Der auferstandene Christus

Around 1511 Titian was barely into his twenties, and the painter he had learned the most from, Giorgione, had just died in the plague that swept Venice in 1510. That left the young Titian as the coming man of Venetian painting, and this small panel of the risen Christ dates from exactly that stretch. Christ steps from the tomb carrying the banner of the Resurrection, while behind him a walled, towered town recedes under a cool morning sky. Down in the lower right corner Titian tucked a little gold jar, the vessel of perfumed oil the Gospels give to Mary Magdalene, who would come looking for the body and find the tomb empty.