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diff --git a/12657-h/12657-h.htm b/12657-h/12657-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c53fdae --- /dev/null +++ b/12657-h/12657-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5088 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Later works of Titian, by Claude Phillips</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- +a {text-decoration: none;} + +P { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + } + HR { width: 33%; } + hr.full { width: 100%; + height: 5px } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 8pt;} + BODY { margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */ + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem .caesura {vertical-align: -200%;} + li.indent {margin-left: 5%;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12657 ***</div> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Later works of Titian, by Claude Phillips</h1> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr class="full" noshade> +<br /> +<div style="text-align: center;"><img + style="width: 512px; height: 669px;" + alt="Titian. From a photograph by G. Brogi." + title="Titian. From a photograph by G. Brogi." src="images/image01.jpg"><a + name="Titian"></a></div> +<h1>THE LATER WORK</h1> +<h1>OF TITIAN</h1> +<h2><i>By</i></h2> +<h1>CLAUDE PHILLIPS</h1> +<h2><i>Keeper of the Wallace Collection</i></h2> +<br> +<div style="text-align: center;"><img + style="width: 400px; height: 481px;" alt="Editot mark" + title="Editor mark" src="images/image02.jpg"><br> +</div> +<h4>1898</h4> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +<br> +<p><i>COPPER PLATES</i></p> +<ul> + <li><a href="#Titian">Portrait of Titian, by himself</a>. Uffizi +Gallery, +Florence.</li> + <li><a href="#La_Bella_di_Tiziano">La Bella di Tiziano</a>. Pitti +Palace, Florence.</li> + <li><a href="#Titians_Daughter_Lavinia">Titian's daughter Lavinia</a>. +Berlin Gallery.</li> + <li><a href="#The_Cornaro_Family">The Cornaro Family</a>. Collection +of the Duke of Northumberland.</li> +</ul> +<br> +<p><i>ILLUSTRATIONS PRINTED IN SEPIA</i></p> +<ul> + <li><a href="#drawing_ST_JEROME">Drawing of St. Jerome</a>. British +Museum.</li> + <li><a href="#Landscape">Landscape with Stag</a>. Collection of +Professor Legros.</li> +</ul> +<br> +<p><i>ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT</i></p> +<ul> + <li><a href="#Madonna_and_Child">Madonna and Child with St. Catherine +and St. John the Baptist</a>. In +the National Gallery.</li> + <li><a href="#Cardinal_Ippolito_de_Medici">Cardinal Ippolito de' +Medici</a>. Pitti Palace, Florence.</li> + <li><a href="#Francis_the_First">Francis the First</a>. Louvre.</li> + <li><a href="#Portrait_of_a_Nobleman">Portrait of a Nobleman</a>. +Pitti Palace, Florence.</li> + <li><a href="#S_Giovanni_Elemosinario">S. Giovanni Elemosinario +giving Alms</a>. In the Church of that name at +Venice.</li> + <li><a href="#The_Girl_in_the_Fur_Cloak">The Girl in the Fur Cloak</a>. +Imperial Gallery, Vienna.</li> + <li><a href="#Francesco_Maria_della_Rovere">Francesco Maria della +Rovere, Duke of Urbino</a>. Uffizi Gallery, +Florence.</li> + <li><a href="#The_Battle_of_Cadore">The Battle of Cadore</a> (from a +reduced copy of part only). Uffizi +Gallery, Florence.</li> + <li><a href="#The_Presentation_of_the_Virgin">The Presentation of the +Virgin in the Temple</a>. Accademia delle Belle +Arti, Venice.</li> + <li><a href="#The_Magdalen">The Magdalen</a>. Pitti Palace, Florence.</li> + <li><a href="#The_Infant_Daughter">The Infant Daughter of Roberto +Strozzi</a>. Royal Gallery, Berlin.</li> + <li><a href="#Ecce_Homo">Ecce Homo</a>. Imperial Gallery, Vienna</li> + <li><a href="#Aretino">Aretino</a>. Pitti Palace, Florence</li> + <li><a href="#Pope_Paul_III">Pope Paul III</a>. with Cardinal Farnese +and Ottavio Farnese. Naples +Gallery</li> + <li><a href="#Danae_and_the_Golden_Rain">Danaë and the Golden +Rain</a>. Naples Gallery</li> + <li><a href="#Charles_V">Charles V. at the Battle of Mühlberg</a>. +Gallery of the Prado, +Madrid</li> + <li><a href="#Venus_with_the_Mirror">Venus with the Mirror</a>. +Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg</li> + <li><a href="#Christ_crowned_with_Thorns">Christ crowned with Thorns</a>. +Louvre</li> + <li><a href="#The_Rape_of_Europa">The Rape of Europa</a></li> + <li><a href="#Portrait_of_Titian">Portrait of Titian</a>, by himself. +Gallery of the Prado, Madrid</li> + <li><a href="#St_Jerome">St. Jerome in the Desert</a>. Gallery of the +Brera, Milan</li> + <li><a href="#The_Education_of_Cupid">The Education of Cupid</a>. +Gallery of the Villa Borghese, Rome</li> + <li><a href="#Religion_succoured">Religion succoured by Spain</a>. +Gallery of the Prado, Madrid</li> + <li><a href="#Portrait_of_the_Antiquary">Portrait of the Antiquary +Jacopo da Strada.</a> Imperial Gallery, Vienna</li> + <li><a href="#Madonna">Madonna and Child</a>. Collection of Mr. +Ludwig Mond</li> + <li><a href="#Christ_crowned">Christ crowned with Thorns</a>. Alte +Pinakothek, Munich</li> + <li><a href="#Pieta">Pietà</a>. By Titian and Palma Giovine. +Accademia delle Belle +Arti, Venice</li> +</ul> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> +<h2><a name="Page_5"></a>THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN</h2> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 35%;"> +<h2>CHAPTER I.<br> +</h2> +<h4><i>Friendship with Aretino—Its effect on Titian's +art—Characteristics of the middle +period—"Madonna with St. Catherine" of National Gallery—Portraits not +painted from life—"Magdalen" of the Pitti—First Portrait of Charles +V.—Titian +the painter, par excellence, of aristocratic traits—The "d'Avalos +Allegory"—Portrait of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici—S. Giovanni +Elemosinario +altar-piece.</i></h4> +<br> +<p>Having followed Titian as far as the year 1530, rendered memorable +by +that sensational, and, of its kind, triumphant achievement, <i>The +Martyrdom +of St. Peter the Dominican</i>, we must retrace our steps some three +years in +order to dwell a little upon an incident which must appear of vital +importance +to those who seek to understand Titian's life, and, above all, to +follow the development of his art during the middle period of splendid +maturity reaching to the confines of old age. This incident is the +meeting +with Pietro Aretino at Venice in 1527, and the gradual strengthening +by mutual service and mutual inclination of the bonds of a friendship +which is to endure without break until the life of the Aretine comes, +many years later, to a sudden and violent end. Titian was at that time +fifty years of age, and he might thus be deemed to have over-passed +the age of sensuous delights. Yet it must be remembered that he +was in the fullest vigour of manhood, and had only then arrived at the +middle point of a career which, in its untroubled serenity, was to +endure +for a full half-century more, less a single year. Three years later on, +that +<a name="Page_6"></a>is to say in the middle of August 1530, the death +of his wife Cecilia, who +had borne to him Pomponio, Orazio, and Lavinia, left him all +disconsolate, +and so embarrassed with the cares of his young family that he was +compelled to appeal to his sister Orsa, who thereupon came from Cadore +to preside over his household. The highest point of celebrity, of +favour +with princes and magnates, having been attained, and a certain royalty +in +Venetian art being already conceded to him, there was no longer any +obstacle to the organising of a life in which all the refinements of +culture +and all the delights of sense were to form the most agreeable relief to +days of continuous and magnificently fruitful labour. It is just +because +Titian's art of this great period of some twenty years so entirely +accords +with what we know, and may legitimately infer, to have been his life at +this time, that it becomes important to consider the friendship with +Aretino and the rise of the so-called Triumvirate, which was a kind of +Council of Three, having as its <i>raison d'être</i> the mutual +furtherance of +material interests, and the pursuit of art, love, and pleasure. The +third +member of the Triumvirate was Jacopo Tatti or del Sansovino, the +Florentine sculptor, whose fame and fortune were so far above his +deserts +as an artist. Coming to Venice after the sack of Rome, which so +entirely +for the moment disorganised art and artists in the pontifical city, he +elected to remain there notwithstanding the pressing invitations sent +to +him by Francis the First to take service with him. In 1529 he was +appointed architect of San Marco, and he then by his adhesion completed +the Triumvirate which was to endure for more than a quarter of a +century.</p> +<p>It has always excited a certain sense of distrust in Titian, and +caused +the world to form a lower estimate of his character than it would +otherwise +have done, that he should have been capable of thus living in the +closest and most fraternal intimacy with a man so spotted and in many +ways so infamous as Aretino. Without precisely calling Titian to +account in set terms, his biographers Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and above +all M. Georges Lafenestre in <i>La Vie et L'Oeuvre du Titien</i>, have +relentlessly +raked up Aretino's past before he came together with the Cadorine, +and as pitilessly laid bare that organised system of professional +sycophancy, +adulation, scurrilous libel, and blackmail, which was the foundation +and +the backbone of his life of outward pomp and luxurious ease at Venice. +<a name="Page_7"></a>By them, as by his other biographers, he has been +judged, not indeed +unjustly, yet perhaps too much from the standard of our own time, too +little from that of his own. With all his infamies, Aretino was a man +whom sovereigns and princes, nay even pontiffs, delighted to honour, or +rather to distinguish by honours. The Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of +Mantua, the Duke Guidobaldo II. of Urbino, among many others, +showed themselves ready to propitiate him; and such a man as Titian +the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom ample means and +the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity; who was grasping yet +not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it secured material +consideration and a life of serene enjoyment; such a man could not +be expected to rise superior to the temptations presented by a +friendship +with Aretino, or to despise the immense advantages which it included. +As he is revealed by his biographers, and above all by himself, Aretino +was essentially "good company." He could pass off his most flagrant +misdeeds, his worst sallies, with a certain large and Rabelaisian +gaiety; +if he made money his chief god, it was to spend it in magnificent +clothes +and high living, but also at times with an intelligent and even a +beneficent +liberality. He was a fine though not an unerring connoisseur of +art, he had a passionate love of music, and an unusually exquisite +perception of the beauties of Nature.