The Later works of Titian
by
Claude Phillips
Part 2 out of 2
Destruction of Pharaoh's Host_, designed, according to the inscription
on the print, by "the great and immortal Titian," and engraved by
Domenico delle Greche, who, notwithstanding his name, calls himself
"depentore Venetiano." He is not, as need hardly be pointed out, to be
confounded with the famous Veneto-Spanish painter, Domenico
Theotocopuli, Il Greco, whose date of birth is just about this time
(1548).
Titian, specially summoned by the Emperor, travelled back to Augsburg in
November 1550. Charles had returned thither with Prince Philip, the
heir-presumptive of the Spanish throne, and it can hardly be open to
question that one of the main objects for which the court painter was
made to undertake once more the arduous journey across the Alps was to
depict the son upon whom all the monarch's hopes and plans were centred.
Charles, whose health had still further declined, was now, under an
accumulation of political misfortune, gloomier than ever before, more
completely detached from the things of the world. Barely over fifty at
this moment, he seemed already, and, in truth, was an old man, while the
master of Cadore at seventy-three shone in the splendid autumn of his
genius, which even then had not reached its final period of expansion.
Titian enjoyed the confidence of his imperial master during this second
visit in a degree which excited surprise at the time; the intercourse
with Charles at this tragic moment of his career, when, sick and
disappointed, he aspired only to the consolations of faith, seeing his
sovereign remedy in the soothing balm of utter peace, may have worked to
deepen the gloom which was overspreading the painter's art if not his
soul. It is not to be believed, all the same, that this atmosphere of
unrest and misgiving, of faith coloured by an element of terror, in
itself operated so strongly as unaided to give a final form to Titian's
sacred works. There was in this respect kinship of spirit between the
mighty ruler and his servant; Titian's art had already become sadder and
more solemn, had already shown a more sombre passion. The tragic gloom
is now to become more and more intense, until we come to the climax in
the astonishing _Pieta_ left unfinished when the end comes a quarter of
a century later still.
And with this change in the whole atmosphere of the sacred art comes
another in the inverse sense, which, being an essential trait, must be
described, though to do so is not quite easy. Titian becomes more and
more merely sensuous in his conception of the beauty of women. He
betrays in his loss of serenity that he is less than heretofore
impervious to the stings of an invading sensuality, which serves to make
of his mythological and erotic scenes belonging to this late time a
tribute to the glories of the flesh unennobled by the gilding touch of
the purer flame. And the painter who, when Charles V. retired into his
solitude, had suffered the feeble flame of his life to die slowly out,
was to go on working for King Philip, as fierce in the intensity of his
physical passion as in the fervour of his faith, would receive
encouragement to develop to the full these seemingly conflicting
tendencies of sacred and amorous passion.
The Spanish prince whom it was the master's most important task on this
occasion to portray was then but twenty-four years of age, and youth
served not indeed to hide, but in a slight measure to attenuate, some of
his most characteristic physical defects. His unattractive person even
then, however, showed some of the most repellent peculiarities of his
father and his race. He had the supreme distinction of Charles but not
his majesty, more than his haughty reserve, even less than his power of
enlisting sympathy. In this most difficult of tasks--the portrayal that
should be at one and the same time true in its essence, distinguished,
and as sympathetic as might be under the circumstances, of so unlovable
a personage--Titian won a new victory. His _Prince Philip of Austria in
Armour_ at the Prado is one of his most complete and satisfying
achievements, from every point of view. A veritable triumph of art, but
as usual a triumph to which the master himself disdains to call
attention, is the rendering of the damascened armour, the puffed hose,
and the white silk stockings and shoes. The two most important
variations executed by the master, or under his immediate direction, are
the full-lengths of the Pitti Palace and the Naples Museum, in both of
which sumptuous court-dress replaces the gala military costume. They are
practically identical, both in the design and the working out, save that
in the Florence example Philip stands on a grass plot in front of a
colonnade, while in that of Naples the background is featureless. As the
pictures are now seen, that in the Pitti is marked by greater subtlety
in the characterisation of the head, while the Naples canvas appears the
more brilliant as regards the working out of the costume and
accessories.
To the period of Titian's return from the second visit to Augsburg
belongs a very remarkable portrait which of late years there has been
some disinclination to admit as his own work. This is the imposing
full-length portrait which stands forth as the crowning decoration of
the beautiful and well-ordered gallery at Cassel. In the days when it
was sought to obtain _quand meme_ a striking designation for a great
picture, it was christened _Alfonso d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto_.
More recently, with some greater show of probability, it has
been called _Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino_. In the _Jahrbuch der
koeniglich-preussischen Kunstsammlungen_,[43] Herr Carl Justi, ever bold
and ingenious in hypothesis, strives, with the support of a mass of
corroborative evidence that cannot be here quoted, to prove that the
splendid personage presented is a Neapolitan nobleman of the highest
rank, Giovan Francesco Acquaviva, Duke of Atri. There is the more reason
to accept his conjecture since it helps us to cope with certain
difficulties presented by the picture itself. It may be conceded at the
outset that there are disturbing elements in it, well calculated to give
pause to the student of Titian. The handsome patrician, a little too
proud of his rank, his magnificent garments and accoutrements, his
virile beauty, stands fronting the spectator in a dress of crimson and
gold, wearing a plumed and jewelled hat, which in its elaboration
closely borders on the grotesque, and holding a hunting-spear. Still
more astonishing in its exaggeration of a Venetian mode in
portraiture[44] is the great crimson, dragon-crowned helmet which, on
the left of the canvas, Cupid himself supports. To the right, a rival
even of Love in the affections of our enigmatical personage, a noble
hound rubs himself affectionately against the stalwart legs of his
master. Far back stretches a prospect singularly unlike those rich-toned
studies of sub-Alpine regions in which Titian as a rule revels. It has
an august but more colourless beauty recalling the middle Apennines; one
might almost say that it prefigures those prospects of inhospitable
Sierra which, with their light, delicate tonality, so admirably relieve
and support the portraits of Velazquez. All this is unusual, and still
more so is the want of that aristocratic gravity, of that subordination
of mere outward splendour to inborn dignity, which mark Titian's
greatest portraits throughout his career. The splendid materials for the
picture are not as absolutely digested, as absolutely welded into one
consistent and harmonious whole, as with such authorship one would
expect. But then, on the other hand, take the magnificent execution in
the most important passages: the distinguished silvery tone obtained
notwithstanding the complete red-and-gold costume and the portentous
crimson helmet; the masterly brush-work in these last particulars, in
the handsome virile head of the model and the delicate flesh of the
_amorino_. The dog might without exaggeration be pronounced the best,
the truest in movement, to be found in Venetian art--indeed, in art
generally, until Velazquez appears. Herr Carl Justi's happy conjecture
helps us, if we accept it, to get over some of these difficulties and
seeming contradictions. The Duke of Atri belonged to a great Neapolitan
family, exiled and living at the French court under royal countenance
and protection. The portrait was painted to be sent back to France, to
which, indeed, its whole subsequent history belongs. Under such
circumstances the young nobleman would naturally desire to affirm his
rank and pretensions as emphatically as might be; to outdo in splendour
and _prestance_ all previous sitters to Titian; to record himself apt in
war, in the chase, in love, and more choice in the fashion of his
appointments than any of his compeers in France or Italy.
An importance to which it is surely not entitled in the life-work of the
master is given to the portrait of the Legate Beccadelli, executed in
the month of July 1552, and included among the real and fancied
masterpieces of the Tribuna in the Uffizi. To the writer it has always
appeared the most nearly tiresome and perfunctory of Titian's more
important works belonging to the same class. Perhaps the elaborate
legend inscribed on the paper held by the prelate, including the unusual
form of signature "Titianus Vecellius faciebat Venetiis MDLII, mense
Julii," may have been the cause that the canvas has attracted an undue
share of attention.[45] At p. 218 of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's second
volume we get, under date the 11th of October 1552, Titian's first
letter to Philip of Spain. There is mention in it of a _Queen of
Persia_, which the artist does not expressly declare to be his own work,
and of a _Landscape_ and _St. Margaret_ previously sent by Ambassador
Vargas ("... il Paesaggio et il ritratto di Sta. Margarita mandatovi per
avanti"). The comment of the biographers on this is that "for the first
time in the annals of Italian painting we hear of a picture which claims
to be nothing more than a landscape, etc." Remembering, however, that
when in 1574, at the end of his life, our master sent in to Philip's
secretary, Antonio Perez, a list of paintings delivered from time to
time, but not paid for, he described the _Venere del Pardo_, or _Jupiter
and Antiope_, as "La nuda con il paese con el satiro," would it not be
fair to assume that the description _Il Paesaggio et il ritratto di Sta.
Margarita_ means one and the same canvas--_The Figure of St. Margaret in
a Landscape_? Thus should we be relieved from the duty of searching
among the authentic works of the master of Cadore for a landscape pure
and simple, and in the process stumbling across a number of spurious and
doubtful things. The _St. Margaret_ is evidently the picture which,
having been many years at the Escorial, now hangs in the Prado Gallery.
Obscured and darkened though it is by the irreparable outrages of time,
it may be taken as a very characteristic example of Titian's late but
not latest manner in sacred art. In the most striking fashion does it
exhibit that peculiar gloom and agitation of the artist face to face
with religious subjects which at an earlier period would have left his
serenity undisturbed. The saint, uncertain of her triumph, armed though
she is with the Cross, flees in affright from the monster whose huge
bulk looms, terrible even in overthrow, in the darkness of the
foreground. To the impression of terror communicated by the whole
conception the distance of the lurid landscape--a city in
flames--contributes much.
[Illustration: _Venus with the Mirror._ _Gallery of the Hermitage, St.
Petersburg. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie._]
In the spring and summer of 1554 were finished for Philip of Spain the
_Danae_ of Madrid; for Mary, Queen of Hungary, a _Madonna Addolorata_;
for Charles V. the _Trinity_, to which he had with Titian devoted so
much anxious thought. The _Danae_ of the Prado, less grandiose, less
careful in finish than the Naples picture, is painted with greater
spontaneity and _elan_ than its predecessor, and vibrates with an
undisguisedly fleshly passion. Is it to the taste of Philip or to a
momentary touch of cynicism in Titian himself that we owe the deliberate
dragging down of the conception until it becomes symbolical of the
lowest and most venal form of love? In the Naples version Amor, a
fairly-fashioned divinity of more or less classic aspect, presides; in
the Madrid and subsequent interpretations of the legend, a grasping hag,
the attendant of Danae, holds out a cloth, eager to catch her share of
the golden rain. In the St. Petersburg version, which cannot be
accounted more than an atelier piece, there is, with some slight yet
appreciable variations, a substantial agreement with the Madrid picture.
Of this Hermitage _Danae_ there is a replica in the collection of the
Duke of Wellington at Apsley House. In yet another version (also a
contemporary atelier piece), which is in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna,
and has for that reason acquired a certain celebrity, the greedy duenna
is depicted in full face, and holds aloft a chased metal dish.
Satisfaction of a very different kind was afforded to Queen Mary of
Hungary and Charles V. The lady obtained a _Christ appearing to the
Magdalen_, which was for a long time preserved at the Escorial, where
there is still to be found a bad copy of it. A mere fragment of the
original, showing a head and bust of Christ holding a hoe in his left
hand, has been preserved, and is now No. 489 in the gallery of the
Prado. Even this does not convince the student that Titian's own brush
had a predominant share in the performance. The letter to Charles V.,
dated from Venice the 10th of September 1554, records the sending of a
_Madonna Addolorata_ and the great _Trinity_. These, together with
another _Virgen de los Dolores_ ostensibly by Titian, and the _Ecce
Homo_ already mentioned, formed afterwards part of the small collection
of devotional paintings taken by Charles to his monastic retreat at
Yuste, and appropriated after his death by Philip. If the picture styled
_La Dolorosa_, and now No. 468 in the gallery of the Prado, is indeed
the one painted for the great monarch who was so sick in body and
spirit, so fast declining to his end, the suspicion is aroused that the
courtly Venetian must have acted with something less than fairness
towards his great patron, since the _Addolorata_ cannot be acknowledged
as his own work. Still less can we accept as his own that other _Virgen
de los Dolores_, now No. 475 in the same gallery.
[Illustration: Landscape drawing in pen and bistre by Titian.]
It is very different with the _Trinity_, called in Spain _La Gloria_,
and now No. 462 in the same gallery. Though the master must have been
hampered by the express command that the Emperor should be portrayed as
newly arisen from the grave and adoring the _Trinity_ in an agony of
prayer, and with him the deceased Empress Isabel, Queen Mary of Hungary,
and Prince Philip, also as suppliants, he succeeded in bringing forth
not indeed a complete masterpiece, but a picture all aspiration and
fervent prayer--just the work to satisfy the yearnings of the man who,
once the mightiest, was then the loneliest and saddest of mortals on
earth. The crown and climax of the whole is the group of the Trinity
itself, awful in majesty, dazzling in the golden radiance of its
environment, and, beautifully linking it with mortality, the blue-robed
figure of the Virgin, who stands on a lower eminence of cloud as she
intercedes for the human race, towards whom her pitying gaze is
directed. It would be absurd to pretend that we have here a work
entitled, in virtue of the perfect achievement of all that has been
sought for, to rank with such earlier masterpieces as the _Assunta_ or
the _St. Peter Martyr_. Yet it represents in one way sacred art of a
higher, a more inspired order, and contains some pictorial
beauties--such as the great central group--of which Titian would not in
those earlier days have been equally capable.
There is another descent, though not so marked a one as in the case of
the _Danae_, with the _Venus and Adonis_ painted for Philip, the new
King-Consort of England, and forwarded by the artist to London in the
autumn of 1554. That the picture now in the _Sala de la Reina Isabel_
at Madrid is this original is proved, in the first place, by the quality
of the flesh-painting, the silvery shimmer, the vibration of the whole,
the subordination of local colour to general tone, yet by no means to
the point of extinction--all these being distinctive qualities of this
late time. It is further proved by the fact that it still shows traces
of the injury of which Philip complained when he received the picture in
London. A long horizontal furrow is clearly to be seen running right
across the canvas. Apart from the consideration that pupils no doubt had
a hand in the work, it lacks, with all its decorative elegance and
felicity of movement, the charm with which Titian, both much earlier in
his career and later on towards the end, could invest such mythological
subjects.[46] That the aim of the artist was not a very high one, or
this _poesia_ very near to his heart, is demonstrated by the amusingly
material fashion in which he recommends it to his royal patron. He says
that "if in the _Danae_ the forms were to be seen front-wise, here was
occasion to look at them from a contrary direction--a pleasant variety
for the ornament of a _Camerino_." Our worldly-wise painter evidently
knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to
captivate Philip. It cannot be alleged, all the same, that this purely
sensuous mode of conception was not perfectly in consonance with his own
temperament, with his own point of view, at this particular stage in his
life and practice.
The new Doge Francesco Venier had, upon his accession in 1554, called
upon Titian to paint, besides his own portrait, the orthodox votive
picture of his predecessor Marcantonio Trevisan, and this official
performance was duly completed in January 1555, and hung in the Sala de'
Pregadi. At the same time Venier determined that thus tardily the memory
of a long--deceased Doge, Antonio Grimani, should be rehabilitated by
the dedication to him of a similar but more dramatic and allusive
composition. The commission for this piece also was given to Titian, who
made good progress with it, yet for reasons unexplained never carried
the important undertaking to completion. It remained in the workshop at
the time of his death, and was completed--with what divergence from the
original design we cannot authoritatively say--by assistants. Antonio
Grimani, supported by members of his house, or officers attached to his
person, kneels in adoration before an emblematic figure of Faith which
appears in the clouds holding the cross and chalice, which winged
child-angels help to support, and haloed round with an oval glory of
cherubim--a conception, by the way, quite new and not at all orthodox.
To the left appears a majestic figure of St. Mark, while the clouds upon
which Faith is upborne, rise just sufficiently to show a very realistic
prospect of Venice. There is not to be found in the whole life-work of
Titian a clumsier or more disjointed composition as a whole, even making
the necessary allowances for alterations, additions, and restorations.
Though the figure of Faith is a sufficiently noble conception in itself,
the group which it makes with the attendant angels is inexplicably heavy
and awkward in arrangement; the flying _pulli_ have none of the
audacious grace and buoyancy that Lotto or Correggio would have imparted
to them, none of the rush of Tintoretto. The noble figure of St. Mark
must be of Titian's designing, but is certainly not of his painting,
while the corresponding figure on the other side is neither the one nor
the other. Some consolation is afforded by the figure of the kneeling
Doge himself, which is a masterpiece--not less in the happy expression
of naive adoration than in the rendering, with matchless breadth and
certainty of brush, of burnished armour in which is mirrored the glow of
the Doge's magnificent state robes.
CHAPTER IV
_Portraits of Titian's daughter Lavinia--Death of Aretino--"Martyrdom of
St. Lawrence"--Death of Charles V.--Attempted assassination of Orazio
Vecellio--"Diana and Actaeon" and "Diana and Calisto"--The "Comoro
Family"--The "Magdalen" of the Hermitage--The "Jupiter and Antiope" and
"Rape of Europa"--Vasari defines Titian's latest manner--"St. Jerome" of
the Brera--"Education of Cupid"--"Jacopo da Strada"--Impressionistic
manner of the end--"Ecce Homo" of Munich--"Nymph and Shepherd" of
Vienna--The unfinished "Pieta"--Death of Titian_.
It was in the month of March 1555 that Titian married his only daughter
Lavinia to Cornelio Sarcinelli of Serravalle, thus leaving the pleasant
home at Biri Grande without a mistress; for his sister Orsa had been
dead since 1549.[47] It may be convenient to treat here of the various
portraits and more or less idealised portrait-pieces in which Titian has
immortalised the thoroughly Venetian beauty of his daughter. First we
have in the great _Ecce Homo_ of Vienna the graceful white-robed figure
of a young girl of some fourteen years, placed, with the boy whom she
guards, on the steps of Pilate's palace. Then there is the famous piece
_Lavinia with a Dish of Fruit_, dating according to Morelli from about
1549, and painted for the master's friend Argentina Pallavicino of
Reggio. This last-named work passed in 1821 from the Solly Collection
into the Berlin Gallery. Though its general aspect is splendidly
decorative, though it is accounted one of the most popular of all
Titian's works, the Berlin picture cannot be allowed to take the highest
rank among his performances of the same class. Its fascinations are of
the obvious and rather superficial kind, its execution is not equal in
vigour, freedom, and accent to the best that the master did about the
same time. It is pretty obvious here that only the head is adapted from
that of Lavinia, the full-blown voluptuous form not being that of the
youthful maiden, who could not moreover have worn this sumptuous and
fanciful costume except in the studio. In the strongest contrast to the
conscious allurement of this showpiece is the demure simplicity of mien
in the avowed portrait _Lavinia as a Bride_ in the Dresden Gallery. In
this last she wears a costume of warm white satin and a splendid
necklace and earrings of pearls. Morelli has pointed out that the fan,
in the form of a little flag which she holds, was only used in Venice by
newly betrothed ladies; and this fixes the time of the portrait as 1555,
the date of the marriage contract. The execution is beyond all
comparison finer here, the colour more transparent in its warmth, than
in the more celebrated Berlin piece. Quite eight or ten years later than
this must date the _Salome_ of the Prado Gallery, which is in general
design a variation of the _Lavinia_ of Berlin. The figure holding up--a
grim substitute for the salver of fruit--the head of St. John on a
charger has probably been painted without any fresh reference to the
model. The writer is unable to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle when
they affirm that this _Salome_ is certainly painted by one of the
master's followers. The touch is assuredly Titian's own in the very late
time, and the canvas, though much slighter and less deliberate in
execution than its predecessors, is in some respects more spontaneous,
more vibrant in touch. Second to none as a work of art--indeed more
striking than any in the naive and fearless truth of the rendering--is
the _Lavinia Sarcinelli as a Matron_ in the Dresden Gallery. Morelli
surely exaggerates a little when he describes Lavinia here as a woman of
forty. Though the demure, bright-eyed maiden has grown into a
self-possessed Venetian dame of portentous dimensions, Sarcinelli's
spouse is fresh still, and cannot be more than two-or three-and-thirty.
This assumption, if accepted, would fix the time of origin of the
picture at about 1565, and, reasoning from analogies of technique, this
appears to be a more acceptable date than the year 1570-72, at which
Morelli would place it.
[Illustration: _Titian's Daughter Lavinia._]
One of the most important chapters in our master's life closed with the
death of Aretino, which took place suddenly on the 21st of October 1556.
He had been sitting at table with friends far into the night or morning.
One of them, describing to him a farcical incident of Rabelaisian
quality, he threw himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter, and
slipping on the polished floor, was thrown with great force on his head
and killed almost instantaneously. This was indeed the violent and
sudden death of the strong, licentious man; poetic justice could have
devised no more fitting end to such a life.
In the year 1558 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, for very sufficient reasons,
place the _Martyrdom of St. Lawrence_, now preserved in the hideously
over-ornate Church of the Jesuits at Venice. To the very remarkable
analysis which they furnish of this work, the writer feels unable to add
anything appreciable by way of comment, for the simple reason that
though he has seen it many times, on no occasion has he been fortunate
enough to obtain such a light as would enable him to judge the picture
on its own merits as it now stands.[48] Of a design more studied in its
rhythm, more akin to the Florentine and Roman schools, than anything
that has appeared since the _St. Peter Martyr_, with a _mise-en-scene_
more classical than anything else from Titian's hand that can be pointed
to, the picture may be guessed, rather than seen, to be also a curious
and subtle study of conflicting lights. On the one hand we have that of
the gruesome martyrdom itself, and of a huge torch fastened to the
carved shaft of a pedestal; on the other, that of an effulgence from the
skies, celestial in brightness, shedding its consoling beams on the
victim.
The _Christ crowned with Thorns_, which long adorned the church of S.
Maria delle Grazie at Milan, and is now in the Long Gallery of the
Louvre, may belong to about this time, but is painted with a larger and
more generous brush, with a more spontaneous energy, than the carefully
studied piece at the Gesuiti. The tawny harmonies finely express in
their calculated absence of freshness the scene of brutal and unholy
violence so dramatically enacted before our eyes. The rendering of
muscle, supple and strong under the living epidermis, the glow of the
flesh, the dramatic momentariness of the whole, have not been surpassed
even by Titian. Of the true elevation, of the spiritual dignity that the
subject calls for, there is, however, little or nothing. The finely
limbed Christ is as coarse in type and as violent in action as his
executioners; sublimity is reached, strange to say, only in the bust of
Tiberius, which crowns the rude archway through which the figures have
issued into the open space. Titian is here the precursor of the
_Naturalisti_--of Caravaggio and his school. Yet, all the same, how
immeasurable is the distance between the two!
[Illustration: _Christ crowned with Thorns. Louvre. From a Photograph by
Neurdein_.]
On the 21st of September 1558 died the imperial recluse of Yuste, once
Charles V., and it is said his last looks were steadfastly directed
towards that great canvas _The Trinity_, which to devise with Titian had
been one of his greatest consolations at a moment when already earthly
glories held him no more. Philip, on the news of his father's death,
retired for some weeks to the monastery of Groenendale, and thence sent
a despatch to the Governor of Milan, directing payment of all the
arrears of the pensions "granted to Titian by Charles his father (now in
glory)," adding by way of unusual favour a postscript in his own
hand.[49] Orazio Vecellio, despatched by his father in the spring of
1559 to Milan to receive the arrears of pension, accepted the
hospitality of the sculptor Leone Leoni, who was then living in splendid
style in a palace which he had built and adorned for himself in the
Lombard city. He was the rival in art as well as the mortal enemy of
Benvenuto Cellini, and as great a ruffian as he, though one less
picturesque in blackguardism. One day early in June, when Orazio, having
left Leoni's house, had returned to superintend the removal of certain
property, he was set upon, and murderously assaulted by the perfidious
host and his servants. The whole affair is wrapped in obscurity. It
remains uncertain whether vengeance, or hunger after the arrears of
Titian's pension, or both, were the motives which incited Leoni to
attempt the crime. Titian's passionate reclamations, addressed
immediately to Philip II., met with but partial success, since the
sculptor, himself a great favourite with the court of Spain, was
punished only with fine and banishment, and the affair was afterwards
compromised by the payment of a sum of money.
Titian's letter of September 22, 1559, to Philip II. announces the
despatch of the companion pieces _Diana and Calisto_ and _Diana and
Actaeon_, as well as of an _Entombment_ intended to replace a painting of
the same subject which had been lost on the way. The two celebrated
canvases,[50] now in the Bridgewater Gallery, are so familiar that they
need no new description. Judging by the repetitions, reductions, and
copies that exist in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna, the Prado Gallery,
the Yarborough Collection, and elsewhere, these mythological _poesie_
have captivated the world far more than the fresher and lovelier painted
poems of the earlier time--the _Worship of Venus_, the _Bacchanal_, the
_Bacchus and Ariadne_. At no previous period has Titian wielded the
brush with greater _maestria_ and ease than here, or united a richer or
more transparent glow with greater dignity of colour. About the
compositions themselves, if we are to take them as the _poesie_ that
Titian loved to call them, there is a certain want of significance,
neither the divine nor the human note being struck with any depth or
intensity of vibration. The glamour, the mystery, the intimate charm of
the early pieces is lost, and there is felt, enwrapping the whole, that
sultry atmosphere of untempered sensuousness which has already, upon
more than one occasion, been commented upon. That this should be so is
only natural when creative power is not extinguished by old age, but is
on the contrary coloured with its passion, so different in quality from
that of youth.
The _Entombment_, which went to Madrid with the mythological pieces just
now discussed, serves to show how vivid was Titian's imagination at this
point, when he touched upon a sacred theme, and how little dependent he
was in this field on the conceptions of his earlier prime. A more living
passion informs the scene, a more intimate sympathy colours it, than we
find in the noble _Entombment_ of the Louvre, much as the picture which
preceded it by so many years excels the Madrid example in fineness of
balance, in dignity, in splendour and charm of colour. Here the
personages are set free by the master from all academic trammels, and
express themselves with a greater spontaneity in grief. The colour, too,
of which the general scheme is far less attractive to the eye than in
the Louvre picture, blazes forth in one note of lurid splendour in the
red robe of the saint who supports the feet of the dead Christ.
In this same year Titian painted on the ceiling of the ante-chamber to
Sansovino's great Library in the Piazzetta the allegorical figure
_Wisdom_, thus entering into direct competition with young Paolo
Veronese, Schiavone, and the other painters who, striving in friendly
rivalry, had been engaged a short time before on the ceiling of the
great hall in the same building. This noble design contains a pronounced
reminiscence of Raphael's incomparable allegorical figures in the Camera
della Segnatura, but excels them as much in decorative splendour and
facile breadth of execution as it falls behind them in sublimity of
inspiration.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle are probably right in assigning the great
_Cornaro Family_ in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland to the
year 1560 or thereabouts. Little seen of late years, and like most
Venetian pictures of the sixteenth century shorn of some of its glory by
time and the restorer, this family picture appears to the writer to rank
among Titian's masterpieces in the domain of portraiture, and to be
indeed the finest portrait-group of this special type that Venice has
produced. In the simplicity and fervour of the conception Titian rises
to heights which he did not reach in the _Madonna di Casa Pesaro_, where
he is hampered by the necessity for combining a votive picture with a
series of avowed portraits. It is pretty clear that this _Cornaro_
picture, like the Pesaro altar-piece, must have been commissioned to
commemorate a victory or important political event in the annals of the
illustrious family. Search among their archives and papers, if they
still exist, might throw light upon this point, and fix more accurately
the date of the magnificent work. In the open air--it may be outside
some great Venetian church--an altar has been erected, and upon it is
placed a crucifix, on either side of which are church candles, blown
this way and the other by the wind. Three generations of patricians
kneel in prayer and thanksgiving, taking precedence according to age,
six handsome boys, arranged in groups of three on either side of the
canvas, furnishing an element of great pictorial attractiveness but no
vital significance. The act of worship acquires here more reality and a
profounder meaning than it can have in those vast altar-pieces in which
the divine favour is symbolised by the actual presence of the Madonna
and Child. An open-air effect has been deliberately aimed at and
attained, the splendid series of portraits being relieved against the
cloud-flecked blue sky with a less sculptural plasticity than the master
would have given to them in an indoor scheme. This is another admirable
example of the dignity and reserve which Titian combines with sumptuous
colour at this stage of his practice. His mastery is not less but
greater, subtler, than that of his more showy and brilliant
contemporaries of the younger generation; the result is something that
appears as if it must inevitably have been so and not otherwise. The
central figure of the patriarch is robed in deep crimson with grayish
fur, rather black in shadow; the man in the prime of manhood wears a
more positive crimson, trimmed with tawnier fur, browner in shadow; a
lighter sheen is on the brocaded mantle of yet another shade of crimson
worn by the most youthful of the three patricians. Just the stimulating
note to break up a harmony which might otherwise have been of a richness
too cloying is furnished--in the master's own peculiar way--by the
scarlet stockings of one boy in the right hand group, by the cinnamon
sleeve of another.[51]
[Illustration: The Cornaro Family. In the Collection of the Duke of
Northumberland.]
To the year 1561 belongs, according to the elaborate inscription on the
picture, the magnificent _Portrait of a Man_ which is No. 172 in the
Dresden Gallery. It presents a Venetian gentleman in his usual habit,
but bearing a palm branch such as we associate with saints who have
endured martyrdom. Strangely sombre and melancholy in its very reserve
is this sensitive face, and the tone of the landscape echoes the
pathetic note of disquiet. The canvas bears the signature "Titianus
Pictor et Aeques (sic) Caesaris." There group very well with this
Dresden picture, though the writer will not venture to assert positively
that they belong to exactly the same period, the _St. Dominic_ of the
Borghese Gallery and the _Knight of Malta_ of the Prado Gallery. In all
three--in the two secular portraits as in the sacred piece which is also
a portrait--the expression given, and doubtless intended, is that of a
man who has withdrawn himself in his time of fullest physical vigour
from the pomps and vanities of the world, and sadly concentrates his
thoughts on matters of higher import.
On the 1st of December 1561 Titian wrote to the king to announce the
despatch of a _Magdalen_, which had already been mentioned more than
once in the correspondence. According to Vasari and subsequent
authorities, Silvio Badoer, a Venetian patrician, saw the masterpiece on
the painter's easel, and took it away for a hundred scudi, leaving the
master to paint another for Philip. This last has disappeared, while the
canvas which remained in Venice cannot be identified with any
certainty. The finest extant example of this type of _Magdalen_ is
undoubtedly that which from Titian's ne'er-do-well son, Pompinio, passed
to the Barbarigo family, and ultimately, with the group of Titians
forming part of the Barbarigo collection, found its way into the
Imperial Gallery of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. This answers in
every respect to Vasari's eloquent description of the _magna peccatrix_,
lovely still in her penitence. It is an embodiment of the favourite
subject, infinitely finer and more moving than the much earlier
_Magdalen_ of the Pitti, in which the artist's sole preoccupation has
been the alluring portraiture of exuberant feminine charms. This later
_Magdalen_, as Vasari says, "ancorche che sia bellissima, non muove a
lascivia, ma a commiserazione," and the contrary might, without
exaggeration, be said of the Pitti picture.[52] Another of the Barbarigo
heirlooms which so passed into the Hermitage is the ever-popular _Venus
with the Mirror_, the original of many repetitions and variations. Here,
while one winged love holds the mirror, the other proffers a crown of
flowers, not to the goddess, but to the fairest of women. The rich
mantle of Venetian fashion, the jewels, the coiffure, all show that an
idealised portrait of some lovely Cytherean of Venice, and no true
mythological piece, has been intended.
