRH Princess Diana, Madonna, Donatella Versace, Kendall Jenner and Mariacarla Boscono. His solo exhibitions have shown in museums and galleries worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery, London; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The contributing author
Alain Elkann is a New York–born author and journalist. Since 1989, he has maintained a weekly interview column for the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa. Elkann has lectured on art, Italian literature and Jewish studies at the Universities of Oxford, Columbia, Jerusalem, Pennsylvania and Milan’s IULM. He is President of The Foundation for Italian Art & Culture (FIAC) in New York and in 2009 was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by the French Republic.
In the first episode of “Travels with a Curator,” Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, transports us to Venice. He introduces us to the Ca’ d’Oro, a house museum which was lovingly restored around the same time that the Frick mansion was built in New York City.
I often find myself observing classic paintings that can inspire compositions, or fashion that can inspire the choice of a color palette. At a certain point everything is united in a very natural way in a creative concept. My artistic research is a constant blend between the worlds of architecture, painting, photography, graphic design, and fashion. At the base of my work, then, there is an artistic background very much linked to the Gestalt principles of visual perception. I try to avoid looking for inspiration only within the confines of my sector: I find that this often leads to a flattening of the creative result.
Having always been fascinated with sensational spaces, Cristina Lello now visualizes the most striking scenes that tell a clear story. As she describes herself, her studio “creates high-impact images from the intersection of interior styling, set design and 3D art.” After graduating with honors in Set Design at the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, she also started a Master’s degree in Interactive Media for Interior Design while working for Elisa Ossino Studio.