Art: The Renaissance's Big Men on Canvas

venice art paintings Tintoretto Veronese Vincenzo Mosti Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese Rivals in Renaissance Venice A new show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts charts the competition
Kunsthistoriches Museum, Gemaldegalerie, Vienna

Tintoretto, Susannah and the Elders, c. 1555-56
At around the same time that Titian executed his Venus, Tintoretto turned a story from the Old Testament into an intricate exercise in erotic surveillance. The old men at top and lower left corner attempt to catch a full frontal view of the naked Susannah, who thwarts them with the deft positioning of her arms and leg. She offers part of that view to us, however. But only the mirror holds the full view — which it leaves to our imagination.

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