Art spotlight: Titian at the MIA

Closing May 1

Now a picturesque ruin awash in tourists and sinking slowly into a lagoon, Venice in the 16th century was a magnet for Europe's most acclaimed artists, whose colorful canvases decorated the city's canal-side palaces and glowed in the flickering candlelight of its cathedrals. Thirteen paintings and a dozen drawings feature in "Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting," on view in Minneapolis just one more week. On loan from the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, most of the paintings have not left the British Isles in 200 years and are unlikely to travel again. Highlights are four paintings by Titian, including the lovely "Virgin and Child With Saint John the Baptist," shown here. Biblical scenes and images from classical mythology by Paolo Veronese, Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, Lorenzo Lotto, Jacopo Bassano and others make this a must-see opportunity.