</p> +<p>To hint that the lower nature of the man corrupted that of Titian, +and exercised a disintegrating influence over his art, would be to go +far +beyond the requirements of the case. The great Venetian, though he +might at this stage be much nearer to earth than in those early days +when he was enveloped in the golden glow of Giorgione's overmastering +influence, could never have lowered himself to the level of those too +famous <i>Sonetti Lussuriosi</i> which brought down the vengeance of +even a +Medici Pope (Clement VII.) upon Aretino the writer, Giulio Romano +the illustrator, and Marcantonio Raimondi the engraver. Gracious and +dignified in sensuousness he always remained even when, as at this +middle stage of his career, the vivifying shafts of poetry no longer +pierced through, and transmuted with their vibration of true passion, +the +fair realities of life. He could never have been guilty of the frigid +and +calculated indecency of a Giulio Romano; he could not have cast aside +all conventional restraints, of taste as well as of propriety, as +Rubens and +<a name="Page_8"></a>even Rembrandt did on occasion; but as Van Dyck, +the child of Titian +almost as much as he was the child of Rubens, ever shrank from doing. +Still the ease and splendour of the life at Biri Grande—that pleasant +abode with its fair gardens overlooking Murano, the Lagoons, and the +Friulan Alps, to which Titian migrated in 1531—the Epicureanism which +saturated the atmosphere, the necessity for keeping constantly in view +the material side of life, all these things operated to colour the +creations +which mark this period of Titian's practice, at which he has reached +the +apex of pictorial achievement, but shows himself too serene in +sensuousness, +too unruffled in the masterly practice of his profession to give to the +heart the absolute satisfaction that he affords to the eyes. This is +the +greatest test of genius of the first order—to preserve undimmed in +mature +manhood and old age the gift of imaginative interpretation which youth +and love give, or lend, to so many who, buoyed up by momentary +inspiration, +are yet not to remain permanently in the first rank. With Titian at +this time supreme ability is not invariably illumined from within by +the +lamp of genius; the light flashes forth nevertheless, now and again, +and +most often in those portraits of men of which the sublime <i>Charles +V. at +Mühlberg</i> is the greatest. Towards the end the flame will rise +once +more and steadily burn, with something on occasion of the old heat, but +with a hue paler and more mysterious, such as may naturally be the +outward symbol of genius on the confines of eternity.</p> +<p>The second period, following upon the completion of the <i>St. +Peter +Martyr</i>, is one less of great altar-pieces and <i>poesie</i> such +as the miscalled +<i>Sacred and Profane Love</i> (<i>Medea and Venus</i>), the <i>Bacchanals</i>, +and the +<i>Bacchus and Ariadne</i>, than it is of splendid nudities and great +portraits. +In the former, however mythological be the subject, it is generally +chosen +but to afford a decent pretext for the generous display of beauty +unveiled. +The portraits are at this stage less often intimate and soul-searching +in +their summing up of a human personality than they are official +presentments +of great personages and noble dames; showing them, no doubt, +without false adulation or cheap idealisation, yet much as they desire +to appear to their allies, their friends, and their subjects, sovereign +in +natural dignity and aristocratic grace, yet essentially in a moment of +representation. Farther on the great altar-pieces reappear more sombre, +more agitated in passion, as befits the period of the sixteenth century +in +<a name="Page_9"></a>which Titian's latest years are passed, and the +patrons for whom he paints. +Of the <i>poesie</i> there is then a new upspringing, a new +efflorescence, and +we get by the side of the <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, the <i>Diana and +Actæon</i>, +the <i>Diana and Calisto</i>, the <i>Rape of Europa</i>, such pieces +of a more +exquisite and penetrating poetry as the <i>Venere del Pardo</i> of +Paris, +and the <i>Nymph and Shepherd</i> of Vienna.</p> +<p>This appears to be the right place to say a word about the +magnificent +engraving by Van Dalen of a portrait, no longer known to exist, but +which has, upon the evidence apparently of the print, been put down as +that of Titian by himself. It represents a bearded man of some +thirty-five +years, dressed in a rich but sombre habit, and holding a book. The +portrait is evidently not that of a painter by himself, nor does it +represent +Titian at any age; but it finely suggests, even in black and white, a +noble +original by the master. Now, a comparison with the best authenticated +portrait of Aretino, the superb three-quarter length painted in 1545, +and +actually at the Pitti Palace, reveals certain marked similarities of +feature +and type, notwithstanding the very considerable difference of age +between +the personages represented. Very striking is the agreement of eye and +nose in either case, while in the younger as in the older man we note +an +idiosyncrasy in which vigorous intellect as well as strong sensuality +has full play. Van Dalen's engraving very probably reproduces one of +the lost portraits of Aretino by Titian. In Crowe and Cavalcaselle's +<i>Biography</i> (vol. i. pp. 317-319) we learn from correspondence +interchanged +in the summer of 1527 between Federigo Gonzaga, Titian, and +Aretino, that the painter, in order to propitiate the Mantuan ruler, +sent +to him with a letter, the exaggerated flattery of which savours of +Aretino's +precept and example, portraits of the latter and of Signor Hieronimo +Adorno, another "faithful servant" of the Marquess. Now Aretino was +born in 1492, so that in 1527 he would be thirty-five, which appears to +be just about the age of the vigorous and splendid personage in Van +Dalen's print.</p> +<p>Some reasons were given in the former section of this monograph<a + name="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> for +the assertion that the <i>Madonna with St. Catherine</i>, mentioned in +a letter +from Giacomo Malatesta to the Marchese Federigo Gonzaga, dated +February 1530, was not, as is assumed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the +<a name="Page_10"></a><i>Madonna del Coniglio</i> of the Louvre, but +the <i>Madonna and Child with +St. John the Baptist and St. Catherine</i>, which is No. 635 at the +National +Gallery.<a name="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> +Few pictures of the master have been more frequently copied +and adapted than this radiantly beautiful piece, in which the dominant +chord of the scheme of colour is composed by the cerulean blues of the +heavens and the Virgin's entire dress, the deep luscious greens of the +landscape, and the peculiar, pale, citron hue, relieved with a crimson +girdle, of the robe worn by the St. Catherine, a splendid Venetian +beauty +of no very refined type or emotional intensity. Perfect repose and +serenity +are the keynote of the conception, which in its luxuriant beauty has +little +of the power to touch that must be conceded to the more naïve and +equally splendid <i>Madonna del Coniglio</i>.<a name="FNanchor_3"></a><a + href="#Footnote_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> It is above all in the wonderful +Venetian landscape—a mountain-bordered vale, along which flocks and +herds are being driven, under a sky of the most intense blue—that the +master shows himself supreme. Nature is therein not so much detailed +as synthesised with a sweeping breadth which makes of the scene not the +reflection of one beautiful spot in the Venetian territory, but without +loss +of essential truth or character a very type of Venetian landscape of +the +sixteenth century. These herdsmen and their flocks, and also the note +of warning in the sky of supernatural splendour, recall the beautiful +Venetian storm-landscape in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace. +This has been very generally attributed to Titian himself,<a + name="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> and +described +as the only canvas still extant in which he has made landscape his one +and +only theme. It has, indeed, a rare and mysterious power to move, a true +<a name="Page_11"></a>poetry of interpretation. A fleeting moment, full +of portent as well as of +beauty, has been seized; the smile traversed by a frown of the stormy +sky, +half overshadowing half revealing the wooded slopes, the rich plain, +and the +distant mountains, is rendered with a rare felicity. The beauty is, all +the +same, in the conception and in the thing actually seen—much less in the +actual painting. It is hardly possible to convince oneself, comparing +the +work with such landscape backgrounds as those in this picture at the +National Gallery in the somewhat earlier <i>Madonna del Coniglio</i>, +and +the gigantic <i>St. Peter Martyr</i>, or, indeed, in a score of other +genuine +productions, that the depth, the vigour, the authority of Titian +himself are +here to be recognised. The weak treatment of the great Titianesque tree +in the foreground, with its too summarily indicated foliage—to select +only one detail that comes naturally to hand—would in itself suffice to +bring such an attribution into question.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Madonna_and_Child"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 404px;" + alt="Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli." + title="Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli." + src="images/image03.jpg"></p> +<p>Vasari states, speaking confessedly from hearsay, that in 1530, the +Emperor Charles V. being at Bologna, Titian was summoned thither by +<a name="Page_12"></a>Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, using Aretino as an +intermediary, and that +he on that occasion executed a most admirable portrait of His Majesty, +all in arms, which had so much success that the artist received as a +present a thousand scudi. