Resumen de Il primo prestito di Tiziano dall'Antico
Titian's first borrowing from the Antique.
Over the course of his long career, Titian often derived his painted figures from ancient sculpture, drawing especially on works in the Grimani collection. The large Roman statue of a man wearing a cuirass, so prominent in the fresco of the child that exculpates its mother in the Scuola del Santo, Padua, is unrelated to the collection of the Venetian cardinal, but turns out to be derived from a relief discovered in Ravenna near the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. No trip by Titian to Ravenna is documented, but San Vitale adhered to the congregation of Santa Giustina, and it was through Benedictine channels that news of the discovery reached Titian. The date of the fresco (1511-1512) provides us with a terminus ante quem of the discovery date of the sculpture.
