Sergio Bettini, Tiziano e la dicibilità del colore

In his essays Il colore di Tiziano (1977) and Linguistica di Tiziano (1980), the art historian Sergio Bettini takes a deconstructive and innovative approach to the art of the painter from Cadore. After having ascertained the ineffability of Titian's colour, he dwells on the difficulties inherent in the verbalization of the visual, questioning the pertinence of critical language and questioning the traditional strategies devised by scholars to account for the colour of the Venetian master. The contribution retraces Bettini's methodological reflections and reconstructs the steps through which the scholar, thanks to a continuous dialogue with the philosophical ferments of his time, arrives first at the concept of “structure” and then at an interpretation of Titian's proposal as a fluid language, still today an indispensable guideline for framing the brushstroke and interpreting the “unfinished manner” of the Late Titian.