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, however, adduce +strong evidence to prove that Titian was busy in Venice for +Federigo Gonzaga at the time of the Emperor's first visit, and that he +only proceeded to Bologna in July to paint for the Marquess of Mantua +the portrait of a Bolognese beauty, <i>La Cornelia</i>, the +lady-in-waiting of +the Countess Pepoli, whom Covas, the all-powerful political secretary +of +Charles the Fifth, had seen and admired at the splendid entertainments +given by the Pepoli to the Emperor. Vasari has in all probability +confounded this journey of Charles in 1530 with that subsequent one +undertaken in 1532 when Titian not only portrayed the Emperor, but +also painted an admirable likeness of Ippolito de' Medici presently to +be +described. He had the bad luck on this occasion to miss the lady +Cornelia, who had retired to Nuvolara, indisposed and not in good face. +The letter written by our painter to the Marquess in connection with +this +incident<a name="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> +is chiefly remarkable as affording evidence of his too great +anxiety to portray the lady without approaching her, relying merely on +the portrait, "che fece quel altro pittore della detta Cornelia"; of +his +unwillingness to proceed to Nuvolara, unless the picture thus done at +second hand should require alteration. In truth we have lighted here +upon one of Titian's most besetting sins, this willingness, this +eagerness, +when occasion offers, to paint portraits without direct reference +to the model. In this connection we are reminded that he never +saw Francis the First, whose likeness he notwithstanding painted with +so showy and superficial a magnificence as to make up to the casual +observer for the absence of true vitality;<a name="FNanchor_6"></a><a + href="#Footnote_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> that the Empress Isabella, +Charles V.'s consort, when at the behest of the monarch he produced her +sumptuous but lifeless and empty portrait, now in the great gallery of +the Prado, was long since dead. He consented, basing his picture +upon a likeness of much earlier date, to paint Isabella d'Este Gonzaga +as +a young woman when she was already an old one, thereby flattering an +amiable and natural weakness in this great princess and unrivalled +<a name="Page_13"></a>dilettante, but impairing his own position as an +artist of supreme rank.<a name="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> +It is not necessary to include in this category the popular <i>Caterina +Cornaro</i> of the Uffizi, since it is confessedly nothing but a fancy +portrait, +making no reference to the true aspect at any period of the long-since +deceased queen of Cyprus, and, what is more, no original Titian, but at +the utmost an atelier piece from his <i>entourage</i>. Take, however, +as an +instance the <i>Francis the First</i>, which was painted some few +years later +than the time at which we have now arrived, and at about the same +period +as the <i>Isabella d'Este</i>. Though as a <i>portrait d'apparat</i> +it makes its effect, +and reveals the sovereign accomplishment of the master, does it not +shrink into the merest insignificance when compared with such +renderings +from life as the successive portraits of <i>Charles the Fifth</i>, the +<i>Ippolito de' +Medici</i>, the <i>Francesco Maria della Rovere</i>? This is as it +must and +should be, and Titian is not the less great, but the greater, because +he +cannot convincingly evolve at second hand the true human individuality, +physical and mental, of man or woman.</p> +<p>It was in the earlier part of 1531 that Titian painted for Federigo +Gonzaga a <i>St. Jerome</i> and a <i>St. Mary Magdalene</i>, destined +for the famous +Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, who had expressed to the +ruler of Mantua the desire to possess such a picture. Gonzaga writes to +the Marchioness on March 11, 1831<a name="FNanchor_8"></a><a + href="#Footnote_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a>:—"Ho subito mandate a Venezia +e scritto a Titiano, quale è forse il piu eccellente in quell' +arte che a nostri +tempi si ritrovi, ed è tutto mio, ricercandolo con grande +instantia a +volerne fare una bella lagrimosa piu che si so puo, e farmela haver +presto." +The passage is worth quoting as showing the estimation in which Titian +was held at a court which had known and still knew the greatest Italian +masters of the art.</p> +<p>It is not possible at present to identify with any extant painting +the +<i>St. Jerome</i>, of which we know that it hung in the private +apartments +<a name="Page_14"></a>of the Marchioness Isabella at Mantua. The writer +is unable to +accept Crowe and Cavalcaselle's suggestion that it may be the fine +moonlight landscape with St. Jerome in prayer which is now in the +Long Gallery of the Louvre. This piece, if indeed it be by Titian, +which is by no means certain, must belong to his late time. The +landscape, which is marked by a beautiful and wholly unconventional +treatment of moonlight, for which it would not be easy to find a +parallel +in the painting of the time, is worthy of the Cadorine, and agrees +well, +especially in the broad treatment of foliage, with, for instance, the +background in the late <i>Venus and Cupid</i> of the Tribuna.<a + name="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> The +figure +of St. Jerome, on the other hand, does not in the peculiar tightness of +the modelling, or in the flesh-tints, recall Titian's masterly +synthetic way +of going to work in works of this late period. The noble <i>St. Jerome</i> +of +the Brera, which indubitably belongs to a well-advanced stage in the +late +time, will be dealt with in its right place. Though it does not appear +probable that we have, in the much-admired <i>Magdalen</i> of the +Pitti, +the picture here referred to—this last having belonged to Francesco +Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, and representing, to judge by +style, a somewhat more advanced period in the painter's career—it +may be convenient to mention it here. As an example of accomplished +brush-work, of handling careful and yet splendid in breadth, it is +indeed +worthy of all admiration. The colours of the fair human body, the +marvellous wealth of golden blond hair, the youthful flesh glowing +semi-transparent, and suggesting the rush of the blood beneath; these +are also the colours of the picture, aided only by the indefinite +landscape +and the deep blue sky of the background. If this were to be +accepted as the <i>Magdalen</i> painted for Federigo Gonzaga, we must +hold, nevertheless, that Titian with his masterpiece of painting only +half satisfied the requirements of his patron. <i>Bellissima</i> this +Magdalen +undoubtedly is, but hardly <i>lagrimosa pin che si puo</i>. She is a <i>belle +pécheresse</i> whose repentance sits all too lightly upon her, +whose consciousness +of a physical charm not easily to be withstood is hardly disguised. +<a name="Page_15"></a>Somehow, although the picture in no way oversteps +the bounds of decency, and cannot be objected to even by the most +over-scrupulous, there is latent in it a jarring note of unrefinement +in the presentment of exuberant youth and beauty which we do not find +in the more avowedly sensuous <i>Venus of the Tribuna</i>. This last +is an avowed act of worship by the artist of the naked human body, and +as such, in its noble frankness, free from all offence, except to those +whose scruples in matters of art we are not here called upon to +consider. From this <i>Magdalen</i> to that much later +one of the Hermitage, which will be described farther on, is a great +step upwards, and it is a step which, in passing from the middle to +the last period, we shall more than once find ourselves taking.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="drawing_ST_JEROME"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 657px;" + alt="ST. JEROME. PEN DRAWING BY TITIAN (?) British Museum." + title="ST. JEROME. PEN DRAWING BY TITIAN (?) British Museum." + src="images/image04.jpg"></p> +<p>It is impossible to give even in outline here an account of Titian's +correspondence and business relations with his noble and royal patrons, +instructive as it is to follow these out, and to see how, under the +influence of Aretino, his natural eagerness to grasp in every direction +at material advantages is sharpened; how he becomes at once more humble +and more pressing, covering with the manner and the tone appropriate to +courts the reiterated demands of the keen and indefatigable man of +business. It is the less necessary to attempt any such account in these +pages—dealing as we are chiefly with the work and not primarily with +the life of Titian—seeing that in Crowe and Cavalcaselle's admirable +biography this side of the subject, among many others, is most +patiently and exhaustively dealt with.</p> +<p>In 1531 we read of a <i>Boy Baptist</i> by Titian sent by Aretino +to +Maximian Stampa, an imperialist partisan in command of the castle of +Milan. The donor particularly dwells upon "the beautiful curl of the +Baptist's hair, the fairness of his skin, etc.," a description which +recalls to us, in striking fashion, the little St. John in the <i>Virgin +and Child with St. Catherine</i> of the National Gallery, which +belongs, as has been shown, to the same time.</p> +<p>It was on the occasion of the second visit of the Emperor and his +court to Bologna at the close of 1532 that Titian first came in +personal contact with Charles V., and obtained from that monarch his +first sitting. In the course of an inspection, with Federigo Gonzaga +himself as cicerone, of the art treasures preserved in the palace at +Mantua, the Emperor saw the portrait by Titian of Federigo, and was so +much struck +<a name="Page_16"></a>with it, so intent upon obtaining a portrait of +himself from the same +brush, that the Marquess wrote off at once pressing our master to join +him without delay in his capital. Titian preferred, however, to go +direct to Bologna in the train of his earlier patron Alfonso d'Este. +It was on this occasion that Charles's all-powerful secretary, the +greedy, overbearing Covos, exacted as a gift from the agents of the +Duke of Ferrara, among other things, a portrait of Alfonso himself by +Titian; and in all probability obtained also a portrait from the same +hand of Ercole d'Este, the heir-apparent. There is evidence to show +that the portrait of Alfonso was at once handed over to, or +appropriated by, the Emperor.</p> +<p>Whether this was the picture described by Vasari as representing the +prince with his arm resting on a great piece of artillery, does not +appear. Of this last a copy exists in the Pitti Gallery which Crowe and +Cavalcaselle have ascribed to Dosso Dossi, but the original is nowhere +to be traced. The Ferrarese ruler is, in this last canvas, depicted as +a man of forty or upwards, of resolute and somewhat careworn aspect. It +has already been demonstrated, on evidence furnished by Herr Carl +Justi, that the supposed portrait of Alfonso, in the gallery of the +Prado at Madrid, cannot possibly represent Titian's patron at any stage +of his career, but in all +probability, like the so-called <i>Giorgio Cornaro</i> of Castle +Howard, is a likeness of his son and successor, Ercole II.