During his career, Titian (1488/90–1576) produced some of the most groundbreaking paintings of the Renaissance, establishing himself as the most celebrated Italian artist of his time. Over the past fifty years, Save Venice has restored a number of his paintings. Generously sponsored by Christopher Todd Page, Titian & Save Venice: Conserving Six Masterpieces reveals remarkable discoveries from these conservation projects, offering fresh insights into the artist’s creative process and technique. Save Venice members are invited to an illustrated discussion featuring the editors of the forthcoming publication, Dr. Davide Gasparotto and Dr. Gabriele Matino, in conversation with Dr. Frederick Ilchman, Dr. Matthias Wivel, and Dr. Cleo Nisse.

Presented by Dr. Frederick Ilchman, Chairman, Save Venice Board of Directors; Dr. Davide Gasparotto, Save Venice Board Member and Chair of the Educational Resources Committee; Dr. Gabriele Matino, Save Venice Senior Researcher; Dr. Matthias Wivel, Head of Research at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek; and Dr. Cleo Nisse, Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen.

Frederick Ilchman is happier in Venice than anywhere else. His long involvement with Save Venice began as a graduate intern in the Venice office in 1998. A specialist in the art of Renaissance Italy, he holds an A.B. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Columbia University, both in art history. He is currently Chair, Art of Europe, and the Baker Curator of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has curated or co-curated such exhibitions as Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice (2009), Goya: Order and Disorder (2014), Botticelli and the Search for the Divine (2017), Casanova’s Europe (2018), and Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice (2018). A member of the board of Save Venice since 2005, Frederick became Chairman in 2016.

Davide Gasparotto is Senior Curator and Head of the Paintings Department, and Chair, Curatorial Affairs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. He is also currently Chair of the Educational Resources Committee of the Save Venice Board of Directors. A native of Bassano del Grappa, Italy, he was previously the Director of the Fondazione Piero della Francesca in Sansepolcro (1996-98), and a curator at the National Gallery of Parma from 1999 to 2012. From 2012 to 2014 he was Director of the Galleria Estense in Modena. He was a Francis A. Yates Fellow at the Warburg Institute, London (1999), Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (2007), and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2011-2012). At the Getty, he organized several acclaimed exhibitions such as Giovanni Bellini: Landscapes of Faith in Renaissance Venice (2017-18), Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters (2019), and Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye (2023). 

Gabriele Matino is Senior Researcher at Save Venice and an independent curator. An expert in Venetian Renaissance art, he holds an MA from Ca’ Foscari University and a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham. His collaboration with Save Venice began in 2016, when he received the Save Venice Curatorial Fellowship to organize the exhibition Art, Faith, and Medicine in Tintoretto’s Venice at the Scuola Grande di San Marco (2018). Since then, he has authored Carpaccio in Venice: Itineraries (2020), co-edited with board member Patricia Fortini Brown; contributed to The Church of San Sebastiano in Venice: A Guide (2024), co-authored with board members Xavier F. Salomon and Davide Gasparotto, and the Director of the Venice office Melissa Conn; and developed Assunta Restored (2025), a website dedicated to Titian’s altarpiece and its conservation by Save Venice. His latest project is Titian & Save Venice: Conserving Six Masterpieces, a volume co-edited with Gasparotto.

Matthias Wivel is Head of research at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. He was previously Curator of sixteenth-century Italian paintings at the National Gallery, London, and specializes in Italian art. There, he was curator or co-curator of the exhibitions Michelangelo & Sebastiano (2017), Lorenzo Lotto Portraits (2018-19), Titian: Love, Desire, Death (2020-21), Raphael (2022), and Parmigianino: The Vision of St. Jerome (2024-25). His latest project was Michelangelo Imperfect at SMK in Copenhagen (2025). He has published widely on Italian renaissance art over the last two decades, as well as on comics and cartoon art.

Cleo Nisse is assistant professor of early modern European art at the University of Groningen, NL. She holds a BA in history from Cambridge University, a PgDip in Easel Paintings Conservation from the Courtauld Institute, and an Mphil and PhD from Columbia University, awarded 2024. She recently co-edited Titian’s Poetics: Selected Essays by David Rosand with Diane Bodart and her first monograph, Venetian Canvas and the Transformation of Painting is forthcoming with Princeton University Press (May 2026). In 2020, she held an Acqua Alta graduate fellowship with Save Venice Inc., contributing to efforts to respond to the high water crisis of 2019.