Homage to Titian and Claude Monet
Book series LOUNGE 2 – volume XV
Editor: Kurt Ries
At the occasion of the 450th anniversary of Titian’s and the 100th anniversary of Claude Monet’s death, this book is dedicated to the theme of “Beauty and Transience”. The contributions other Venice-loving artists with important anniversaries in 2026 have made to modernity (Turner, Vivaldi, and Richard Wagner) is also honored in its pages.
While Venice has never been destroyed, it nevertheless embodies the continuity of transience. William Turner and Claude Monet loved visiting the city to depict its melancholy beauty. Monet’s last trip before dedicating himself to his almost abstract late water lily works, had also taken him to Venice. The revolution of landscape in art, however, first occurred during the Renaissance. Taking up these ideas, 48 artists from 24 countries have come together to emulate them with contemporary diversity. The editor of this book has divided the artworks from around the world into chapters and added selected poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quotes, aesthetic statements, and illustrations. The result is a multifaceted homage from the animated perspective of modern artists.
International Artworks and Poems
Bilingual art gift book with 71 artworks, 8 haiku poems and 7 verses from 24 countries.
Art and poetry from around the world
With verses of the “Venetian Epigrams” by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Book design awards – as part of the book project:
- Cover – 1st Prize: Agni Connor – United Kingdom
- Back cover – 2nd Prize: Aga Cela – The Netherlands, Irene Belknap – USA, Tina Hellblom-Thibblin – Sweden
- Titel page – 3rd Prize: Cornelia B. Bienz – Switzerland
- Chapter pages – Honorable Mentions: Irena Krizman – United Kingdom, Irene Belknap – USA, Mariola Szreiber-Zdzieblowska – Poland, Renate Merzinger-Pleban – Austria, Sylviane Leblond – France, Takanori Iwase – Japan, Tove Andresen – Denmark
Please see the images in the book!
Titian is the most prominent representative of Venetian painting during the golden era of the Republic of Venice – at once the city’s heyday and its time of economic decline. Born from the shimmering spheres of the sea, the sparkling air of luxury, and the golden gleam of byzantine mosaics, Venetian painting (as opposed to Florentine art) is all about basking in color and light. As a global trading nation, Venice imported the finest pigments from overseas. Apart from statesmen, Titian also painted a large portrait of his color vendor. The psychological depth of his character portraits modernized the world of painting. Another one of his models was his author friend Pietro Aretino, who belonged to a group of artists that regularly met for bacchanalian bashes on the master’s private premises, and brought about the flourishing of sensualist painting. The idea of a terrestrial paradise also dates back from the medieval Gardens of Love. Back then, the two most famous paintings of the love goddess were created: Giorgione’s “Sleeping Venus” (Which Titian may have had a part in) and Titian’s “Venus of Urbino”. Scholars debate whether it actually depicts a goddess. The son of the Duke of Urbino who commissioned the painting simply called her „a naked woman“. The painting may have been a wedding gift to stimulate his young wife. Both works had a lasting impact on modern art, as Eduard Manet’s Olympia painting clearly shows. The loose application of paint in Titian’s late work reveals first parallels to Impressionism—a style that Claude Monet was able to develop in a groundbreaking way in Venice.
‘LA Serenissima”
The printed book is available in the book trade and in internet bookshops.
- Publisher: Re Di Roma-Verlag
- Language: English, German
- Size: 21 x 21 cm
- Hardcover
- ISBN-10: follows later
- ISBN-13: follows later
Book participants can purchase any number of the book from the German publisher or bookseller Peecho at the reduced author’s price. Please find more information here!
