Titian Red

"Titian red" refers to the red hair in Titian's paintings such as this one of Mary Magdalene, dated around 1532-33 in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence. This pose was one he painted a number of times, as the examples below attest. Titian may have acquired his red earth pigments from a quarry outside Venice; his reds are more of a brownish orange, like henna, rather than a red.

These more modest later paintings shown below are from around 1565. The first is in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the lower one is in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

The red hair motif for Mary persisted. See Dante Gabriel Rossetti's and Frederick Sandys' versions here.