It was a great pleasure, in the run-up to Christmas, to announce the publication of the latest issue of the art history anthology Artibus et Historiae, which is a special issue dedicated to Professor Paul Joannides, formerly of the University of Cambridge, now Emeritus.
I was one of the guest editors of this project, working with a group of Paul’s former students and friends to put together a publication that we thought he would enjoy, a Festschrift to mark his retirement a few years ago, but beyond that of course his significance as a scholar and teacher in his field. It was all kept a secret and took about two years. We’re proud of the publication and happy in this way to honour a great teacher, mentor and person.
The list of contributors includes many of Paul’s friends and colleagues, some who have known him for most of their lives and some who only got to know him in recent years, as his last students. The list of contents can be perused through the link above.
I managed to contribute an article myself. Here’s the abstract:
Building the Brand
Titian Self-Portraits
By Matthias Wivel
This article presents a survey of Titian’s activities as a self-portraitist: it origins, motivations, typology and development. Although only two extant Self-Portraits by Titian—presently in Berlin and the Madrid—can plausibly be described as autograph, the evidence provided by numerous copies still in existence, and others recorded in the sources or in prints, demonstrates that his activity in the field was a sustained and relatively prolific one. A preliminary history of these is here proposed in the identification of a number of self-portrait types, all of which are traceable back to his studio and from which almost all subsequent portraits of the master are derived.
Simultaneously, the article treats for the first time in detail a largely overlooked engraving after a lost self-portrait by the master. The life and career of its author, the Flemish artist Lambert Suavius, are examined as are the possible meanings of the date of 1539, included in the second state of the engraving. Unlikely to be the date of the print itself, it is here proposed that it points to an early painted self-portrait that predates any mentioned in the sources and helps localise more firmly Titian’s initial activities in the field in the 1530s, motivated by his knighthood of 1533 and stimulated by his association with Pietro Aretino and his literary circle.