Titian: Woman in White
In February on our annual winter visit to California, we visited the Norton-Simon Museum in Pasadena to view its current exhibition of Titian’s magnificent portrait, The Woman in White, on loan from its home in Dresden. The painting was given pride of place in a large room filled with other Old Masters from the Norton Simon’s permanent collection
The Museum’s notes indicated that in a 1561 letter Titian claimed that the young woman depicted was “the mistress of his soul.” Later, commentators took these words to mean that the young woman was Titian’s mistress even though the artist would have been in his seventies at the time. Others speculate that the woman could be one of Titian’s daughters, Emilia or Lavinia.