</p> +<p>Titian's first portrait of the Emperor, a full-length in which he +appeared in armour with a generalissimo's baton of command, was taken +in 1556 from Brussels to Madrid, after the formal ceremony of +abdication, and perished, it would appear, in one of the too numerous +fires which have devastated from time to time the royal palaces of the +Spanish capital and its neighbourhood. To the same period belongs, no +doubt, the noble full-length of Charles in gala court costume which now +hangs in the <i>Sala de la Reina Isabel</i> in the Prado Gallery, as a +pendant to Titian's portrait of Philip II. in youth. Crowe and +Cavalcaselle assume that not this picture, but a replica, was the one +which found its way into Charles I.'s collection, and was there +catalogued by Van der Doort as "the Emperor Charles the Fifth, brought +by the king from Spain, being done at length with a big white Irish +dog"—going afterwards, at the dispersal of the king's effects, +to Sir Balthasar Gerbier for <i>£</i>150. There is, however, no +valid reason for doubting that this is the very picture owned for a +time by Charles I., and +<a name="Page_17"></a>which busy intriguing Gerbier afterwards bought, +only to part with it to +Cardenas the Spanish ambassador.<a name="FNanchor_10"></a><a + href="#Footnote_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> Other famous originals by +Titian were +among the choicest gifts made by Philip IV. to Prince Charles at the +time +of his runaway expedition to Madrid with the Duke of Buckingham, and +this was no doubt among them. Confirmation is supplied by the fact +that the references to the existence of this picture in the royal +palaces of +Madrid are for the reigns of Philip II., Charles II., and Charles III., +thus +leaving a large gap unaccounted for. Dimmed as the great portrait is, +robbed of its glow and its chastened splendour in a variety of ways, it +is +still a rare example of the master's unequalled power in rendering +race, +the unaffected consciousness of exalted rank, natural as distinguished +from +assumed dignity. There is here no demonstrative assertion of <i>grandeza</i>, +no menacing display of truculent authority, but an absolutely serene +and +simple attitude such as can only be the outcome of a consciousness of +supreme rank and responsibility which it can never have occurred to any +one to call into question. To see and perpetuate these subtle +qualities, +which go so far to redeem the physical drawbacks of the House of +Hapsburg, +the painter must have had a peculiar instinct for what is aristocratic +in the higher sense of the word—that is, both outwardly and inwardly +distinguished. This was indeed one of the leading characteristics of +Titian's great art, more especially in portraiture. Giorgione went +deeper, +knowing the secret of the soul's refinement, the aristocracy of poetry +and +passion; Lotto sympathetically laid bare the heart's secrets and showed +the pathetic helplessness of humanity. Tintoretto communicated his own +savage grandeur, his own unrest, to those whom he depicted; Paolo +Veronese charmed without <i>arrière-pensée</i> by the +intensity of vitality +which with perfect simplicity he preserved in his sitters. Yet to +Titian +must be conceded absolute supremacy in the rendering not only of the +outward but of the essential dignity, the refinement of type and +bearing, +which without doubt come unconsciously to those who can boast a noble +and illustrious ancestry.</p> +<p>Again the writer hesitates to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle +when they place at this period, that is to say about 1533, the +superb <i>Allegory</i> of the Louvre (No. 1589), which is very +generally +believed to represent the famous commander Alfonso d'Avalos, +<a name="Page_18"></a>Marqués del Vasto, with his family. The +eminent biographers +of Titian connect the picture with the return of d'Avalos from the +campaign against the Turks, undertaken by him in the autumn of 1532, +under the leadership of Croy, at the behest of his imperial master. +They +hazard the surmise that the picture, though painted after Alfonso's +return, symbolises his departure for the wars, "consoled by Victory, +Love, and Hymen." A more natural conclusion would surely be that +what Titian has sought to suggest is the return of the commander to +enjoy the hard-earned fruits of victory.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><i><a name="Cardinal_Ippolito_de_Medici"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 639px;" + alt="Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by G. Brogi." + title="Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by G. Brogi." + src="images/image05.jpg"></i></p> +<p>The Italo-Spanish grandee was born at Naples in 1502, so that at +this date he would have been but thirty-one years of age, whereas the +mailed warrior of the <i>Allegory</i> is at least forty, perhaps +older. Moreover, +and this is the essential point, the technical qualities of the +picture, +the wonderful easy mastery of the handling, the peculiarities of the +colouring and the general tone, surely point to a rather later date, to +a +period, indeed, some ten years ahead of the time at which we have +arrived. +If we are to accept the tradition that this Allegory, or +quasi-allegorical +portrait-piece, giving a fanciful embodiment to the pleasures of +martial +domination, of conjugal love, of well-earned peace and plenty, +represents +d'Avalos, his consort Mary of Arragon, and their family—and a +comparison with the well-authenticated portrait of Del Vasto in the +<i>Allocution</i> of Madrid does not carry with it entire conviction—we +must perforce place the Louvre picture some ten years later than do +Crowe and Cavalcaselle. Apart from the question of identification, +it appears to the writer that the technical execution of the piece +would +lead to a similar conclusion.<a name="FNanchor_11"></a><a + href="#Footnote_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a></p> +<p>To this year, 1533, belongs one of the masterpieces in portraiture +of our painter, the wonderful <i>Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici in a +Hungarian +habit</i> of the Pitti. This youthful Prince of the Church, the natural +<a name="Page_19"></a>son of Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, was +born in 1511, so +that when Titian so incomparably portrayed him, he was, for all the +perfect maturity of his virile beauty, for all the perfect +self-possession +of his aspect, but twenty-two years of age. He was the passionate +worshipper of the divine Giulia Gonzaga, whose portrait he caused to +be painted by Sebastiano del Piombo. His part in the war undertaken +by Charles V. in 1532, against the Turks, had been a strange one. +<a name="Page_20"></a>Clement VII., his relative, had appointed him +Legate and sent him to +Vienna at the head of three hundred musketeers. But when Charles +withdrew from the army to return to Italy, the Italian contingent, +instead of going in pursuit of the Sultan into Hungary, opportunely +mutinied, thus affording to their pleasure-loving leader the desired +pretext for riding back with them through the Austrian provinces, +with eyes wilfully closed the while to their acts of depredation. +<a name="Page_21"></a>It was in the rich and fantastic habit of a +Hungarian captain that +the handsome young Medici was now painted by Titian at Bologna, +the result being a portrait unique of its kind even in his life-work. +The sombre glow of the supple, youthful flesh, the red-brown +of the rich velvet habit which defines the perfect shape of Ippolito, +the +<a name="Page_22"></a>red of the fantastic plumed head-dress worn by +him with such sovereign +ease, make up a deep harmony, warm, yet not in the technical sense hot, +and of indescribable effect. And this effect is centralised in the +uncanny +glance, the mysterious aspect of the man whom, as we see him here, +a woman might love for his beauty, but a man would do well to distrust. +The smaller portrait painted by Titian about the same time of the young +Cardinal fully armed—the one which, with the Pitti picture, Vasari saw +in +the closet (<i>guardaroba</i>) of Cosimo, Duke of Tuscany—is not now +known +to exist.<a name="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Francis_the_First"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 648px;" + alt="Francis the First. Louvre. From a Photograph by Neurdein." + title="Francis the First. Louvre. From a Photograph by Neurdein." + src="images/image06.jpg"></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Portrait_of_a_Nobleman"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 656px;" + alt="Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + title="Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + src="images/image07.jpg"></p> +<p>It may be convenient to mention here one of the most magnificent +among the male portraits of Titian, the <i>Young Nobleman</i> in the +Sala di +Marte of the Pitti Gallery, although its exact place in the middle time +of +the artist it is, failing all data on the point, not easy to determine. +At +Florence there has somehow been attached to it the curious name <i>Howard +duca di Norfolk</i>,<a name="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> +but upon what grounds, if any, the writer is unable to +state. The master of Cadore never painted a head more finely or with a +more exquisite finesse, never more happily characterised a face, than +that of +this resolute, self-contained young patrician with the curly chestnut +hair and +the short, fine beard and moustache—a personage high of rank, +doubtless, +notwithstanding the studied simplicity of his dress. Because we know +nothing of the sitter, and there is in his pose and general aspect +nothing +sensational, this masterpiece is, if not precisely not less celebrated +among +connoisseurs, at any rate less popular with the larger public, than it +deserves to be.<a name="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Page_23"></a><a + name="S_Giovanni_Elemosinario"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 927px;" + alt="S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of that name at Venice. From a Photograph by Naya." + title="S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of that name at Venice. From a Photograph by Naya." + src="images/image08.jpg"></p> +<p><a name="Page_24"></a>The noble altar-piece in the church of S. +Giovanni Elemosinario at +Venice showing the saint of that name enthroned, and giving alms to a +beggar, belongs to the close of 1533 or thereabouts, since the +high-altar +was finished in the month of October of that year. According to Vasari, +it +must be regarded as having served above all to assert once for all the +supremacy of Titian over Pordenone, whose friends had obtained for him +the commission to paint in competition with the Cadorine an altar-piece +for +one of the apsidal chapels of the church, where, indeed, his work is +still to +be seen.<a name="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> +Titian's canvas, like most of the great altar-pieces of the middle +time, was originally arched at the top; but the vandalism of a +subsequent +epoch has, as in the case of the <i>Madonna di S. Niccola</i>, now in +the Vatican, made of this arch a square, thereby greatly impairing the +majesty of the general effect. Titian here solves the problem of +combining +the strong and simple decorative aspect demanded by the position +of the work as the central feature of a small church, with the utmost +pathos and dignity, thus doing incomparably in his own way—the way +of the colourist and the warm, the essentially human realist—what +Michelangelo had, soaring high above earth, accomplished with +unapproachable +sublimity in the <i>Prophets</i> and <i>Sibyls</i> of the Sixtine +Chapel.