03 — ARTWORK
Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 332 x 279 cm
- TYPE
- Portrait
PALETTE
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- FILE
- 1178 × 1400 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
The painting commemorates the emperor's victory over the Protestant princes at the Battle of Mühlberg on 24 April 1547. The dominant red in the foreground, visible on Charles' helmet decorations, his sash and the horses trim, was the colour of the Catholic faction in the many religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.
This is one of Titian's most dramatic and monumental portraits, conveying not so much the personality of the sitter as the high ideals of his imperial office. At the Battle of Mühlberg the Emperor had defeated the Schmalkadic League of Protestant princes, and in Titian's picture he is portrayed as the archetypal Christian knight victorious against heresyThe heretical movements affecting Italy between the mid-12th and the mid-14th century had their main impact in an area covering the north-west of the peninsula and southern France: it is not possible to speak of distinct Italian and meridional French movements. The authentically Christian movements which were expelled from the Catholic Church must in the first instance be distinguished from Catharism, which represented an infiltration by the originally non-Christian dualist system of Manichaeanism; from the start, the Cathars were an anti-church. By contrast, the Waldensian, Spiritual and Joachimite movements appeared initially as vital manifestations of Catholicism; only after their condemnation by the ecclesiastical authorities do they seem to have developed notably eccentric doctrines and to have described themselves as the true Church in opposition to the institutional Church; they had a recognizable kinship with movements that remained within the pale of orthodoxy. These Christian heresies had in common an attachment to the ideal of apostolic poverty, which came to be seen by the ecclesiastical authorities as a challenge to the institutionalized Church. The Waldensians or Valdesi (not to be confused with Valdesiani, the followers of Juan de Valdes, d. 1541) took their origin from the Poor Men of Lyons, founded by Peter Valdes or Waldo in the 1170s. They were distinguished by a strong attachment to the Bible and a desire to imitate Christ's poverty. At first approved by the Papacy as an order of laymen, they were condemned in 1184. Likewise condemned was the rather similar Lombard movement of the Humiliati. One stream of these remained as an approved order within the Catholic Church, while others merged with the Waldensians. The Waldensians came to teach that the sacraments could be administered validly only by the pure, i.e: only by Waldensian superiors or perfecti practising evangelical poverty. Alone among the heretical sects existing in Italy they were organized as a church, and regarded themselves as forming, together with brethren north of the Alps, one great missionary community. They spread all over western and central Europe but in the long term they came to be largely confined to the Rhaetian and Cottian Alps (the Grisons and Savoy). The Italian Waldensians in the 16th century resisted absorption by Reformed Protestantism. The early Franciscans might be regarded as a movement, similar in character to the Poor Men of Lyons, which was won for the cause of Catholic orthodoxy. However, divisions within the order over the issue of poverty led to religious dissidence. The Spirituals held up the ideal of strict poverty as obligatory for Franciscans and, indeed, normative for churchmen; following the Papacy's recognition of the Franciscan order as a property-owning body in 1322-23, their position became one of criticism of the institutional Church as such. Their heresies came to incorporate the millenarian doctrines of the 12th century abbot Joachim of Fiore. He had prophesied a coming age of the Holy Spirit ushered in by Spiritual monks; his heretical followers prophesied a new Spiritual gospel that would supersede the Bible. Joachimite Spiritualists came to see the pope, head of the 'carnal Church', as Antichrist. The main impact of the movement upon the laity was in southern France; in Italy it was an affair of various groups of fraticelli de paupere vita (little friars of the poor life), mainly in the south. - a kind of modern St George. Apart from the brilliant creation of a memorable image, Titian shows his skill in the consummate handling of textures, such as the diffusion of the evening sunlight through the landscape and the captivating sheen of the armour.
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r806a1627cbd484,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg by TIZIANO Vecellio},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-09},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/tiziano-vecellio-rf16f53052a933d/emperor-charles-v-at-mhlberg-r806a1627cbd484},
urldate = {2026-09-09},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-09. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
