The Coloristic Virtuosity of Venetian Painting as Exhibited by Andrea Schiavone's "The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche"

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Recommended: Renaissance influence on art

Sixteenth century art focused on individual artistic styles, which helped a lot of painters develop key characteristics in their artwork. The end of the High Renaissance and a turn towards what would later be defined as the Baroque style marked this time period. Andrea Schiavone’s The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche shows the perfect blend of taking different characteristics from the master painters before him and creating his own style. The combination shown in his depiction of The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche is of Titian and Parmigianino, both of whom were great master painters during the Renaissance. He combines the radical brushwork of Titian with the weirdly serpentine forms of Parmigianino to further his own stylistic manners. The Dalmatian artist scrutinized paintings and prints from all over central and northern Italy for inspiration. Throughout his career as an artist Schiavone remained grounded in the techniques and coloristic virtuosity of Venetian Mannerist painting.

Andrea Schiavone devised a strategy to distinguish himself from the master painters before him. This style is marked by a sense on incompleteness and feathery brushwork. The painting The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche shows Schiavone at his best because it is the perfect example of the harmony between Titian and Parmigianino. The sinuous lines depicted in the painting give it a lot of sex appeal, while his heavy-duty paint handling keeps it from cloying. In this work Schiavone forces you think past the accepted notions of what is right, and instead focus on the beauty that lies past right and wrong. The painting itself is of Venetian origins, dating back to 1550. It is composed of oil on wood and it was originally octagonal in shape. The corners were add...

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... "Part 3." In Lives of the artists / Giorgio Vasari . 2d ed. New York: Noonday Press, 1958.

Ekserdjian, David. Parmigianino . New Haven [Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006.

Goldner, George R., Lee Hendrix, Gloria Williams Sander, N. J. L. Turner, and Carol Plazzotta. "Andrea Schiavone." In European drawings: catalogue of the collections. Malibu, Calif.: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1988. 114.

Lindsay, Jack, and Lucius Apuleius. "IV-VI." In Apuleius and The golden ass . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979. 88-148

"Castello di San Salvatore." Castello San Salvatore. http://www.castellosansalvatore.it/castellosansalvatore/default.asp (accessed April 29, 2011).

Carlo Ridolfi. Le Maraviglie dell’arte. Venice, 1648, part 1, p.237

Davis, Bruce. Mannerist paintings: international style in the sixteenth century. Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988

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