Lecture: Titian’s “Lady in White”: A Mistress of the Artist’s Soul

Stephan Koja, Director, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Saturday, March 23, 2019

Art historians continue to debate the youthful subject portrayed in Lady in White. Is she a courtesan? Or is she Titian’s daughter Lavinia? Is she an illegitimate child, or just an ideal portrayal of beauty? At one and the same time, the person appears before us as an individual and an ideal. But where does the never-ending fascination with this painting come from? And why is it in Dresden? To answer these questions, this lecture gets closer to the painter, to his model and to princely collections in late Renaissance and Baroque times.

Presented in conjunction with Titian’s 'Portrait of a Lady in White,' c. 1561, on loan from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, on view through March 25, 2019.