Stephen Campbell: Against Titian

"Against Titian," forms part of a larger study of "geographical mentality" in Italian art theory and historiography emerging by the mid-sixteenth century, where a process of canon-formation reinforced a cultural and political hegemony of Rome and Venice. The first part of "Against Titian" addresses geographical considerations in the reception of Titian’s art from mid-century, focusing on the city of Milan, tracing a general pattern of reaction to a perceived inscrutability and alienating character in Titian’s works for locations in Italy. The second part (which bears the subtitle "Titian Against Titian") contrasts Titian’s production for Hapsburg and non-Italian destinations, where he performs as the quintessential artist of the Italian modern manner, with a very different "Italian" or "Venetian" Titian, in which the artist pursues strategies of dis-identification from a critical enterprise (Dolce, Aretino, Vasari), that increasingly sought to define his work.

Stephen Campbell was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (BA 1985), the University of North Carolina (MA 1987) and Johns Hopkins University (1993). Before joining the faculty of Johns Hopkins in 2002 he taught at Case Western Reserve University (1993-94), the University of Michigan (1995-1999), and the University of Pennsylvania (1999-2002). In 1993 he published a book for a general audience on the Great Irish Famine of 1847-1851, with a preface by President of Ireland Mary Robinson. In 2002 he was guest curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, for the exhibition Cosmè Tura: Painting and Design in Renaissance Ferrara. He has held post-doctoral fellowships at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1994-95), the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence (1999-2000) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery, Washington (2005-06).