In fashionable art circles today, "illustration" has become a dirty word, and "literary" a sneering epithet. The proper province of art is thought to be merely art. a non-representational play of shapes and colors. Last week Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum staged an exhibition of pictures from its archives that graphically refutes the modern proposition of art for the artist's sake.
Among the 160-odd illustrations in the show, one highlight was a little chiaroscuro woodcut attributed to Titian, which served as the frontispiece to an edition of Aretino's poems published in 1537. Titian surely would not have looked down on such an assignment;...
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