At this date, or thereabouts, is very generally placed, with the _Rape
of Europa_ presently to be discussed, the _Jupiter and Antiope_ of the
Louvre, more popularly known as the _Venere del Pardo_.[53] Seeing that
the picture is included in the list[54] sent by Titian to Antonio Perez
in 1574, setting forth the titles of canvases delivered during the last
twenty-five years, and then still unpaid for, it may well have been
completed somewhere about the time at which we have arrived. To the
writer it appears nevertheless that it is in essentials the work of an
earlier period, taken up and finished thus late in the day for the
delectation of the Spanish king. Seeing that the _Venere del Pardo_ has
gone through two fires--those of the Pardo and the Louvre--besides
cleanings, restorations, and repaintings, even more disfiguring, it
would be very unsafe to lay undue stress on technique alone. Yet compare
the close, sculptural modelling in the figure of Antiope with the
broader, looser handling in the figure of Europa; compare the two
landscapes, which are even more divergent in style. The glorious sylvan
prospect, which adds so much freshness and beauty to the _Venere del
Pardo_, is conspicuously earlier in manner than, for instance, the
backgrounds to the _Diana and Actaeon_ and _Diana and Calisto_ of
Bridgewater House. The captivating work is not without its faults, chief
among which is the curious awkwardness of design which makes of the
composition, cut in two by a central tree, two pictures instead of one.
Undeniably, too, there is a certain meanness and triviality in the
little nymph or mortal of the foreground, which may, however, be due to
the intervention of an assistant. But then, with an elasticity truly
astounding in a man of his great age, the master has momentarily
regained the poetry of his youthful prime, and with it a measure of that
Giorgionesque fragrance which was evaporating already at the close of
the early time, when the _Bacchanals_ were brought forth. The Antiope
herself far transcends in the sovereign charm of her beauty--divine in
the truer sense of the word--all Titian's Venuses, save the one in the
_Sacred and Profane Love_. The figure comes in some ways nearer even in
design, and infinitely nearer in feeling, to Giorgione's _Venus_ at
Dresden than does the _Venus of Urbino_ in the Tribuna, which was
closely modelled upon it. And the aged Titian had gone back even a step
farther than Giorgione; the group of Antiope with Jupiter in the guise
of a Satyr is clearly a reminiscence of a _Nymph surprised by a
Satyr_--one of the engravings in the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ first
published in 1499, but republished with the same illustrations in
1545.[55]
[Illustration: _The Rape of Europa. From the Engraving by J.Z.
Delignon_.]
According to the correspondence published by Crowe and Cavalcaselle
there were completed for the Spanish King in April 1562 the _Poesy of
Europa carried by the Bull_, and the _Christ praying in the Garden_,
while a _Virgin and Child_ was announced as in progress.
These paintings, widely divergent as they are in subject, answer very
well to each other in technical execution, while in both they differ
very materially from the _Venere del Pardo_. The _Rape of Europa_, which
has retained very much of its blond brilliancy and charm of colour,
affords convincing proof of the unrivalled power with which Titian still
wielded the brush at this stage which precedes that of his very last and
most impressionistic style. For decorative effect, for "go," for
frankness and breadth of execution, it could not be surpassed. Yet
hardly elsewhere has the great master approached so near to positive
vulgarity as here in the conception of the fair Europa as a strapping
wench who, with ample limbs outstretched, complacently allows herself to
be carried off by the Bull, making her appeal for succour merely _pour
la forme_. What gulfs divide this conception from that of the Antiope,
from Titian's earlier renderings of female loveliness, from Giorgione's
supreme Venus![56]
[Illustration: _Portrait of Titian, by himself. Gallery of the Prado,
Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie_.]
The _Agony in the Garden_, which is still to be found in one of the
halls of the Escorial, even now in its faded state serves to evidence
the intensity of religious fervour which possessed Titian when, so late
in life, he successfully strove to renew the sacred subjects. If the
composition--as Crowe and Cavalcaselle assert--does more or less
resemble that of the famous _Agony_ by Correggio now at Apsley House,
nothing could differ more absolutely from the Parmese master's amiable
virtuosity than the aged Titian's deep conviction.[57]
To the year 1562 belongs the nearly profile portrait of the artist,
painted by himself with a subtler refinement and a truer revelation of
self than is to be found in those earlier canvases of Berlin and the
Uffizi in which his late prime still shows as a green and vigorous
manhood. This is now in the _Sala de la Reina Isabel_ of the Prado. The
pale noble head, refined by old age to a solemn beauty, is that of one
brought face to face with the world beyond; it is the face of the man
who could conceive and paint the sacred pieces of the end, the _Ecce
Homo_ of Munich and the last _Pieta_, with an awe such as we here read
in his eyes. Much less easy is it to connect this likeness with the
artist who went on concurrently producing his Venuses, mythological
pieces, and pastorals, and joying as much as ever in their production.
Vasari, who, as will be seen, visited Venice in 1566, when he was
preparing that new and enlarged edition of the _Lives_ which was to
appear in 1568, had then an opportunity of renewing his friendly
acquaintance with the splendid old man whom he had last seen, already
well stricken in years, twenty-one years before in Rome. It must have
been at this stage that he formed the judgment as to the latest manner
of Titian which is so admirably expressed in his biography of the
master. Speaking especially of the _Diana and Actaeon_, the _Rape of
Europa_, and the _Deliverance of Andromeda_,[58] he delivers himself as
follows:--"It is indeed true that his technical manner in these last is
very different from that of his youth. The first works are, be it
remembered, carried out with incredible delicacy and pains, so that they
can be looked at both at close quarters and from afar. These last ones
are done with broad coarse strokes and blots of colour, in such wise
that they cannot be appreciated near at hand, but from afar look
perfect. This style has been the cause that many, thinking therein to
play the imitators and to make a display of practical skill, have
produced clumsy, bad pictures. This is so, because, notwithstanding that
to many it may seem that Titian's works are done without labour, this is
not so in truth, and they who think so deceive themselves. It is, on the
contrary, to be perceived that they are painted at many sittings, that
they have been worked upon with the colours so many times as to make the
labour evident; and this method of execution is judicious, beautiful,
astonishing, because it makes the pictures seem living."
No better proof could be given of Vasari's genuine _flair_ and intuition
as a critic of art than this passage. We seem to hear, not the Tuscan
painter bred to regard the style of Michelangelo as an article of faith,
to imitate his sculptural smoothness of finish and that of Angelo
Bronzino, but some intelligent exponent of impressionistic methods,
defending both from attack and from superficial imitation one of the
most advanced of modernists.
Among the sacred works produced in this late time is a _Crucifixion_,
still preserved in a damaged state in the church of S. Domenico at
Ancona. To a period somewhat earlier than that at which we have arrived
may belong the late _Madonna and Child in a Landscape_ which is No.
1113 in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. The writer follows Giovanni
Morelli in believing that this is a studio picture touched by the
master, and that the splendidly toned evening landscape is all his. He
cannot surely be made wholly responsible for the overgrown and inflated
figure of the divine _Bambino_, so disproportionate, so entirely wanting
in tenderness and charm.
The power of vivid conception, the spontaneous fervour which mark
Titian's latest efforts in the domain of sacred art, are very evident in
the great _St. Jerome_ of the Brera here reproduced. Cima, Basaiti, and
most of the Bellinesques had shown an especial affection for the
subject, and it had been treated too by Lotto, by Giorgione, by Titian
himself; but this is surely as noble and fervent a rendering as Venetian
art in its prime has brought forth. Of extraordinary majesty and beauty
is the landscape, with its mighty trees growing out of the abrupt
mountain slope, close to the naked rock.
In the autumn of 1564 we actually find the venerable master, then about
eighty-seven years of age, taking a journey to Brescia in connection
with an important commission given to him for the decoration of the
great hall in the Palazzo Pubblico at Brescia, to which the Vicentine
artist Righetto had supplied the ceiling, and Palladio had added columns
and interior wall-decorations. The three great ceiling-pictures, which
were afterwards, as a consequence of the contract then entered upon,
executed by the master, or rather by his assistants, endured only until
1575, when in the penultimate year of Titian's life they perished in a
great fire.
The correspondence shows that the vast _Last Supper_ painted for the
Refectory of the Escorial, and still to be found there, was finished in
October 1564, and that there was much haggling and finessing on the part
of the artist before it was despatched to Spain, the object being to
secure payment of the arrears of pension still withheld by the Milanese
officials. When the huge work did arrive at the Escorial the monks
perpetrated upon it one of those acts of vandalism of which Titian was
in more than one instance the victim. Finding that the picture would not
fit the particular wall of their refectory for which it had been
destined, they ruthlessly cut it down, slicing off a large piece of the
upper part, and throwing the composition out of balance by the
mutilation of the architectural background.
[Illustration: _St. Jerome in the Desert. Gallery of the Brera, Milan.
From a Photograph by Anderson_.]
Passing over the _Transfiguration_ on the high altar of San Salvatore
at Venice, we come to the _Annunciation_ in the same church with the
signature "Titianus fecit fecit," added by the master, if we are to
credit the legend, in indignation that those who commissioned the canvas
should have shown themselves dissatisfied even to the point of
expressing incredulity as to his share in the performance. Some doubt
has been cast upon this story, which may possibly have been evolved on
the basis of the peculiar signature. It is at variance with Vasari's
statement that Titian held the picture in slight esteem in comparison
with his other works. It is not to be contested that for all the fine
passages of colour and execution, the general tone is paler in its
silveriness, less vibrant and effective on the whole, than in many of
the masterpieces which have been mentioned in their turn. But the
conception is a novel and magnificent one, contrasting instructively in
its weightiness and majesty with the more naive and pathetic renderings
of an earlier time.
