Monday, November 12, 2012

Sheila Hale

Sheila Hale's new book is Titian: His Life.

From her Q & A with A.L. McMichael at Publishers Weekly:

Why did you choose to write about Titian?

Titian was suggested to me by the publisher of a previous book that I had written. He knew that I knew Venice very well [from living there often] and that I was interested in painting. I also happen to be a close friend of Charles Hope, the pre-eminent Titian scholar. He’s spent his entire professional career hunting down documents relating to Titian in the archives of Europe, and he never publishes them. And so I went to him and said, “Will you share your unpublished documents with me?” And he said yes.

Is writing a biography different from journalism?

I read quite deeply about Titian, but I also worked with scholars and said, “What do you think, what are you reading, what are you writing about Titian?” So I suppose you could say that’s a journalistic way of working. More is known about Titian, his personality, his family, his relationship with his patrons, than any other Renaissance artist except...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue