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Titian's "il Bravo"

       

        'il Bravo' by Titian, 1520

The painting 'il Bravo' (hired murderer) by Titian depicts two men in a gruesome scene. As in the case of a Shakespeare play, the viewer or audience has far more information than the two persons depicted in the painting. It is a most dangerous situation for the young man for something is about to happen to him. Titian lets the young man look in the direction of the viewer. He does so by looking over the shoulder of the man who clutches him tightly at the collar. What the young man does not see, but the viewer does, is that the man holds behind his back a dagger. The drama about to unfold is told in stark colours.

The look in the eyes of the young man underlines something more general, namely when man senses his destiny is at stake. In terms of the viewer, there can be invoked an 'ethics of seeing', given the critical question if he sees what is about to happen, should he intervene to stop the killing before it is too late or should he literally step aside and become a kind of voyeur of a painting describing a murder about to take place. Whatever, the viewer becomes a part of a historical painting which suggests or else does remind that such scenes can happen daily especially if no one intervenes in time.

As such, the historical painting is critical of anyone taking a neutral position. Morally speaking, it seems to suggest that in real life it is simply not enough to merely observe. On the other hand, there is the great unknown as to what would happen if the viewer warns the young man that there is behind the elderly man a dagger to be used to stab him as young man to death! The underlining tone is upon 'youth' which is about to bleed once again as is the case of so many societies if the youth refuses to bow to its strict rituals applied to corrupt the minds of the youth and thereby prevent in effect that the youth would criticize the elderlies for their bad practices.

In other words, the depicted conflict in the painting becomes a moral conflict for the viewer since he can easily imagine a way to prevent a murder about to happen. He can do so by simply warning the young man. This conflict involves human conscience and which reoccurs as the same theme in other contexts, at different times and in other situations. It makes the painting into a truly historical one. No wonder, when this painting has experienced multiple ramifications over time.

This can be seen onhand of the official interpretation of Titian's painting. It has undergone most recently a modification in a most interesting sense. The official version can be taken from the catalogue made available for the International Fine Arts Exhibition „Man and his World“shown at EXPO '67 which was held in Montreal, Canada:

„The traditional title of this painting 'Il Bravo' does not correctly designate its theme. The picture illustrates a story from antiquity, in which it is said that Claudius Lucius, a military tribune, made improper advances to the handsome young soldier Coelius, and was killed by the latter in his struggle to preserve his honour. Coelius was acquitted of all guilt and praised for his courageous attitude.“

The interpretation deviates clearly from what the painting itself contains: Lucius has the dagger and not the young man Claudius, who is about to be killed as depicted by the painting. Most likely this has to do with not all art historians agreeing which interpretation of the painting relates accurately to what was the source of inspiration for Titian.

"The subject represented is still debated, with scholars divided as to whether it depicts an episode from Plutarch's Life of Marius in which Caius Lucius attacks Trebonius or a subject derived from Euripides' Bacchae and Ovid's Metamorphoses,: Bacchus' arrest by Pentheus, the king of Thebes, who opposed the spread of his cult.  The identification of the scene with Bacchus is supported by the crown of vine leaves worn by the young man and his mane of blond hair, also visible in Titian's representation of the god in the Bacchus and Ariadne (London, National Gallery, NG35)." (source: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O132190/iil-bravoi-oil-painting-titian/)

Two things about this interpretation can bother one. The first one would be entailed in the question, is it ever justified to kill someone else, in order to preserve one's honour of for having tarnished one's honour? Indeed, men did involve themselves in duels, but that kind of challenge seems to be very much out of date nowadays. The meaning of 'pride' has undergone many corrections, in order to avoid further squandering of life for trivial matters, even though it is said about the Japanese society that a person prefers to commit suicide rather than live on once he has lost his face, that is, both honour and self respect within society. Thus, if this cannot be expected to resolve the original moral conflicts that the painting of Titian presents to any viewer, then why does he suggest another version to the usual legend?

The second doubt about this kind of interpretation deals much more with details. Titian painted not the younger man of the two to hold the dagger, but the older man. The interpretation belies thus a fact of what we see when looking at the painting. And it may have been the intention of Titian to reveal the discrepancy between a legend and reality by showing the scene not only as it might have been, but also what any outcome of conflicts between men requires of those who share some responsibility due to the added information they have and may have revealed in time to prevent a crime, a murder.

 

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