BBC2 - Titian Behind Closed Doors
April 2 2020
Picture: BBC
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz
Exciting news for UK television licence fee holders that the BBC has made a special hour long programme celebrating the National Gallery’s important and historic exhibition Titian: Love, Desire, Death.
A feat of curatorial engineering, this exhibition reunites for the first time in four centuries six works commissioned from Titian by the future King Philip II of Spain. The Venetian painter’s ‘poesies’ inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses are considered amongst his most original works, yet were dispersed during his lifetime. Most notably, the Wallace Collection had only recently ‘reinterpreted’ their 1897 bequest ruling so that their Perseus and Andromeda could be part of the show.
The exhibition opened to the public on 16th March, but had to close just two days later as a precautionary measure against the spread of COVID-19. The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square was one of the last museums to close its doors, with the Vatican Museums having closed on 8th March, the Prado on 12th March and the Louvre on 13th March.
The gallery’s website explains that the current plan is for the exhibition to reopen when the rest of the gallery does on 4th May. This, we might imagine, will be subject to developments and advice from the government. The exhibition is due to run in London until 14th June 2020, after which it will travel to Edinburgh, Madrid and Boston.
The programme entitled Titian - Behind Closed Doors will air on BBC Two on Saturday 4th April 2020 at 21.45 (GMT).