</p> +<p>The colour is appropriately sober, yet a general tone is produced of +great +strength and astonishing effectiveness. The illumination is that of the +open +air, tempered and modified by an overhanging canopy of green; the great +effect is obtained by the brilliant grayish white of the saint's alb, +dominating +and keeping in due balance the red of the rochet and the under-robes, +the cloud-veiled sky, the marble throne or podium, the dark green +hanging. This picture must have had in the years to follow a strong and +lasting influence on Paolo Veronese, the keynote to whose audaciously +<a name="Page_25"></a>brilliant yet never over-dazzling colour is this +use of white and gray in large +dominating masses. The noble figure of S. Giovanni gave him a prototype +for many of his imposing figures of bearded old men. There +is a strong reminiscence, too, of the saint's attitude in one of the +most +wonderful of extant Veroneses—that sumptuous altar-piece <i>SS. +Anthony, +Cornelius, and Cyprian with a Page</i>, in the Brera, for which he +invented +a harmony as delicious as it is daring, composed wholly of +violet-purple, +green, and gold.</p> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 35%;"> +<h2><a name="Page_26"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<h4><i>Francesco Maria della Rovere—Titian and Eleonora Gonzaga—The +"Venus with the +Shell"—Titian's later ideals—The "Venus of Urbino"—The "Bella di +Tiziano"—The +"Twelve Cæsars"—Titian and Pordenone—The "Battle of +Cadore"—Portraits +of the Master by himself—The "Presentation in the Temple"—The +"Allocation" of Madrid—The Ceiling Pictures of Santo Spirito—First +Meeting +with Pope Paul III.—The "Ecce Homo" of Vienna—"Christ with the +Pilgrims at Emmaus</i>."</h4> +<br> +<p>Within the years 1532 and 1538, or thereabouts, would appear to fall +Titian's relations with another princely patron, Francesco Maria della +Rovere, Duke of Urbino, the nephew of the redoubtable Pope Julius II., +whose qualities of martial ardour and unbridled passion he reproduced +in +an exaggerated form. By his mother, Giovanna da Montefeltro, he +descended also from the rightful dynasty of Urbino, to which he +succeeded +in virtue of adoption. His life of perpetual strife, of warfare in +defence of his more than once lost and reconquered duchy, and as the +captain first of the army of the Church, afterwards of the Venetian +forces, +came to an abrupt end in 1538. With his own hand he had, in the +ardent days of his youth, slain in the open streets of Ravenna the +handsome, +sinister Cardinal Alidosi, thereby bringing down upon himself the +anathemas of his uncle, Julius II., and furnishing to his successor, +the +Medici pope Leo X., the best possible excuse for the sequestration of +the +duchy of Urbino in favour of his own house. He himself died by poison, +suspicion resting upon the infamous Pier Luigi Farnese, the son of +Paul III.</p> +<p>Francesco Maria had espoused Eleonora Gonzaga, the sister of +Titian's protector, Federigo, and it is probably through the latter +that +the relations with our master sprang up to which we owe a small group +<a name="Page_27"></a><a name="Page_28"></a>of his very finest works, +including the so-called <i>Venus of Urbino</i> of the +Tribuna, the <i>Girl in a Fur Cloak</i> of the Vienna Gallery, and the +companion portraits of Francesco Maria and Eleonora which are now in +the +Venetian Gallery at the Uffizi. The fiery leader of armies had, it +should +be remembered, been brought up by Guidobaldo of Montefeltro, one of +the most amiable and enlightened princes of his time, and, moreover, +his +consort Eleonora was the daughter of Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, than +whom the Renaissance knew no more enthusiastic or more discriminating +patron of art.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="The_Girl_in_the_Fur_Cloak"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 816px;" + alt="The Girl in the Fur Cloak. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Löwy." + title="The Girl in the Fur Cloak. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Löwy." + src="images/image09.jpg"></p> +<p>A curious problem meets us at the outset. We may assume with +some degree of certainty that the portraits of the duke and duchess +belong to the year 1537. Stylistic characteristics point to the +conclusion +that the great <i>Venus</i> of the Tribuna, the so-called <i>Bella di +Tiziano</i>, and +the <i>Girl in the Fur Cloak</i>—to take only undoubted +originals—belong to +much the same stage of Titian's practice as the companion portraits at +the Uffizi. Eleonora Gonzaga, a princess of the highest culture, the +daughter of an admirable mother, the friend of Pietro Bembo, Sadolet, +and Baldassarre Castiglione, was at this time a matron of some twenty +years' standing; at the date when her avowed portrait was painted she +must have been at the very least forty. By what magic did Titian +manage to suggest her type and physiognomy in the famous pictures just +now mentioned, and yet to plunge the duchess into a kind of <i>Fontaine +de +Jouvence</i>, realising in the divine freshness of youth and beauty +beings who +nevertheless appear to have with her some kind of mystic and unsolved +connection? If this was what he really intended—and the results +attained +may lead us without temerity to assume as much—no subtler or more +exquisite form of flattery could be conceived. It is curious to note +that +at the same time he signally failed with the portrait of her mother, +Isabella d'Este, painted in 1534, but showing the Marchioness of Mantua +as a young woman of some twenty-five years, though she was then sixty. +Here youth and a semblance of beauty are called up by the magic of the +artist, but the personality, both physical and mental, is lost in the +effort. +But then in this last case Titian was working from an early portrait, +and +without the living original to refer to.</p> +<p>But, before approaching the discussion of the <i>Venus of Urbino</i>, +it is +necessary to say a word about another <i>Venus</i> which must have +been +<a name="Page_29"></a>painted some years before this time, revealing, +as it does, a completely +different and, it must be owned, a higher ideal. This is the terribly +ruined, yet still beautiful, <i>Venus Anadyomene</i>, or <i>Venus of +the Shell</i>, of the +Bridgewater Gallery, painted perhaps at the instigation of some +humanist, +to realise a description of the world-famous painting of Apelles. It is +not at present possible to place this picture with anything approaching +to +chronological exactitude. It must have been painted some years after +the <i>Bacchus and Ariadne</i> of the National Gallery, some years +before the +<i>Venus</i> of the Tribuna, and that is about as near as surmise can +get. The +type of the goddess in the Ellesmere picture recalls somewhat the +<i>Ariadne</i> in our masterpiece at the National Gallery, but also, +albeit in a +less material form, the <i>Magdalens</i> of a later time. Titian's +conception +of perfect womanhood is here midway between his earlier Giorgionesque +ideal and the frankly sensuous yet grand luxuriance of his maturity and +old age. He never, even in the days of youth and Giorgionesque +enchantment, penetrated so far below the surface as did his master and +friend Barbarelli. He could not equal him in giving, with the +undisguised +physical allurement which belongs to the true woman, as distinguished +from +the ideal conception compounded of womanhood's finest attributes, that +sovereignty of amorous yet of spiritual charm which is its complement +and its corrective.<a name="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> +Still with Titian, too, in the earlier years, woman, as +presented in the perfection of mature youth, had, accompanying and +elevating her bodily loveliness, a measure of that higher and nobler +feminine attractiveness which would enable her to meet man on equal +terms, nay, actively to exercise a dominating influence of fascination. +In +illustration of this assertion it is only necessary to refer to the +draped +and the undraped figure in the <i>Medea and Venus (Sacred and Profane +Love)</i> of the Borghese Gallery, to the <i>Herodias</i> of the Doria +Gallery, to +the <i>Flora</i> of the Uffizi. Here, even when the beautiful Venetian +courtesan +is represented or suggested, what the master gives is less the mere +votary +than the priestess of love. Of this power of domination, this feminine +royalty, the <i>Venus Anadyomene</i> still retains a measure, but the <i>Venus +of +Urbino</i> and the splendid succession of Venuses and Danaës, +goddesses, +nymphs, and heroines belonging to the period of the fullest maturity, +<a name="Page_30"></a>show woman in the phase in which, renouncing her +power to enslave, +she is herself reduced to slavery.</p> +<p>These glowing presentments of physical attractiveness embody a lower +ideal—that of woman as the plaything of man, his precious possession, +his delight in the lower sense. And yet Titian expresses this by no +means exalted conception with a grand candour, an absence of <i>arrière-pensée</i> +such as almost purges it of offence. It is Giovanni Morelli who, +in tracing the gradual descent from his recovered treasure, the <i>Venus</i> +of +Giorgione in the Dresden Gallery,<a name="FNanchor_17"></a><a + href="#Footnote_17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> through the various Venuses of +Titian down to those of the latest manner, so finely expresses the +essential +difference between Giorgione's divinity and her sister in the Tribuna. +The former sleeping, and protected only by her sovereign loveliness, is +safer from offence than the waking goddess—or shall we not rather say +woman?—who in Titian's canvas passively waits in her rich Venetian +bower, tended by her handmaidens. It is again Morelli<a + name="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> who +points out +that, as compared with Correggio, even Giorgione—to say nothing of +Titian—is when he renders the beauty of woman or goddess a realist. +And this is true in a sense, yet not altogether. Correggio's <i>Danaë</i>, +his +<i>Io</i>, his <i>Leda</i>, his <i>Venus</i>, are in their exquisite +grace of form and movement +farther removed from the mere fleshly beauty of the undraped model than +are the goddesses and women of Giorgione. The passion and throb +of humanity are replaced by a subtler and less easily explicable charm; +beauty becomes a perfectly balanced and finely modulated harmony. Still +the allurement is there, and it is more consciously and more +provocatively +exercised than with Giorgione, though the fascination of Correggio's +divinities asserts itself less directly, less candidly. Showing through +the frankly human loveliness of Giorgione's women there is after all a +higher spirituality, a deeper intimation of that true, that +clear-burning +passion, enveloping body and soul, which transcends all exterior grace +and harmony, however exquisite it may be in refinement of +voluptuousness.