In search of the secret of Titian's landscapes during walks in Cadore

Thus writes Eugene Benson in Art and Nature in Italy (1882), in the chapter titled “The Land of Titian”:

“I passed through the most interesting part of the Dolomite area, the part sometimes called “the land of Titian,” because it is not only the place of his birth but the landscape is part of the inspiration of his genius. The spire-like rocks that soar into the strangest and most solemn shapes, clashing against the sky at dusk in large blue and violet masses, now crossed by horizontal clouds pushed in by the sea, now crowned by great forms gleaming with marine splendor, have a majestic character, a grandeur never seen except in Titian’s backgrounds.

It is worth walking in this region, not least to discover the inspiration and origins of a great painter's work, and to immediately see how generous, natural, and expressive the way a great artist treats nature is.
Titian expresses the feeling of form and captures the impression of color rather than copying so many raw rocks and so many woods.

Titian's feeling for color does not originate in Venice.

We must look to the work of Tintoretto to see the sweetness of marine and gray skies, and to Veronese for the joy of silvery radiance.

Titian's color, rich, solemn, and deep, is brushed by the shadows of the mountains, comes from the skies of the mountains, the slopes of the mountains of Cadore and Ampezzo.”

The intervention will illustrate the walks of Eugene Benson (1835-1908) in Pieve di Cadore and other surrounding areas, to inquire about the origins of Titian's landscapes.

Then there will be a brief biographical overview of the American author and painter who died in Venice in 1908, after living twenty years at Palazzo Soranzo Cappello on Rio Marin.

ROSELLA MAMOLI ZORZI is Emeritus Professor of American Studies at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari; she directed the Master's program in literary translation from English.

She has been president of the Venice Committee of the Dante Alighieri Society.

For many years she has dealt with the relationships between American writers and Venetian painters: among her recent publications:

Titian and the Anglo-American Writers of the Nineteenth Century, Venice, Supernova, 2026;

Carpaccio and the Anglo-American Writers of the Nineteenth Century in Venice, Venice, Supernova, 2023, also in English: Carpatcher or Carpaccio? Carpaccio and 19th Century Anglo-American Writers in Venice;

From Darkness to Light. Writers in Museums 1798-1898, ed. by Rosella Mamoli Zorzi and Katherine Manthorne, Cambridge, OpenBook Publishers, 2019; Italian edition edited by Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Katherine Manthorne and Serena Fornasiero, Rome, Società Dante Alighieri, 2022;

Wonder and Irony, with Henry James and Mark Twain at the Venice Ducal Palace, Venice, Supernova, 2018, also in English: Wonder and Irony, with Henry James and Mark Twain in the Venice Ducal Palace;“

Almost a Prophet”, Henry James on Tintoretto, Venice, Supernova, 2018, also in English: “Almost a Prophet”, Henry James on Tintoretto.

She has edited, with Simone Francescato, The Aspern Papers and Other Tales, Cambridge University Press, 2022 and several volumes of unpublished letters of Henry James and exhibitions with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, with the Marciana National Library, along with other institutions.

For information: Tel. +39 0435 501674 - centrostudi@tizianovecellio.it