Stefan Albl
The Renaissance of Sensuality. Titian around 1520

Louise Giovanelli is strongly inspired by Italian Renaissance painting. Her interest in depictions of ecstasy draws on the sensuality achieved in by 16th century artists, such as Titian, a seminal Italian Renaissance painter, who around 1520, signaled a turning point for the Renaissance, taking a new direction. 

From then on, Titian combined masterly technical virtuosity with profound human emotion in his works. Giovanelli has been particularly inspired by his use of color as a medium for expressing emotions, capturing inner movement, the intensity of a moment, and the beauty of the human form. Like Titian, Giovanelli seeks to bring philosophical depth to depictions of sensuality, exploring interplay of light, flesh and materiality.

Titian’s famous work Venus of Urbino, for example, is exemplary of his female nudes, which incorporate a new and innovating understanding of corporeality – namely, one that is self-confident, lively and full of inner warmth. Thus, they allegorically refer to a new image of humanity; Titian is less concerned with the depiction of abstract ideals than with individual and tangible existence. Titian presents people in all their vulnerability, as beings who feel, desire and suffer, but also upholds their dignity. The quiet power of his paintings lies in this combination of body and soul, of surface and interiority. Around 1520, Titian exemplified a turn in Renaissance art, moving towards an aproach that viewed the sensual perceptible not as the opposite of the spiritual, but as equal.