<a name="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19"><sup>[19]</sup></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_31"></a>It is not, indeed, by any means certain that +we are justified in seriously +criticising as a <i>Venus</i> the great picture of the Tribuna. Titian +himself +has given no indication that the beautiful Venetian woman who lies +undraped after the bath, while in a sumptuous chamber, furnished +according +to the mode of the time, her handmaidens are seeking for the robes +with which she will adorn herself, is intended to present the +love-goddess, +or even a beauty masquerading with her attributes. Vasari, who saw it +in the picture-closet of the Duke of Urbino, describes it, no doubt, as +"une Venere giovanetta a giacere, con fieri e certi panni sottili +attorno." +It is manifestly borrowed, too—as is now universally acknowledged—from +Giorgione's <i>Venus</i> in the Dresden Gallery, with the significant +alteration, +however, that Titian's fair one voluptuously dreams awake, while +Giorgione's +goddess more divinely reposes, and sleeping dreams loftier dreams. +The motive is in the borrowing robbed of much of its dignity and +beauty, +and individualised in a fashion which, were any other master than +Titian +in question, would have brought it to the verge of triviality. Still as +an example of his unrivalled mastery in rendering the glow and +semi-transparency +of flesh, enhanced by the contrast with white linen—itself slightly +golden in tinge; in suggesting the appropriate atmospheric environment; +in giving the full splendour of Venetian colour, duly subordinated +nevertheless +to the main motive, which is the glorification of a beautiful human +body as it is; in all these respects the picture is of superlative +excellence, +a representative example of the master and of Venetian art, a piece +which +it would not be easy to match even among his own works.</p> +<p><a name="Page_32"></a>More and more, as the supreme artist matures, +do we find him +disdaining the showier and more evident forms of virtuosity. His +colour is more and more marked in its luminous beauty by reticence +and concentration, by the search after such a main colour-chord as +shall not only be beautiful and satisfying in itself, but expressive of +the +motive which is at the root of the picture. Play of light over the +surfaces and round the contours of the human form; the breaking-up +and modulation of masses of colour by that play of light; strength, and +beauty of general tone—these are now Titian's main preoccupations. To +this point his perfected technical art has legitimately developed +itself +from the Giorgionesque ideal of colour and tone-harmony, which was +essentially the same in principle, though necessarily in a less +advanced +stage, and more diversified by exceptions. Our master became, as +time went on, less and less interested in the mere dexterous +juxtaposition +of brilliantly harmonising and brilliantly contrasting tints, in +piquancy, gaiety, and sparkle of colour, to be achieved for its own +sake. +Indeed this phase of Venetian sixteenth-century colour belongs rather +to +those artists who issued from Verona—to the Bonifazi, and to Paolo +Veronese—who in this respect, as generally in artistic temperament, +proved +themselves the natural successors of Domenico and Francesco Morone, of +Girolamo dai Libri, of Cavazzola.</p> +<p>Yet when Titian takes colour itself as his chief motive, he can +vie with the most sumptuous of them in splendour, and eclipse them +all by the sureness of his taste. A good example of this is the +celebrated +<i>Bella di Tiziano</i> of the Pitti Gallery, another work which, like +the <i>Venus of Urbino</i>, recalls the features without giving the +precise +personality of Eleonora Gonzaga. The beautiful but somewhat +expressionless +head with its crowning glory of bright hair, a waving mass of +Venetian gold, has been so much injured by rubbing down and restoration +that we regret what has been lost even more than we enjoy what is left. +But the surfaces of the fair and exquisitely modelled neck and bosom +have +been less cruelly treated; the superb costume retains much of its +pristine +splendour. With its combination of brownish-purple velvet, peacock-blue +brocade, and white lawn, its delicate trimmings of gold, and its +further adornment with small knots, having in them, now at any rate, +but +an effaced note of red, the gown of <i>La Bella</i> has remained the +type of +<a name="Page_33"></a>what is most beautiful in Venetian costume as it +was in the earlier half of +the sixteenth century. In richness and ingenious elaboration, chastened +by taste, it far transcends the over-splendid and ponderous dresses in +which later on the patrician dames portrayed by Veronese and his school +loved to array themselves. A bright note of red in the upper jewel of +one earring, now, no doubt, cruder than was originally intended, gives +a +fillip to the whole, after a fashion peculiar to Titian.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="La_Bella_di_Tiziano"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 713px;" + alt="La Bella di Tiziano. From a photograph by Aplinari. Walter L. Cells. Ph." + title="La Bella di Tiziano. From a photograph by Aplinari. Walter L. Cells. Ph." + src="images/image10.jpg"></p> +<p>The <i>Girl in the Fur Cloak</i>, No 197 in the Imperial Gallery at +Vienna, shows once more in a youthful and blooming woman the features +of Eleonora. The model is nude under a mantle of black satin lined with +fur, which leaves uncovered the right breast and both arms. The picture +is undoubtedly Titian's own, and fine in quality, but it reveals less +than +his usual graciousness and charm. It is probably identical with the +canvas described in the often-quoted catalogue of Charles I.'s pictures +as +"A naked woman putting on her smock, which the king changed with +the Duchess of Buckingham for one of His Majesty's Mantua pieces." It +may well have suggested to Rubens, who must have seen it among the +King's possessions on the occasion of his visit to London, his superb, +yet +singularly unrefined, <i>Hélène Fourment in a Fur Mantle</i>, +now also in the +Vienna Gallery.</p> +<p>The great portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in the +Uffizi belong, as has already been noted, to 1537. Francesco Maria, +here represented in the penultimate year of his stormy life, assumes +deliberately the truculent warrior, and has beyond reasonable doubt +made +his own pose in a portrait destined to show the leader of armies, and +not the amorous spouse or the patron of art and artists. Praise +enthusiastic, but not excessive, has ever been and ever will be +lavished +on the breadth and splendid decision of the painting; on the +magnificent rendering of the suit of plain but finely fashioned steel +armour, with its wonderful reflections; on the energy of the virile +countenance, and the appropriate concentration and simplicity of the +whole. The superb head has, it must be confessed, more grandeur +and energy than true individuality or life. The companion picture +represents Eleonora Gonzaga seated near an open window, wearing a +sombre but magnificent costume, and, completing it, one of those +turbans +with which the patrician ladies of North Italy, other than those of +<a name="Page_34"></a>Venice, habitually crowned their locks. It has +suffered in loss of freshness +and touch more than its companion. Fine and accurate as the +portrait is, much as it surpasses its pendant in subtle truth of +characterisation, +it has in the opinion of the writer been somewhat overpraised. +For once, Titian approaches very nearly to the northern ideal in +portraiture, +underlining the truth with singular accuracy, yet with some sacrifice +of graciousness and charm. The daughter of the learned and brilliant +Isabella looks here as if, in the decline of her beauty, she had become +something of a <i>précieuse</i> and a prude, though it would be +imprudent to +assert that she was either the one or the other. Perhaps the most +attractive feature of the whole composition is the beautiful landscape +so characteristically stretching away into the far blue distance, +suggested +rather than revealed through the open window. This is such a picture +as might have inspired the Netherlander Antonio Moro, just because it +is Italian art of the Cinquecento with a difference, that is, with a +certain +admixture of northern downrightness and literalness of statement.</p> +<p>About this same time Titian received from the brother of this +princess, his patron and admirer Federigo Gonzaga, the commission for +the famous series of the <i>Twelve Cæsars</i>, now only known to +the world +by stray copies here and there, and by the grotesquely exaggerated +engravings of Ægidius Sadeler. Giulio Romano having in 1536<a + name="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20"><sup>[20]</sup></a> +completed the Sala di Troja in the Castello of Mantua, and made +considerable +progress with the apartments round about it, Federigo Gonzaga +conceived the idea of devoting one whole room to the painted effigies +of +the <i>Twelve Cæsars</i> to be undertaken by Titian. The exact +date +when the <i>Cæsars</i> were delivered is not known, but it may +legitimately +be inferred that this was in the course of 1537 or the earlier half of +1538. Our master's pictures were, according to Vasari, placed in an <i>anticamera</i> +of the Mantuan Palace, below them being hung twelve <i>storie a olio</i>—histories +in oils—by Giulio Romano.<a name="FNanchor_21"></a><a + href="#Footnote_21"><sup>[21]</sup></a> The <i>Cæsars</i> were +all half-<a name="Page_35"></a>lengths, +eleven out of the twelve being done by the Venetian master and +the twelfth by Giulio Romano himself.<a name="FNanchor_22"></a><a + href="#Footnote_22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> Brought to England with +<a name="Page_36"></a>the rest of the Mantua pieces purchased by Daniel +Nys for Charles I., +they suffered injury, and Van Dyck is said to have repainted the <i>Vitellius</i>, +which was one of several canvases irretrievably ruined by the +quicksilver +of the frames during the transit from Italy.