The _Education of Cupid_, popularly but erroneously known as _The Three
Graces_[59] is one of the pearls of the Borghese Gallery. It is clearly
built in essentials on the master's own _d'Avalos Allegory_, painted
many years before. This later allegory shows Venus binding the eyes of
Love ere he sallies forth into the world, while his bow and his quiver
well-stocked with arrows are brought forward by two of the Graces. In
its conception there is no great freshness or buoyancy, no pretence at
invention. The aged magician of the brush has interested himself more in
the execution than in the imagining of his picture. It is a fine and
typical specimen of the painting _di macchia_, which Vasari has praised
in a passage already quoted. A work such as this bears in technique much
the same relation to the productions of Titian's first period that the
great _Family Picture_ of Rembrandt at Brunswick does to his work done
some thirty-five or forty years before. In both instances it is a
life-time of legitimate practice that has permitted the old man to
indulge without danger in an abridgment of labour, a synthetic
presentment of fact, which means no abatement, but in some ways an
enhancement of life, breadth, and pictorial effect. To much about the
same time, judging from the handling and the types, belongs the curious
allegory, _Religion succoured by Spain_--otherwise _La Fe_--now No. 476
in the gallery of the Prado. This canvas, notwithstanding a marked
superficiality of invention as well as of execution, is in essentials
the master's own; moreover it can boast its own special decorative
qualities, void though it is of any deep significance. The showy figure
of Spain holding aloft in one hand a standard, and with the other
supporting a shield emblazoned with the arms of the realm, recalls the
similar creations of Paolo Veronese. Titian has rarely been less happily
inspired than in the figure of Religion, represented as a naked female
slave newly released from bondage.
[Illustration: _The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese,
Rome. From a Photograph by E. Alinari_.]
When Vasari in 1566 paid the visit to Venice, of which a word has
already been said, he noted, among a good many other things then in
progress, the _Martyrdom of St. Lawrence_, based upon that now at the
Gesuiti in Venice. This was despatched nearly two years later to the
Escorial, where it still occupies its place on the high altar of the
mighty church dedicated to St. Lawrence. The Brescian ceiling canvases
appeared, too, in his list as unfinished. They were sent to their
destination early in 1568, to be utterly destroyed, as has been told, by
fire in 1575.
The best proof we have that Titian's artistic power was in many respects
at its highest in 1566, is afforded by the magnificent portrait of the
Mantuan painter and antiquary Jacopo da Strada, now in the Imperial
Gallery at Vienna. It bears, besides the usual late signature of the
master, the description of the personage with all his styles and titles,
and the date MDLXVI. The execution is again _di macchia_, but
magnificent in vitality, as in impressiveness of general effect, swift
but not hasty or superficial. The reserve and dignity of former male
portraits is exchanged for a more febrile vivacity, akin to that which
Lotto had in so many of his finest works displayed. His peculiar style
is further recalled in the rather abrupt inclination of the figure and
the parallel position of the statuette which it holds. But none other
than Titian himself could have painted the superb head, which he himself
has hardly surpassed.
It is curious and instructive to find the artist, in a letter addressed
to Philip on the 2nd of December 1567, announcing the despatch,
together with the just now described altar-piece, _The Martyrdom of St.
Lawrence_, of "una pittura d'una Venere ignuda"--the painting of a nude
Venus. Thus is the peculiar double current of the aged painter's genius
maintained by the demand for both classes of work. He well knows that to
the Most Catholic Majesty very secular pieces indeed will be not less
acceptable than those much-desired sacred works in which now Titian's
power of invention is greatest.
[Illustration: _Religion succoured by Spain. Gallery of the Prado,
Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie_.]
Our master, in his dealings with the Brescians, after the completion of
the extensive decorations for the Palazzo Pubblico, was to have proof
that Italian citizens were better judges of art than the King of Spain,
and more grudging if prompter paymasters. They declared, not without
some foundation in fact, that the canvases were not really from the hand
of Titian, and refused to pay more than one thousand ducats for them.
The negotiation was conducted--as were most others at that time--by the
trusty Orazio, who after much show of indignation was compelled at last
to accept the proffered payment.
[Illustration: _Portrait of the Antiquary Jacopo da Strada. Imperial
Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Loewy_.]
[Illustration: _Madonna and Child. Collection of Mr. Ludwig Mond_.]
The great victory of Lepanto, gained by the united fleets of Spain and
Venice over the Turk on the 7th of October 1571, gave fitting occasion
for one of Paolo Veronese's most radiant masterpieces, the celebrated
votive picture of the Sala del Collegio, for Tintoretto's _Battle of
Lepanto_, but also for one of Titian's feeblest works, the allegory
_Philip II. offering to Heaven his Son, the Infant Don Ferdinand_, now
No. 470 in the gallery of the Prado. That Sanchez Coello, under special
directions from the king, prepared the sketch which was to serve as the
basis for the definitive picture may well have hampered and annoyed the
aged master. Still this is but an insufficient excuse for the
absurdities of the design, culminating in the figure of the descending
angel, who is represented in one of those strained, over-bold attitudes,
in which Titian, even at his best, never achieved complete success. That
he was not, all the same, a stranger to the work, is proved by some
flashes of splendid colour, some fine passages of execution.
In the four pieces now to be shortly described, the very latest and most
impressionistic form of Titian's method as a painter is to be observed;
all of them are in the highest degree characteristic of this ultimate
phase. In the beautiful _Madonna and Child_ here reproduced,[60] the
hand, though it no longer works with all trenchant vigour of earlier
times, produces a magical effect by means of unerring science and a
certainty of touch justifying such economy of mere labour as is by the
system of execution suggested to the eye. And then this pathetic motive,
the simple realism, the unconventional treatment of which are
spiritualised by infinite tenderness, is a new thing in Venetian, nay in
Italian art. Precisely similar in execution, and equally restrained in
the scheme of colour adopted, is the _Christ crowned with Thorns_ of the
Alte Pinakothek at Munich, a reproduction with important variations of
the better-known picture in the Long Gallery of the Louvre. Less
demonstratively and obviously dramatic than its predecessor, the Munich
example is, as a realisation of the scene, far truer and more profound
in pathos. Nobler beyond compare in His unresisting acceptance of insult
and suffering is the Munich Christ than the corresponding figure, so
violent in its instinctive recoil from pain, of the Louvre picture.
[Illustration: _Christ crowned with Thorns. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
From a Photograph by F. Hanfstaengl_.]
It is nothing short of startling at the very end of Titian's career to
meet with a work which, expressed in this masterly late technique of
his, vies in freshness of inspiration with the finest of his early
_poesie_. This is the _Nymph and Shepherd_[61] of the Imperial Gallery
at Vienna, a picture which the world had forgotten until it was added,
or rather restored, to the State collection on its transference from the
Belvedere to the gorgeous palace which it now occupies. In its almost
monochromatic harmony of embrowned silver the canvas embodies more
absolutely than any other, save perhaps the final _Pieta_, the ideal of
tone-harmony towards which the master in his late time had been steadily
tending. Richness and brilliancy of local colour are subordinated, and
this time up to the point of effacement, to this luminous monotone, so
mysteriously effective in the hands of a master such as Titian. In the
solemn twilight which descends from the heavens, just faintly flushed
with rose, an amorous shepherd, flower-crowned, pipes to a nude nymph,
who, half-won by the appealing strain, turns her head as she lies
luxuriously extended on a wild beast's hide, covering the grassy knoll;
in the distance a strayed goat browses on the leafage of a projecting
branch. It may not be concealed that a note of ardent sensuousness still
makes itself felt, as it does in most of the later pieces of the same
class. But here, transfigured by a freshness of poetic inspiration
hardly to be traced in the master's work in pieces of this order, since
those early Giorgionesque days when the sixteenth century was in its
youth, it offends no more than does an idyll of Theocritus. Since the
_Three Ages_ of Bridgewater House, divided from the _Nymph and Shepherd_
by nearly seventy years of life and labour, Titian had produced nothing
which, apart from the question of technical execution, might so nearly
be paralleled with that exquisite pastoral. The early _poesia_ gives,
wrapped in clear even daylight, the perfect moment of trusting,
satisfied love; the late one, with less purity, but, strange to say,
with a higher passion, renders, beautified by an evening light more
solemn and suggestive, the divine ardours fanned by solitude and
opportunity.
And now we come to the _Pieta_,[62] which so nobly and appropriately
closes a career unexampled for duration and sustained achievement.
Titian had bargained with the Franciscan monks of the Frari, which
contained already the _Assunta_ and the _Madonna di Casa Pesaro_, for a
grave in the Cappella del Crocifisso, offering in payment a _Pieta_, and
this offer had been accepted. But some misunderstanding and consequent
quarrel having been the ultimate outcome of the proposed arrangements,
he left his great canvas unfinished, and willed that his body should be
taken to Cadore, and there buried in the chapel of the Vecelli.
[Illustration: _Pieta. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle
Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by E. Alinari._]
The well-known inscription on the base of the monumental niche which
occupies the centre of the _Pieta_, "Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit,
Palma reverenter absolvit, Deoque dicavit opus," records how what Titian
had left undone was completed as reverently as might be by Palma
Giovine. At this stage--the question being much complicated by
subsequent restorations--the effort to draw the line accurately between
the work of the master on one hand and that of his able and pious
assistant on the other, would be unprofitable. Let us rather strive to
appreciate what is left of a creation unique in the life-work of Titian,
and in some ways his most sublime invention. Genius alone could have
triumphed over the heterogeneous and fantastic surroundings in which he
has chosen to enframe his great central group. And yet even these--the
great rusticated niche with the gold mosaic of the pelican feeding its
young, the statues of Moses on one side and of the Hellespontic Sibyl on
the other--but serve to heighten the awe of the spectator. The
artificial light is obtained in part from a row of crystal lamps on the
cornice of the niche, in part, too, from the torch borne by the
beautiful boy-angel who hovers in mid-air, yet another focus of
illumination being the body of the dead Christ. This system of lighting
furnishes just the luminous half-gloom, the deeply significant
chiaroscuro, that the painter requires in order to give the most
poignant effect to his last and most thrilling conception of the world's
tragedy. As is often the case with Tintoretto, but more seldom with
Titian, the eloquent passion breathed forth in this _Pieta_ is not to be
accounted for by any element or elements of the composition taken
separately; it depends to so great an extent on the poetic
suggestiveness of the illumination, on the strange and indefinable power
of evocation that the aged master here exceptionally commands.
