For the 45th episode of Reading the Art World, host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with William E. Wallace, an internationally recognized authority on Michelangelo, about his new book “Michelangelo and Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius,” published by Princeton University Press.

The book makes a case scholars have long resisted: that the forty-year rivalry between Michelangelo and Titian was genuinely reciprocal. Wallace shows that Michelangelo—far from the untouchable master receiving Titian's admiration from a distance—was the first to encounter Titian's work, the first to react, and in certain respects the more transformed by it. Kelly and Wallace’s conversation covers the two artists' actual meetings: Venice in 1529, Rome in 1545; the encounter at Alfonso d'Este's studiolo in Ferrara, where Michelangelo came face to face with Titian's mythological paintings and responded by producing the most erotic work of his career; and the role of Pietro Aretino—Titian's closest friend and, as Wallace puts it, the social media champion of the Renaissance—in shaping and publicizing the rivalry's terms.

The episode closes on the two Pietàs: one by each artist, produced in old age, in which competition gives way to something closer to mutual recognition.

For anyone interested in Renaissance art, the history of artistic rivalry, or how reputation is made and managed across a lifetime, this episode is essential listening.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William E. Wallace is the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author and editor of nine books on Michelangelo, has consulted for the Vatican on the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and has served as a principal consultant for three BBC television programmes on Michelangelo. He is the recipient of fellowships at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the American Academy in Rome.

PURCHASE THE BOOK https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691266572/michelangelo-and-titian

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"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

Music composed by Bob Golden