Titian: Women, Myth & Power

Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1559-62, oil on canvas, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Between 1551 and 1562, Titian created a series of paintings for Philip II of Spain, based largely on stories from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Celebrated as landmarks of western painting, the six poesie — or painted poetries — depict Perseus and Andromeda, Diana and Acteon, the Rape of Europa, The Danäe, Venus and Adonis, and Diana and Callisto, with a seventh addition, the Death of Acteon, never delivered. For the first time in over four centuries, the paintings have been reunited in Titian: Women, Myth and Power, a show which began at the National Gallery, London, and then toured to the Museo del Prado in Madrid. It is now in Boston at the Isabella Stewart Gardner, home to the newly restored Rape of Europa. The exhibition explores each painting's story, its drama, raw emotion, and complex consequences illustrated in each painting, reconsidering what the poesie meant in their own time and how they resonate now. Newly commissioned responses by contemporary artists and scholars engage with questions of gender, power, and sexual violence as relevant today as they were in the Renaissance.

A detailed Gallery Guide can be found online, along with information about the representation of sexual violence in exhibitions and resources for survivors and supporters.