Titian
Poems Inspired by Titian - Don Paterson - Metamorphosis - Titian 2012 - The national gallery, London
My name’s Don Paterson. This is a poem inspired by The Death of Actaeon and I guess it is a poem about desire and transgression and the way they’re bound closely together. It’s also about...
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This poem is called The Change and it’s about Titian’s great painting The Death of Actaeon. In it, I put words into the mouth of the painter himself. So, imagine that he’s in his studio, taking a...
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I felt either you do this immediately or you won’t do it at all. It will be too slow, and you’ll get anxious and it will build up. So, I plunged in with the Actaeon I knew, basically [The Death of...
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I had some fantastic reproductions to work from and maybe that stopped me being too concerned about working with this masterpiece [Diana and Actaeon] that I’d had reduced down to A4. Plus I write...
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I was really impressed by the way that it was a story about vision for a visual art form. The turning point and the intense drama of that painting [Diana and Actaeon] is about sight and forbidden...
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I knew the painting [Diana and Callisto] and I’ve always been very interested in the fact that Callisto is one of those people who get caught up. I’ve always been interested in those characters in...
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I have to confess that I’m not terribly drawn to this kind of painting [Diana and Actaeon]. I’m not terribly drawn to paintings on mythological subjects. My favourite paintings are mostly Dutch –...
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The painting I chose was Diana and Callisto. I did spend quite a while pondering which one to choose and there was something about Callisto’s belly in the painting which is very strange. Lucian Freud...
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Well, originally when someone got in touch with me I said, ‘Oh, I’ll do The Flaying of Marsyas’, which is my favourite Titian. They said, ‘Oh no, that’s not in the exhibition’. So, I looked at the...
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I am going to read a poem called Callisto's Song. Callisto was a nymph who was flung up into the heavens and became a constellation. So, in order to write the poem I had to imagine what a...
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