<a name="FNanchor_23"></a><a + href="#Footnote_23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> On the disposal of the +royal collection after Charles Stuart's execution the <i>Twelve +Cæsars</i> were +sold by the State—not presented, as is usually asserted—to the Spanish +Ambassador Cardenas, who gave £1200 for them. On their arrival in +Spain with the other treasures secured on behalf of Philip IV., they +were +placed in the Alcazar of Madrid, where in one of the numerous fires +which successively devastated the royal palace they must have perished, +since no trace of them is to be found after the end of the seventeenth +century. The popularity of Titian's decorative canvases is proved by +the fact that Bernardino Campi of Cremona made five successive sets of +copies from them—for Charles V., d'Avalos, the Duke of Alva, +Rangone, and another Spanish grandee. Agostino Caracci subsequently +copied them for the palace of Parma, and traces of yet other copies +exist. +Numerous versions are shown in private collections, both in England and +abroad, purporting to be from the hand of Titian, but of these none—at +any rate none of those seen by the writer—are originals or even +Venetian copies. Among the best are the examples in the collection +of Earl Brownlow and at the royal palace of Munich respectively, and +these may possibly be from the hand of Campi. Although we are +expressly told in Dolce's <i>Dialogo</i> that Titian "painted the <i>Twelve +Cæsars</i>, taking them in part from medals, in part from antique +marbles," +it is perfectly clear that of the exact copying of antiques—such as is +to +be noted, for instance, in those marble medallions by Donatello which +adorn the courtyard of the Medici Palace at Florence—there can have +been no question. The attitudes of the <i>Cæsars</i>, as shown +in the +engravings and the extant copies, exclude any such supposition. Those +who have judged them from those copies and the hideous grotesques of +Sadeler have wondered at the popularity of the originals, somewhat +hastily deeming Titian to have been here inferior to himself. Strange +to +say, a better idea of what he intended, and what he may have realised +in +the originals, is to be obtained from a series of small copies now in +the Provincial Museum of Hanover, than from anything else that has +<a name="Page_37"></a>survived.<a name="FNanchor_24"></a><a + href="#Footnote_24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> The little pictures in +question, being on copper, cannot well +be anterior to the first part of the seventeenth century, and they are +not +in themselves wonders. All the same they have a unique interest as +proving that, while adopting the pompous attitudes and the purely +decorative standpoint which the position of the pictures in the +Castello +may have rendered obligatory, Titian managed to make of his +Emperors creatures of flesh and blood; the splendid Venetian warrior +and patrician appearing in all the glory of manhood behind the +conventional +dignity, the self-consciousness of the Roman type and attitude.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Francesco_Maria_della_Rovere"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 635px;" + alt="Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + title="Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + src="images/image11.jpg"></p> +<p>These last years had been to Titian as fruitful in material gain as +in +honour. He had, as has been seen, established permanent and intimate +relations not only with the art-loving rulers of the North Italian +principalities, but now with Charles V. himself, mightiest of European +sovereigns, and, as a natural consequence, with the all-powerful +captains +and grandees of the Hispano-Austrian court. Meanwhile a serious danger +to his supremacy had arisen. At home in Venice his unique position was +threatened by Pordenone, that masterly and wonderfully facile <i>frescante</i> +and painter of monumental decorations, who had on more than one +occasion in the past been found in competition with him.</p> +<p>The Friulan, after many wanderings and much labour in North Italy, +had settled in Venice in 1535, and there acquired an immense reputation +by the grandeur and consummate ease with which he had carried out great +mural decorations, such as the façade of Martin d'Anna's house +on the +Grand Canal, comprising in its scheme of decoration a Curtius on +horse-back +and a flying Mercury which according to Vasari became the talk of +the town.<a name="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> +Here, at any rate, was a field in which even Titian himself, +seeing that he had only at long intervals practised in fresco painting, +could +not hope to rival Pordenone. The Friulan, indeed, in this his special +branch, stood entirely alone among the painters of North Italy.</p> +<p><a name="Page_38"></a>The Council of Ten in June 1537 issued a +decree recording that +Titian had since 1516 been in possession of his <i>senseria</i>, or +broker's patent, +and its accompanying salary, on condition that he should paint "the +canvas of the land fight on the side of the Hall of the Great Council +looking out on the Grand Canal," but that he had drawn his salary +without +performing his promise. He was therefore called upon to refund all that +he had received for the time during which he had done no work. This +sharp reminder operated as it was intended to do. We see from Aretino's +correspondence that in November 1537 Titian was busily engaged on the +great canvas for the Doges' Palace. This tardy recognition of an old +obligation did not prevent the Council from issuing an order in +November +1538 directing Pordenone to paint a picture for the Sala del Gran +Consiglio, to occupy the space next to that reserved for Titian's +long-delayed +battle-piece.</p> +<p>That this can never have been executed is clear, since Pordenone, on +receipt of an urgent summons from Ercole II., Duke of Ferrara, departed +from Venice in the month of December of the same year, and falling sick +at Ferrara, died so suddenly as to give rise to the suspicion of foul +play, +which too easily sprang up in those days when ambition or private +vengeance +found ready to hand weapons so many and so convenient. Crowe and +Cavalcaselle give good grounds for the assumption that, in order to +save +appearances, Titian was supposed—replacing and covering the +battle-piece +which already existed in the Great Hall—to be presenting the Battle of +Spoleto in Umbria, whereas it was clear to all Venetians, from the +costumes, the banners, and the landscape, that he meant to depict the +Battle of Cadore fought in 1508. The latter was a Venetian victory and +an Imperial defeat, the former a Papal defeat and an Imperial victory. +The all-devouring fire of 1577 annihilated the <i>Battle of Cadore</i> +with too +many other works of capital importance in the history both of the +primitive and the mature Venetian schools. We have nothing now to +show what it may have been, save the print of Fontana, and the oil +painting in the Venetian Gallery of the Uffizi, reproducing on a +reduced +scale part only of the big canvas. This last is of Venetian origin, and +more or less contemporary, but it need hardly be pointed out that it is +a +copy from, not a sketch for, the picture.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="The_Battle_of_Cadore"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 488px;" + alt="The Battle of Cadore (from a reduced copy of part only). Uffizi Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by G. Brogi." + title="The Battle of Cadore (from a reduced copy of part only). Uffizi Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by G. Brogi." + src="images/image12.jpg"></p> +<p>To us who know the vast battle-piece only in the feeble echo of the +<a name="Page_39"></a>print and the picture just now mentioned, it is a +little difficult to account +for the enthusiasm that it excited, and the prominent place accorded to +it +among the most famous of the Cadorine's works. Though the whole has +abundant movement and passion, and the <i>mise-en-scène</i> is +undoubtedly +imposing, the combat is not raised above reality into the region of the +higher and more representative truth by any element of tragic vastness +and significance. Even though the Imperialists are armed more or +less in the antique Roman fashion, to distinguish them from the +Venetians, who appear in the accoutrements of their own day, it is +still +that minor and local combat the <i>Battle of Cadore</i> that we have +before +us, and not, above and beyond this battle, War, as some masters of the +<a name="Page_40"></a>century, gifted with a higher power of evocation, +might have shown it. +Even as the fragment of Leonardo da Vinci's <i>Battle of Anghiari</i> +survives +in the free translation of Rubens's well-known drawing in the Louvre, +we see how he has made out of the unimportant cavalry combat, yet +without +conventionality or undue transposition, a representation unequalled in +art of the frenzy generated in man and beast by the clash of arms and +the scent of blood. And Rubens, too, how incomparably in the <i>Battle +of the Amazons</i> of the Pinakothek at Munich, he evokes the terrors, +not +only of one mortal encounter, but of War—the hideous din, the horror +of man let loose and become beast once more, the pitiless yell of the +victors, the despairing cry of the vanquished, the irremediable +overthrow! +It would, however, be foolhardy in those who can only guess at what the +picture may have been to arrogate to themselves the right of sitting in +judgment on Vasari and those contemporaries who, actually seeing, +enthusiastically admired it. What excited their delight must surely +have +been Titian's magic power of brush as displayed in individual figures +and +episodes, such as that famous one of the knight armed by his page in +the +immediate foreground.</p> +<p>Into this period of our master's career there fit very well the two +portraits in which he appears, painted by himself, on the confines of +old +age, vigorous and ardent still, fully conscious, moreover, though +without +affectation, of pre-eminent genius and supreme artistic rank. The +portraits referred to are those very similar ones, both of them +undoubtedly +originals, which are respectively in the Berlin Gallery and the +Painters' +Gallery of the Uffizi. It is strange that there should exist no certain +likeness of the master of Cadore done in youth or earlier manhood, if +there be excepted the injured and more than doubtful production in the +Imperial Gallery of Vienna, which has pretty generally been supposed to +be an original auto-portrait belonging to this period. In the Uffizi +and +Berlin pictures Titian looks about sixty years old, but may be a little +more or a little less. The latter is a half-length, showing him seated +and +gazing obliquely out of the picture with a majestic air, but also with +something of combativeness and disquietude, an element, this last, +which +is traceable even in some of the earlier portraits, but not in the +mythological +<i>poesie</i> or any sacred work. More and more as we advance through +the final period of old age do we find this element of disquietude and +<a name="Page_41"></a>misgiving asserting itself in male portraiture, +as, for instance, in the +<i>Maltese Knight</i> of the Prado, the <i>Dominican Monk</i> of the +Borghese, the +<i>Portrait of a Man with a Palm Branch</i> of the Dresden Gallery. The +atmosphere of sadness and foreboding enveloping man is traceable back +to +Giorgione; but with him it comes from the plenitude of inner life, from +the gaze turned inwards upon the mystery of the human individuality +rather than outwards upon the inevitable tragedies of the exterior life +common to all. This same atmosphere of passionate contemplativeness +enwraps, indeed, all that Giorgione did, and is the cause that he sees +the +world and himself lyrically, not dramatically; the flame of aspiration +burning steadily at the heart's core and leaving the surface not indeed +unruffled, but outwardly calm in its glow. Titian's is the more +dramatic +temperament in outward things, but also the more superficial. It must +be remembered, too, that arriving rapidly at the maturity of his art, +and +painting all through the period of the full Renaissance, he was able +with +far less hindrance from technical limitations to express his +conceptions to +the full. His portraiture, however, especially his male portraiture, +was +and remained in its essence a splendid and full-blown development of +the +Giorgionesque ideal. It was grander, more accomplished, and for obvious +reasons more satisfying, yet far less penetrating, less expressive of +the +inner fibre, whether of the painter or of his subject.