'A Boy with a Bird' in the National Gallery: Two Responses to a Titian Question

Paul Joannides and Jill Dunkerton
Technical Bulletin Volume 28, 2007

Abstract 

The small canvas of A Boy with a Bird has generally been considered a 17th-century pastiche in the manner of Titian, based on a background detail in some of the variations on his 'Venus and Adonis'. The first part of the article argues that Titian’s first version of this subject may have been painted considerably earlier than thought previously and that the 'Boy with a Bird' could therefore date from the same period. The second part presents the results of the cleaning and technical examination, including the discovery of a first composition linked to one of Titian’s woodcut designs.

Keywords

A Boy with a Bird, coloured primings, cross-sections, infrared reflectography, Niccolò Boldrini, sixteenth-century Venetian technique, Titian, underdrawing, Venus and Adonis, X-radiography

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'A Boy with a Bird' in the National Gallery: Two Responses to a Titian Question, Paul Joannides and Jill Dunkerton (PDF 19.58MB)

To cite this article we suggest using

Joannides, P., Dunkerton, J. '"A Boy with a Bird" in the National Gallery: Two Responses to a Titian Question'. National Gallery Technical Bulletin Vol 28, pp 36–57.
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/technical-bulletin/joannides_dunkerton2007

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