Wonderfully does the terrible figure of the Magdalen contrast in its
excess of passion with the sculptural repose, the permanence of the main
group. As she starts forward, almost menacing in her grief, her loud and
bitter cry seems to ring through space, accusing all mankind of its
great crime. It is with a conviction far more intense than has ever
possessed him in his prime, with an awe nearly akin to terror, that
Titian, himself trembling on the verge of eternity, and painting, too,
that which shall purchase his own grave, has produced this profoundly
moving work. No more fitting end and crown to the great achievements of
the master's old age could well be imagined.
There is no temptation to dwell unnecessarily upon the short period of
horror and calamity with which this glorious life came to an end. If
Titian had died a year earlier, his biographer might still have wound
up with those beautiful words of Vasari's peroration: "E stato Tiziano
sanissimo et fortunate quant' alcun altro suo pari sia stato ancor mai;
e non ha mai avuto dai cieli se non favori e felicita." Too true it is,
alas, that no man's life may be counted happy until its close! Now comes
upon the great city this all-enveloping horror of the plague, beginning
in 1575, but in 1576 attaining to such vast proportions as to sweep away
more than a quarter of the whole population of 190,000 inhabitants. On
the 17th of August, 1576, old Titian is attacked and swept
away--surprised, as one would like to believe, while still at work on
his _Pieta_. Even at such a moment, when panic reigns supreme, and the
most honoured, the most dearly beloved are left untended, he is not to
be hurried into an unmarked grave. Notwithstanding the sanitary law
which forbids the burial of one who has succumbed to the plague in any
of the city churches, he receives the supreme and at this awful moment
unique honour of solemn obsequies. The body is taken with all due
observance to the great church of the Frari, and there interred in the
Cappella del Crocifisso, which Titian has already, before the quarrel
with the Franciscans, designated as his final resting-place. He is
spared the grief of knowing that the favourite son, Orazio, for whom all
these years he has laboured and schemed, is to follow him immediately,
dying also of the plague, and not even at Biri Grande, but in the
Lazzaretto Vecchio, near the Lido; that the incorrigible Pomponio is to
succeed and enjoy the inheritance after his own unworthy fashion. He is
spared the knowledge of the great calamity of 1577, the destruction by
fire of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, and with it, of the _Battle of
Cadore_, and most of the noble work done officially for the Doges and
the Signoria. One would like to think that this catastrophe of the end
must have come suddenly upon the venerable master like a hideous dream,
appearing to him, as death often does to those upon whom it descends,
less significant than it does to us who read. Instead of remaining fixed
in sad contemplation of this short final moment when the radiant orb
goes suddenly down below the horizon in storm and cloud, let us keep
steadily in view the light as, serene in its far-reaching radiance, it
illuminated the world for eighty splendid years. Let us think of Titian
as the greatest painter, if not the greatest genius in art, that the
world has produced; as, what Vasari with such conviction described him
to be, "the man as highly favoured by fortune as any of his kind had
ever been before him."[63]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "The Earlier Work of Titian," _Portfolio_, October 1897.]
[Footnote 2: According to the catalogue of 1892, this picture was
formerly in the sacristy of the Escorial in Spain. It can only be by an
oversight that it is therein described as "possibly painted there,"
since Titian never was in Spain.]
[Footnote 3: It is especially to be noted that there is not a trace of
red in the picture, save for the modest crimson waistband of the St.
Catherine. Contrary to almost universal usage, it might almost be said
to orthodoxy, the entire draperies of the Virgin are of one intense
blue. Her veil-like head-gear is of a brownish gray, while the St.
Catherine wears a golden-brown scarf, continuing the glories of her
elaborately dressed hair. The audacity of the colour-scheme is only
equalled by its success; no calculated effort at anything unusual being
apparent. The beautiful naked _putto_ who appears in the sky, arresting
the progress of the shepherds, is too trivial in conception for the
occasion. A similar incident is depicted in the background of the much
earlier _Holy Family_, No. 4. at the National Gallery, but there the
messenger angel is more appropriately and more reverently depicted as
full-grown and in flowing garments.]
[Footnote 4: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i. pp. 396, 397; _Tizian_, von
H. Knackfuss, p. 55.]
[Footnote 5: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Appendix to vol. i. p. 448.]
[Footnote 6: No. 1288 in the Long Gallery of the Louvre.]
[Footnote 7: See the canvas No. 163 in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna.
The want of life and of a definite personal character makes it almost
repellent, notwithstanding the breadth and easy mastery of the
technique. Rubens's copy of a lost or unidentified Titian, No. 845 in
the same gallery, shows that he painted Isabella from life in mature
middle age, and with a truthfulness omitting no sign of over-ripeness.
This portrait may very possibly have been done in 1522, when Titian
appeared at the court of the Gonzagas. Its realism, even allowing for
Rubens's unconscious exaggeration, might well have deterred the Gonzaga
princess from being limned from life some twelve years later still.]
[Footnote 8: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i., Appendix, p. 451.]
[Footnote 9: The idea of painting St. Jerome by moonlight was not a new
one. In the house at Venice of Andrea Odoni, the dilettante whose famous
portrait by Lotto is at Hampton Court, the Anonimo (Marcantonio Michiel)
saw, in 1532, "St. Jerome seated naked in a desert landscape by
moonlight, by ---- (sic), copied from a canvas by Zorzi da Castelfranco
(Giorgione)."]
[Footnote 10: See "The Picture Gallery of Charles I.," _The Portfolio_,
January 1896, pp. 49 and 99.]
[Footnote 11: The somewhat similar _Allegories_ No. 173 and No. 187 in
the Imperial Gallery at Vienna (New Catalogue, 1895), both classed as by
Titian, cannot take rank as more than atelier works. Still farther from
the master is the _Initiation of a Bacchante_, No. 1116 (Cat. 1891), in
the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. This is a piece too cold and hard, too
opaque, to have come even from his studio. It is a _pasticcio_ made up
in a curiously mechanical way, from the Louvre _Allegory_ and the quite
late _Education of Cupid_ in the Borghese Gallery; the latter
composition having been manifestly based by Titian himself, according to
what became something like a custom in old age, upon the earlier
_Allegory_.]
[Footnote 12: A rather tiresome and lifeless portrait of Ippolito is
that to be found in the picture No. 20 in the National Gallery, in which
it has been assumed that his companion is his favourite painter,
Sebastiano del Piombo, to whom the picture is, not without some
misgivings, attributed.]
[Footnote 13: It has been photographed under this name by Anderson of
Rome.]
[Footnote 14: In much the same position, since it hardly enjoys the
celebrity to which it is entitled, is another masterpiece of portraiture
from the brush of Titian, which, as belonging to his earlier middle
time, should more properly have been mentioned in the first section of
this monograph. This is the great _Portrait of a Man in Black_, No. 1591
in the Louvre. It shows a man of some forty years, of simple mien yet of
indefinably tragic aspect; he wears moderately long hair, is clothed
entirely in black, and rests his right hand on his hip, while passing
the left through his belt. The dimensions of the canvas are more
imposing than those of the _Jeune Homme au Gant_. No example in the
Louvre, even though it competes with Madrid for the honour of possessing
the greatest Titians in the world, is of finer quality than this
picture. Near this--No. 1592 in the same great gallery--hangs another
_Portrait of a Man in Black_ by Titian, and belonging to his middle
time. The personage presented, though of high breeding, is cynical and
repellent of aspect. The strong right hand rests quietly yet menacingly
on a poniard, this attitude serving to give a peculiarly aggressive
character to the whole conception. In the present state of this fine and
striking picture the yellowness and want of transparency of the
flesh-tones, both in the head and hands, gives rise to certain doubts as
to the correctness of the ascription. Yet this peculiarity may well
arise from injury; it would at any rate be hazardous to put forward any
other name than that of Titian, to whom we must be content to leave the
portrait.]
[Footnote 15: This is the exceedingly mannered yet all the same rich and
beautiful _St. Catherine, St. Roch, with a boy angel, and St.
Sebastian_.]
[Footnote 16: See Giorgione's _Adrastus and Hypsipyle (Landscape with
the Soldier and the Gipsy)_ of the Giovanelli Palace, the _Venus_ of
Dresden, the _Concert Champetre_ of the Louvre.]
[Footnote 17: It is unnecessary in this connection to speak of the
Darmstadt _Venus_ invented by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and to which as a
type they so constantly refer. Giovanni Morelli has demonstrated with
very general acceptance that this is only a late adaptation of the
exquisite _Venus_ of Dresden, which it is his greatest glory to have
restored to Barbarelli and to the world.]
[Footnote 18: _Die Galerien zu Muenchen und Dresden von Ivan Lermolieff_,
p. 290.]
[Footnote 19: Palma Vecchio, in his presentments of ripe Venetian
beauty, was, we have seen, much more literal than Giorgione, more
literal, too, less the poet-painter, than the young Titian. Yet in the
great _Venus_ of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge--not, indeed, in that
of Dresden--his ideal is a higher one than Titian's in such pieces as
the _Venus of Urbino_ and the later _Venus_, its companion, in the
Tribuna. The two Bonifazi of Verona followed Palma, giving, however, to
the loveliness of their women not, indeed, a more exalted character, but
a less pronounced sensuousness--an added refinement but a weaker
personality. Paris Bordone took the note from Titian, but being less a
great artist than a fine painter, descended a step lower in the scale.
Paolo Veronese unaffectedly joys in the beauty of woman, in the sheen of
fair flesh, without any under-current of deeper meaning. Tintoretto,
though like his brother Venetians he delights in the rendering of the
human form unveiled, is but little disquieted by the fascinating problem
which now occupies us. He is by nature strangely spiritual, though he is
far from indulging in any false idealisation, though he shrinks not at
all from the statement of the truth as it presents itself to him. Let
his famous pictures in the Anticollegio of the Doges' Palace, his
_Muses_ at Hampton Court, and above all that unique painted poem, _The
Rescue_, in the Dresden Gallery, serve to support this view of his art.]
[Footnote 20: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Life of Titian_, vol. i. p. 420.]
[Footnote 21: Two of these have survived in the _Roman Emperor on
Horseback_, No. 257, and the similarly named picture, No. 290, at
Hampton Court Palace. These panels were among the Mantua pieces
purchased for Charles I. by Daniel Nys from Duke Vincenzo in 1628-29. If
the Hampton Court pieces are indeed, as there appears no valid reason to
doubt, two of the canvases mentioned by Vasari, we must assume that
though they bore Giulio's name as _chef d'atelier_, he did little work
on them himself. In the Mantuan catalogue contained in d'Arco's
_Notizie_ they were entered thus:--"Dieci altri quadri, dipintovi un
imperatore per quadro a cavallo--opera di mano di Giulio Romano" (see
_The Royal Gallery of Hampton Court_, by Ernest Law, 1898).]
