Titian at the National Gallery: roll over, Rubens

I've waited a while before commenting on the first display of Titian's Diana and Actaeon at the National Gallery since it was bought for the nation . To be honest, I didn't know what to say. Titian's painting hangs among works from all periods in the National Gallery collection that seem to be influenced by it, or to illuminate it. It is between a Rubens and a Cézanne , with a Constable across the way. My considered response, after looking it repeatedly in the last few months, is – God, how these masterpieces of European art shrink in Titian's light. Even though it was painted by an old man and even though its colours have lost a lot of their original power, it is such a great work of art that its neighbours implode. Sayonara, Cézanne. Roll over, Rubens. I think it would be better to see this painting in a straightforward historical Venetian display, because actually only another Venetian painting can mirror its melting luminosity. Venetian art doesn't need a Cézanne nearby to prove that it is modern. The reason it strikes us as fresh and contemporary is the poetic, dreamlike use of colour that anticipates abstraction. That has been its charisma for centuries. Eighteenth century British painters went nuts trying to find the "secret" of Titian's colours. Modern artists still bow to the sensuality of Diana and Actaeon. Every myth of Venice concerns dying. In stories and films, it is a place you go at your peril. Death lurks in the palazzi. The city in reality is indeed dying, sinking, doomed. Oblivion sucks at its foundations. But the most striking quality of its art is a robust life. There is life glowing inside Titian's painting, and it's that Shakespearean fullness that makes other artists in the National Gallery display seem slight. They portray part of life, he encompasses life in its entirety. I don't think art needs to do anything else. All art is good or bad according to how much life it holds and releases. For all the deathly legends of Venice, its artists are life givers.