Mythological paintings for the castle of Ferrara (1516-24)

Titian's first triumph on the mainland was in Ferrara. Here Alfonso d'Este conceived a project in emulation of the Studiolo of his sister Isabella d'Este in Mantua, namely to bring together a group of mythological works by Italy's most celebrated artists to decorate his Camerino d'Alabastro in the castle of Ferrara. Titian was not his first choice: in 1514 Bellini had already delivered a Feast of the Gods, whose landscape Titian was later to repaint. When the contributions invited from Fra Bartolommeo in Florence and Raphael in Rome failed to materialize, however, the Duke had to fall back on Titian, at this point in time still less well-known. Since the market for mythological cycles of this kind did not exist in Venice, Titian was thereby handed a golden opportunity to broaden his repertoire with a series of three Bacchanals: The Worship of Venus, Bacchus and Ariadne, Bacchanal of the Andrians. In these paintings Titian combines a richness of colouristic expression with a great formal elegance. These are the elements which characterize this whole so-called "classic" phase of Titian's development.