[Footnote 22: The late Charles Yriarte in a recent article, "Sabionneta
la petite Athenes," published in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, March
1898, states that Bernardino Campi of Cremona, Giulio's subordinate at
the moment, painted the Twelfth _Caesar_, but adduces no evidence in
support of this departure from the usual assumption.]
[Footnote 23: See "The Picture Gallery of Charles I.," _The Portfolio_,
October 1897, pp. 98, 99.]
[Footnote 24: Nos. 529-540--Catalogue of 1891--Provincial Museum of
Hanover. The dimensions are 0.19 _c._ by 0.15 _c._]
[Footnote 25: Of all Pordenone's exterior decorations executed in Venice
nothing now remains. His only works of importance in the Venetian
capital are the altar-piece in S. Giovanni Elemosinario already
mentioned; the _San Lorenzo Giustiniani_ altar-piece in the Accademia
delle Belle Arti; the magnificent though in parts carelessly painted
_Madonna del Carmelo_ in the same gallery; the vast _St. Martin and St.
Christopher_ in the church of S. Rocco; the _Annunciation_ of S. Maria
degli Angeli at Murano.]
[Footnote 26: No. 108 in the Winter Exhibition at Burlington House in
1896. By Franceschini is no doubt meant Paolo degli Franceschi, whose
portrait Titian is known to have painted. He has been identified among
the figures in the foreground of the _Presentation of the Virgin_.]
[Footnote 27: See a very interesting article, "Vittore Carpaccio--La
Scuola degli Albanesi," by Dr. Gustav Ludwig, in the _Archivio Storico
dell' Arte_ for November-December 1897.]
[Footnote 28: A gigantic canvas of this order is, or rather was, the
famous _Storm_ of the Venetian Accademia, which has for many years past
been dubitatively assigned to Giorgione. Vasari described it as by Palma
Vecchio, stating that it was painted for the Scuola di S. Marco in the
Piazza SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in rivalry with Gian Bellino(!) and
Mansueti, and referring to it in great detail and with a more fervent
enthusiasm than he accords to any other Venetian picture. To the writer,
judging from the parts of the original which have survived, it has long
appeared that this may indeed be after all the right attribution. The
ascription to Giorgione is mainly based on the romantic character of the
invention, which certainly does not answer to anything that we know from
the hand or brain of Palma. But then the learned men who helped
Giorgione and Titian may well have helped him; and the structure of the
thick-set figures in the foreground is absolutely his, as is also the
sunset light on the horizon.]
[Footnote 29: This is an arrangement analogous to that with the aid of
which Tintoretto later on, in the _Crucifixion_ of San Cassiano at
Venice, attains to so sublime an effect. There the spears--not
brandished but steadily held aloft in rigid and inflexible
regularity--strangely heighten the solemn tragedy of the scene.]
[Footnote 30: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Life of Titian_, vol. vi. p. 59.]
[Footnote 31: The writer is unable to accept as a genuine design by
Titian for the picture the well-known sepia drawing in the collection of
the Uffizi. The composition is too clumsy in its mechanical repetition
of parts, the action of the Virgin too awkward. The design looks more
like an adaptation by some Bolognese eclectic.]
[Footnote 32: This double portrait has not been preserved. According to
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the full length of Pier Luigi still exists in
the Palazzo Reale at Naples (not seen by the writer).]
[Footnote 33: The writer, who has studied in the originals all the other
Titians mentioned in this monograph, has had as yet no opportunity of
examining those in the Hermitage. He knows them only in the
reproductions of Messrs. Braun, and in those new and admirable ones
recently published by the Berlin Photographic Company.]
[Footnote 34: This study from the life would appear to bear some such
relation to the finished original as the _Innocent X._ of Velazquez at
Apsley House bears to the great portrait of that Pope in the Doria
Panfili collection.]
[Footnote 35: This portrait-group belongs properly to the time a few
years ahead, since it was undertaken during Titian's stay in Rome.]
[Footnote 36: The imposing signature runs _Titianus Eques Ces. F.
1543._]
[Footnote 37: The type is not the nobler and more suave one seen in the
_Cristo della Moneta_ and the _Pilgrims of Emmaus_; it is the much less
exalted one which is reproduced in the _Ecce Homo_ of Madrid, and in the
many repetitions and variations related to that picture, which cannot
itself be accepted as an original from the hand of Titian.]
[Footnote 38: Vasari saw a _Christ with Cleophas and Luke_ by Titian,
above the door in the Salotta d'Oro, which precedes the Sala del
Consiglio de' Dieci in the Doges' Palace, and states that it had been
acquired by the patrician Alessandro Contarini and by him presented to
the Signoria. The evidence of successive historians would appear to
prove that it remained there until the close of last century. According
to Crowe and Cavalcaselle the Louvre picture was a replica done for
Mantua, which with the other Gonzaga pictures found its way into Charles
I.'s collection, and thence, through that of Jabach, finally into the
gallery of Louis XIV. At the sale of the royal collection by the
Commonwealth it was appraised at L600. The picture bears the signature,
unusual for this period, "Tician." There is another _Christ with the
Pilgrims at Emmaus_ in the collection of the Earl of Yarborough, signed
"Titianus," in which, alike as to the figures, the scheme of colour, and
the landscape, there are important variations. One point is of especial
importance. Behind the figure of St. Luke in the Yarborough picture is a
second pillar. This is not intended to appear in the Louvre picture; yet
underneath the glow of the landscape there is just the shadow of such a
pillar, giving evidence of a _pentimento_ on the part of the master.
This, so far as it goes, is evidence that the Louvre example was a
revised version, and the Yarborough picture a repetition or adaptation
of the first original seen by Vasari. However this may be, there can be
no manner of doubt that the picture in the Long Gallery of the Louvre is
an original entirely from the hand of Titian, while Lord Yarborough's
picture shows nothing of his touch and little even of the manner of his
studio at the time.]
[Footnote 39: Purchased at the sale of Charles I.'s collection by Alonso
de Cardenas for Philip IV. at the price of L165.]
[Footnote 40: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Life of Titian_, vol. ii.,
Appendix (p. 502).]
[Footnote 41: Moritz Thausing has striven in his _Wiener Kunstbriefe_ to
show that the coat of arms on the marble bas-relief in the _Sacred and
Profane Love_ is that of the well-known Nuremberg house of Imhof. This
interpretation has, however, been controverted by Herz Franz Wickhoff.]
[Footnote 42: Cesare Vecellio must have been very young at this time.
The costume-book, _Degli abiti antichi e moderni_, to which he owes his
chief fame, was published at Venice in 1590.]
[Footnote 43: "Das Tizianbildniss der koeniglichen Galerie zu Cassel,"
_Jahrbuch der koeniglich-preussischen Kunstsammlungen_, Funfzehnter Band,
III. Heft.]
[Footnote 44: See the _Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino_ at the Uffizi;
also, for the modish headpiece, the _Ippolito de' Medici_ at the Pitti.]
[Footnote 45: A number of fine portraits must of necessity be passed
over in these remarks. The superb if not very well-preserved _Antonio
Portia_, within the last few years added to the Brera, dates back a good
many years from this time. Then we have, among other things, the
_Benedetto Varchi_ and the _Fabrizio Salvaresio_ of the Imperial Museum
at Vienna--the latter bearing the date 1558. The writer is unable to
accept as a genuine Titian the interesting but rather matter-of-fact
_Portrait of a Lady in Mourning_, No. 174 in the Dresden Gallery. The
master never painted with such a lack of charm and distinction. Very
doubtful, but difficult to judge in its present state, is the _Portrait
of a Lady with a Vase_, No. 173 in the same collection. Morelli accepts
as a genuine example of the master the _Portrait of a Lady in a Red
Dress_ also in the Dresden Gallery, where it bears the number 176. If
the picture is his, as the technical execution would lead the observer
to believe, it constitutes in its stiffness and unambitious _naivete_ a
curious exception in his long series of portraits.]
[Footnote 46: It is impossible to discuss here the atelier repetitions
in the collections of the National Gallery and Lord Wemyss respectively,
or the numerous copies to be found in other places.]
[Footnote 47: For the full text of the marriage contract see Giovanni
Morelli, _Die Galerien zu Muenchen und Dresden_, pp. 300-302.]
[Footnote 48: Joshua Reynolds, who saw it during his tour in Italy,
says: "It is so dark a picture that, at first casting my eyes on it, I
thought there was a black curtain before it."]
[Footnote 49: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. p. 272.]
[Footnote 50: They were, with the _Rape of Europa_, among the so-called
"light pieces" presented to Prince Charles by Philip IV., and packed for
transmission to England. On the collapse of the marriage negotiations
they were, however, kept back. Later on Philip V. presented them to the
Marquis de Grammont. They subsequently formed part of the Orleans
Gallery, and were acquired at the great sale in London by the Duke of
Bridgewater for L2500 apiece.]
[Footnote 51: This great piece is painted on a canvas of peculiarly
coarse grain, with a well-defined lozenge pattern. It was once owned by
Van Dyck, at the sale of whose possessions, in 1556, a good number of
years after his death, it was acquired by Algernon Percy, Earl of
Northumberland. In 1873 it was in the exhibition of Old Masters at the
Royal Academy.]
[Footnote 52: The best repetition of this Hermitage _Magdalen_ is that
in the Naples Museum; another was formerly in the Ashburton Collection,
and yet another is in the Durazzo Gallery at Genoa. The similar, but not
identical, picture in the Yarborough Collection is anything but "cold in
tone," as Crowe and Cavalcaselle call it. It is, on the contrary, rich
in colour, but as to the head of the saint, much less attractive than
the original.]
[Footnote 53: This picture was presented by Philip IV. to Prince Charles
of England, and was, at the sale of his collection, acquired by Jabach
for L600, and from him bought by Cardinal Mazarin, whose heirs sold it
to Louis XIV. The Cardinal thus possessed the two finest representations
of the _Jupiter and Antiope_ legend--that by Correggio (also now in the
Louvre) and the Titian. It was to these pictures especially that his
touching farewell was addressed a few hours before his death.]
[Footnote 54: See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 340.]
[Footnote 55: See as to the vicissitudes through which the picture has
passed an article, "Les Restaurations du tableau du Titien, _Jupiter et
Antiope_" by Fernand Engerand, in the _Chronique des Arts_ of 7th May
1898.]
