Resurrection of Christ

This started life as something you'd carry, not hang. In the early 1540s the Confraternity of Corpus Domini in Urbino ordered a processional banner from Titian, up in Venice, and had paid for it by 1544. A banner is painted on both faces so the crowd sees an image whichever way it turns in the street: on one side the Last Supper, on this side the risen Christ climbing into a dawn sky while the soldiers below scramble in shadow. It served that way only briefly. In 1545 a local painter, Pietro Viti, sawed the two faces apart so each could hang beside the high altar of the church it belonged to. Of all the Titians the Della Rovere dukes once kept here, this is the only one that never left Urbino for Florence.