I have yet to see this work in any context other than a book. Even in that format it blows you away. Finding this image of it in situ it makes me realise how much I want to actually see it. I want the expereince of its scale, of its spiritual context, of its engagement with the architecture of the building.

It is a work of staggering power and inventiveness, often credited as being the paitner’s breakthrough, the synthesis of the two great geographic styles of High renaissance painting. The athletic power and dynamism of design associated with Central Italian combined with the absorbing sense of touch, emotive and narrative power of colour and spiritual evocation of paint as light more readily associated as having a Veneitan history.

The combination of these factors, regardless of geographic roots, is a synthesis of upwardly mobile dynamism. All os the formal attributes of a painting are harness to tell of and induce the experience of a rise from the profane lower realm to the spiritual higher realm.

Like listening to choral music, feeling the pulse and melody resonate through your entire frame, its enough to make you appreciate how the sensations can be read as the confirmation of a divine spirit. considering the nature of its subject this is the ultimate compliment of the power of Titian’s painting. If I was not already so cynical towards such beliefs i would be readily converted. As it is it is enoguh to except that it just moves me on a levle beyond mere intellectual deconstruction.