[Footnote 56: This picture came to England with the Orleans Gallery, and
was until lately at Cobham Hall in the collection of the Earl of
Darnley. It has now passed into that of Mrs J.L. Gardner of Boston, U.S.
It is represented in the Prado Gallery by Rubens's superb copy. A
Venetian copy on a very small scale exists in the Wallace Collection.]
[Footnote 57: A very clever adaptation of this work is No. 490 in the
Prado Gallery under the name of the master. It is remarkable for the
contrast between the moonlight which irradiates the Christ and the
artificial light supplied by the lantern carried by one of the
soldiers.]
[Footnote 58: This picture is mentioned in the list of 1574 furnished by
Titian to Secretary Antonio Perez. A _Perseus and Andromeda_ by, or
attributed to, Titian was in the Orleans Gallery. Is this the canvas now
in the Wallace Collection, but not as yet publicly exhibited there? This
last piece was undoubtedly produced in the _entourage_ and with the
assistance of Titian, and it corresponds perfectly to Vasari's
description of the _Deliverance of Andromeda_. It has the loose easy
touch of the late time, but obscured as it at present is by dirt and
successive coats of now discoloured varnish, no more definite opinion
with regard to its merits can be given. No. 135 in the Hermitage is a
canvas identical in subject and dimensions with this last-named picture.
It was once attributed to Tintoretto, but is now put down to the school
of Titian.]
[Footnote 59: Somewhat earlier in the order of the late works should
come in, if we may venture to judge from the technique of a work that is
practically a ruin, the _Adam and Eve_ of the Prado, in which, for the
usual serpent with the human head of the feminine type, Titian has
substituted as tempter an insignificant _amorino_. Far more enjoyable
than this original in its present state is the magnificent copy, with
slight yet marked variations, left behind by Rubens. This is also to be
found in the Prado. A drawing by the great Antwerper from Titian's
picture is in the Louvre. This is more markedly Flemish in aspect than
the painted canvas, and lacks the foolish little Love.]
[Footnote 60: Formerly in the collection of the Earl of Dudley, upon the
sale of which it was acquired by Mr. Ludwig Mond. It was in the Venetian
exhibition at the New Gallery. There is an engraving of it by Pieter de
Jode, jun.]
[Footnote 61: This is No. 186 in the catalogue of 1895. An etching of
the picture appeared with an article "Les Ecoles d'Italie au Musee de
Vienne," from the pen of Herr Franz Wickhoff, in the _Gazette des Beaux
Arts_ for February 1893. It was badly engraved for the Teniers Gallery
by Lissebetius.]
[Footnote 62: Now in the Accademia delle Belle Arti of Venice.]
[Footnote 63: It was the intention of the writer to add to this
monograph a short chapter on the drawings of Titian. The subject is,
however, far too vast for such summary treatment, and its discussion
must therefore be postponed. Leaving out of the question the very
numerous drawings by Domenico Campagnola which Morelli has once for all
separated from those of the greater master, and those also which, while
belonging to the same class and period, are neither Titian's nor even
Campagnola's, a few of the genuine landscapes may be just lightly
touched upon. The beautiful early landscape with a battlemented castle,
now or lately in the possession of Mr. T.W. Russell (reproduction in the
British Museum marked 1879-5-10-224) is in the opinion of the writer a
genuine Titian. _The Vision of St. Eustace_, reproduced in the first
section of this monograph ("The Earlier Work of Titian") from the
original in the British Museum, is a noble and pathetic example of the
earlier manner. Perhaps the most beautiful of the landscape drawings
still preserving something of the Giorgionesque aroma is that with the
enigmatic female figure, entirely nude but with the head veiled, and the
shepherds sheltering from the noonday sun, which is in the great
collection at Chatsworth (No. 318 in Venetian Exhibition at New
Gallery). Later than this is the fine landscape in the same collection
with a riderless horse crossing a stream (No. 867 in Venetian Exhibition
at New Gallery). The well-known _St. Jerome_ here given (British Museum)
is ascribed by no less an authority than Giovanni Morelli to the master,
but the poor quality of the little round trees, and of the background
generally, is calculated to give pause to the student. A good example of
the later style, in which the technique is more that of the painter and
less that of the draughtsman, is the so-called _Landscape with the
Pedlar_ at Chatsworth. But, faded though it is, the finest extant
drawing of the later period is that here (p. 78) for the first time
reproduced by the kind permission of the owner, Professor Legros, who
had the great good fortune and good taste to discover it in a London
book-shop. There can be no doubt that this ought to be in the Print Room
at the British Museum. A good instance, on the other hand, of a drawing
which cannot without demur be left to Titian, though it is a good deal
too late in style for Domenico Campagnola, and moreover, much too fine
and sincere for that clever, facile adapter of other people's work, is
the beautiful pastoral in the Albertina at Vienna (B. 283), with the
shepherd piping as he leads his flock homewards.] INDEX
"Agony in the Garden, The" (Escorial), 94
Alfonso d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto (Madrid), 46
Alfonso d'Avalos, with his Family, Portrait of (Louvre), 17, 18
"Alfonso d'Este" (Madrid), 16, 54
"Annunciation, The" (Venice), 98
"Annunciation of the Virgin" (Verona), 56
Aretino, Portrait of (Pitti Gallery), 9, 46, 57, 58
Acquaviva, Duke of Arti, Portrait of, 74
"Bacchanals, The" (Madrid), 8, 87, 92
"Bacchus and Ariadne" (National Gallery), 8, 29, 87
"Battle of Cadore, The," 38, 39
Beccadelli, Legate, Portrait of (Uffizi), 75, 76
"Bella, La" (Pitti), 32
"Boy Baptist," 15
"Cain and Abel" (Venice), 50, 51
Charles V., Portrait of (Munich), 70
"Charles V. at Muehlberg" (Madrid), 8, 68-70
"Christ crowned with Thorns" (Louvre), 84
"Christ crowned with Thorns" (Munich), 104
"Christ with the Pilgrims at Emmaus" (Louvre), 57
Cornaro Family (Duke of Northumberland's Collection), 88
Cornaro, Portrait of (Castle Howard), 54
"Cornelia, La," Portrait of, 12
"Danae and the Golden Rain" (Naples Museum), 62, 66
"Danae with Venus and Adonis" (Madrid), 78-80
"David victorious over Goliath" (Venice),50, 51
"Deliverance of Andromeda, The," 95
"Descent of the Holy Spirit, The" (Venice), 50, 51
"Destruction of Pharaoh's Host, The," 72
"Diana and Actaeon" (Bridgewater Gallery), 9, 86, 91, 95
"Diana and Calisto" (Bridgewater Gallery), 9, 86, 91
"Ecce Homo" (Madrid), 67;
(Munich), 94;
(Vienna), 53, 54.
"Education of Cupid, The" (Rome), 98
"Entombment, The" (Louvre), 87
"Entombment, The" (Madrid), 87
Ercole d'Este, Portrait of, 16, 54
Farnese Family, Portrait of, 52
"Flora" (Uffizi), 29, 66
Francis the First, Portrait of (Louvre), 12, 13
Frederick of Saxony, Portrait of (Vienna), 71
"Girl in a Fur Cloak" (Vienna), 28, 83
Gonzaga, Eleonora, Portraits of, 28, 33, 34
Gonzaga, Federigo, Portrait of, 15
Gonzaga, Isabella d'Este, Portrait of, 12, 13
"Herodias" (Doria Gallery), 29, 66
"Ixion," 71
"Jupiter and Antiope," 76, 90, 92
Lavinia, Titian's daughter, 82, 83
"Madonna Addolorata," 78, 79
"Madonna and Child in a Landscape" (Munich), 95, 96
"Madonna and Child" (Mr. Ludwig Mond's Collection), 104
"Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John"
(National Gallery), 9, 10, 11
"Madonna and Child with St. Peter and St. Andrew" (Serravalle), 65
"Madonna del Coniglio" (Louvre), 9-11
"Magdalen" (Florence), 14, 15
"Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, The" (Venice), 84, 100, 101
Medici, Portrait of Ippolito de' (Pitti), 12, 13, 18-21
"Nymph and Shepherd" (Vienna), 9, 106
"Ottavio Farnese with his Beloved": see _Venus with Organ Player_
Philip II., Portrait of (Madrid), 16
"Pieta," 73, 94, 106, 107
Pope Paul III., Portrait of (Naples), 52;
(Hermitage), 53
Pope Paul III. with Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio Farnese (Naples), 53, 60
"Portrait of a Man" (Dresden), 89
"Portrait of a Man in Black" (Louvre), 22 (footnote)
"Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple" (Venice), 42-45
"Prometheus Bound to the Rock," 71
"Prince Philip of Austria in Armour" (Madrid), 73;
(Pitti), 74;
(Naples), 74
"Rape of Europa," 9, 90, 92, 95
"Religion succoured by Spain" (Madrid), 100
"Sacred and Profane Love" (Borghese Gallery), 8, 29, 92
"Sacrifice of Isaac" (Venice), 50
"St. Jerome in Prayer" (Louvre), 14
"St. Jerome in the Desert" (Milan), 96
"St. John in the Desert" (Venice), 64
"St. Margaret in a Landscape" (Madrid), 76
"St. Peter Martyr," 8, 11, 50, 79, 84
"Sisyphus" (Madrid), 71
Strada, Jacopo da, Portrait of (Vienna), 100
"Tantalus" (Madrid), 71
"Three Ages, The" (Bridgewater Gallery), 106
Titian, Portrait of, by himself (Berlin), 40, 41;
(Madrid), 94;
(Pitti), 9;
(Uffizi), 40, 41
"Titian and Franceschini" (Windsor Castle), 42
"Trinity, The," 86
"Twelve Caesars, Series of," 34-36
Vasto, Marques del: see _Alfonso d' Avalos_
"Venere del Pardo" (Paris), 9; see also _Jupiter and Antiope_
"Venetian Storm Landscape" (Buckingham Palace), 10
"Venus Anadyomene" (Bridgewater Gallery), 29
"Venus and Cupid" (Tribuna), 14, 15, 29, 65
"Venus of Urbino," 28, 29, 32, 66, 92
"Venus with the Mirror" (Hermitage), 90
"Venus with the Organ Player" (Madrid), 66
"Virgen de los Dolores" (Madrid), 79
"Worship of Venus" (Madrid), 65, 66, 87
"Young Nobleman, Portrait of" (Florence), 22
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