In this artwork, how is the Analysis discussed?
For Tom Nichols, "Titian's dramatization of the conflicting emotions of those who witness Christ's death lends his painting its bleakly expressive power.  His focus effectively breaks up the usual formal unity expected of a pietà, isolating its protagonists from each other to undermine more abstract possibilities of aesthetic harmony or more resolved theological meaning."The Pietà was an unusual subject in Venice, and Titian's choice of it probably relates to Michelangelo's Florentine Pietà, also originally intended to decorate the artist's tomb, with a self-portrait as Nicodemus.  Throughout Titian's career he had reflected the paragone, or argument over superiority in art, with works asserting the superiority of painting over sculpture, within painting of Venice over Florence, and "it is not difficult to read the radically pictorial quality of his Virgin and Child as a last attempt to defeat his great rival." Erwin Panofsky prefers to see it as "A lifelong rivalry, compounded of mutual respect as well as opposition, ended in a tribute paid by the survivor to his defunct antagonist — and doing honor to both".There are also elements looking back to Titian's master Giovanni Bellini, for example the mosaic semi-dome, seen in Bellini's San Giobbe Altarpiece of c. 1487, now also in the Accademia.According to Sydney J. Freedberg, it "is less a painting about Christian death and tragedy than a splendid and impassioned affirmation of both art and life. Its true protagonist is the Magdalene, salient in a radiance of green against a gold-shot background, who walks out of the picture into the real world, shouting, palpable, magnificent, and one with us in life. She illustrates a cry of grief, but makes the effect of pronouncement of victory.
mosaic Titian Erwin Panofsky Pietà Venice Florentine Pietà Florence Sydney J. Freedberg San Giobbe Altarpiece Nicodemus Giovanni Bellini Michelangelo semi-dome