VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents their June Artful Thursday: Titian’s Mythological Paintings,  Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 6:30 PM, at the Caroline Wiess Law Building. 

Presented by Dr. Louis Markos, Professor in English, Scholar in Residence, and Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities, Houston Baptist University; and author of From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics(2007) and Eye of the Beholder: How to See the World like a Romantic Poet (2011).

Titian, the great Venetian painter, created a series of six large, erotic paintings for King Philip II of Spain between 1551 and 1562. He called them poesie, or poems, because they were meant to elicit an emotional response. All were based upon mythic stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The cycle of six includes Venus and Adonis and Danaë (both now in the Prado, Madrid). Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto, now on view at the MFAH, Perseus and Andromeda (Wallace Collection, London) and The Rape of Europa (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston).

At the June Artful Thursday, Dr. Louis Markos will explore the archetypal and etiological power of myths and their ability to embody visually perennial questions and ideals, and then retell dramatically the stories that underlie Titian's paintings. He will show that as impressive as the paintings are technically, their power to move us today lies in the poignancy with which Titian revived and incarnated the tragic themes of Ovid's epic.

In conjunction with the MFAH exhibition Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland.

Admission is free and open to the public. A reception follows the program. Register to win great giveaways from KUHF 88.7 FM and the MFAH.

Artful Thursday programs receive generous funding from the Rockwell Fund. Promotional support is generously provided by KUHF 88.7 FM, Houston Public Radio. Refreshments generously provided by the Buffalo Speedway Starbucks (corner of Buffalo Speedway and Westpark), Carla Everett, manager, and the Rice Village Starbucks, Jenna Ortiz, manager.

Pictured:  Titian, detail Diana and Actaeon, 1556–59, oil on canvas.