</p> +<p>But to return to the portrait of Berlin. It is in parts unfinished, +and +therefore the more interesting as revealing something of the methods +employed by the master in this period of absolute mastery, when his +palette was as sober in its strength as it was rich and harmonious; +when, +as ever, execution was a way to an end, and therefore not to be +vain-gloriously displayed merely for its own sake. The picture came, +with +very many other masterpieces of the Italian and Netherlandish schools, +from the Solly collection, which formed the nucleus of the Berlin +Gallery. +The Uffizi portrait emerges noble still, in its semi-ruined state, from +a +haze of restoration and injury, which has not succeeded in destroying +the +exceptional fineness and sensitiveness of the modelling. Although the +pose and treatment of the head are practically identical with that in +the +Berlin picture, the conception seems a less dramatic one. It includes, +unless the writer has misread it, an element of greater mansuetude and +a less perturbed reflectiveness.</p> +<p><a name="Page_42"></a>The double portrait in the collection of Her +Majesty the Queen at +Windsor Castle, styled <i>Titian and Franceschini</i><a + name="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26"><sup>[26]</sup></a> has +no pretensions +whatever to be even discussed as a Titian. The figure of the Venetian +senator designated as Franceschini is the better performance of the +two; +the lifeless head of Titian, which looks very like an afterthought, has +been copied, without reference to the relation of the two figures the +one +to the other, from the Uffizi picture, or some portrait identical with +it in +character. A far finer likeness of Titian than any of these is the much +later one, now in the Prado Gallery; but this it will be best to deal +with in its proper chronological order.</p> +<p>We come now to one of the most popular of all Titian's great +canvases based on a sacred subject, the <i>Presentation in the Temple</i> +in the +Accademia delle Belle Arti at Venice. This, as Vasari expressly states, +was painted for the Scuola di S. Maria della Carità, that is, +for the +confraternity which owned the very building where now the Accademia +displays its treasures. It is the magnificent scenic rendering of a +subject +lending itself easily to exterior pomp and display, not so easily to a +more +mystic and less obvious mode of conception. At the root of Titian's +design lies in all probability the very similar picture on a +comparatively +small scale by Cima da Conegliano, now No. 63 in the Dresden +Gallery, and this last may well have been inspired by Carpaccio's <i>Presentation +of the Virgin</i>, now in the Brera at Milan.<a name="FNanchor_27"></a><a + href="#Footnote_27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> The imposing canvases +belonging to this particular period of Titian's activity, and this one +in +particular, with its splendid architectural framing, its wealth of life +and +movement, its richness and variety in type and costume, its fair +prospect +of Venetian landscape in the distance, must have largely contributed to +form the transcendent decorative talent of Paolo Veronese. Only in the +exquisitely fresh and beautiful figure of the childlike Virgin, who +ascends +the mighty flight of stone steps, clad all in shimmering blue, her head +crowned with a halo of yellow light, does the artist prove that he has +penetrated to the innermost significance of his subject. Here, at any +<a name="Page_43"></a><a name="Page_44"></a>rate, he touches the heart +as well as feasts the eye. The thoughts of all +who are familiar with Venetian art will involuntarily turn to +Tintoretto's +rendering of the same moving, yet in its symbolical character not +naturally +ultra-dramatic, scene. The younger master lends to it a significance so +vast that he may be said to go as far beyond and above the requirements +of the theme as Titian, with all his legitimate splendour and serene +dignity, +remains below it. With Tintoretto as interpreter we are made to see the +beautiful episode as an event of the most tremendous import—one that +must shake the earth to its centre. The reason of the onlooker may +rebel against this portentous version, yet he is dominated all the +same, is +overwhelmed with something of the indefinable awe that has seized upon +the bystanders who are witnesses of the scene.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="The_Presentation_of_the_Virgin"></a><img + style="width: 640px; height: 317px;" + alt="The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by Naya." + title="The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by Naya." + src="images/image13.jpg"></p> +<p>But now to discuss a very curious point in connection with the +actual +state of Titian's important canvas. It has been very generally +assumed—and +Crowe and Cavalcaselle have set their seal on the assumption—that +Titian painted his picture for a special place in the Albergo (now +Accademia), and that this place is now architecturally as it was in +Titian's time. Let them speak for themselves. "In this room (in the +Albergo), which is contiguous to the modern hall in which Titian's +<i>Assunta</i> is displayed, there were two doors for which allowance +was +made in Titian's canvas; twenty-five feet—the length of the wall—is +now the length of the picture. When this vast canvas was removed +from its place, the gaps of the doors were filled in with new linen, +and +painted up to the tone of the original...."</p> +<p>That the pieces of canvas to which reference is here made were +new, and not Titian's original work from the brush, was of course well +known to those who saw the work as it used to hang in the Accademia. +Crowe and Cavalcaselle give indeed the name of a painter of this +century +who is responsible for them. Within the last three years the new and +enterprising director of the Venice Academy, as part of a comprehensive +scheme of rearrangement of the whole collection, caused these pieces of +new canvas to be removed and then proceeded to replace the picture in +the room for which it is believed to have been executed, fitting it +into +the space above the two doors just referred to. Many people have +declared themselves delighted with the alteration, looking upon it as a +tardy act of justice done to Titian, whose work, it is assumed, is now +<a name="Page_45"></a>again seen just as he designed it for the +Albergo. The writer must own +that he has, from an examination of the canvas where it is now placed, +or +replaced, derived an absolutely contrary impression. First, is it +conceivable +that Titian in the heyday of his glory should have been asked to +paint such a picture—not a mere mural decoration—for such a place? +There is no instance of anything of the kind having been done with the +canvases painted by Gentile Bellini, Carpaccio, Mansueti, and others +for +the various <i>Scuole</i> of Venice. There is no instance of a great +decorative +canvas by a sixteenth century master of the first rank,<a + name="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> +other than a ceiling +decoration, being degraded in the first instance to such a use. And +then Vasari, who saw the picture in Venice, and correctly characterises +it, +would surely have noticed such an extraordinary peculiarity as the +abnormal shape necessitated by the two doors. It is incredible that +Titian, if so unpalatable a task had indeed been originally imposed +upon +him, should not have designed his canvas otherwise. The hole for the +right door coming in the midst of the monumental steps is just +possible, +though not very probable. Not so that for the left door, which, +according +to the present arrangement, cuts the very vitals out of one of the +main groups in the foreground. Is it not to insult one of the greatest +masters of all time thus to assume that he would have designed what we +now see? It is much more likely that Titian executed his <i>Presentation</i> +in the first place in the normal shape, and that vandals of a later +time, +deciding to pierce the room in the Scuola in which the picture is now +once more placed with one, or probably two, additional doors, partially +sacrificed it to the structural requirements of the moment. Monstrous +as such barbarism may appear, we have already seen, and shall again see +<a name="Page_46"></a>later on, that it was by no means uncommon in +those great ages of +painting, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.</p> +<p>When the untimely death of Pordenone, at the close of 1538, had +extinguished the hopes of the Council that the grandiose facility of +this +master of monumental decoration might be made available for the +purposes of the State, Titian having, as has been seen, made good his +gravest default, was reinstated in his lucrative and by no means +onerous +office. He regained the <i>senseria</i> by decree of August 28, 1539. +The +potent d'Avalos, Marqués del Vasto, had in 1539 conferred upon +Titian's +eldest son Pomponio, the scapegrace and spendthrift that was to be, +a canonry. Both to father and son the gift was in the future to be +productive of more evil than good. At or about the same time he had +commissioned of Titian a picture of himself haranguing his soldiers in +the pompous Roman fashion; this was not, however, completed until +1541. Exhibited by d'Avalos to admiring crowds at Milan, it made a +sensation for which there is absolutely nothing in the picture, as we +now +see it in the gallery of the Prado, to account; but then it would +appear +that it was irreparably injured in a fire which devastated the Alcazar +of +Madrid in 1621, and was afterwards extensively repainted. The Marquis +and his son Francesco, both of them full-length figures, are placed on +a +low plinth, to the left, and from this point of vantage the Spanish +leader +addresses a company of foot-soldiers who with fine effect raise their +halberds high into the air.<a name="FNanchor_29"></a><a + href="#Footnote_29"><sup>[29]</sup></a> Among these last tradition +places a portrait +of Aretino, which is not now to be recognised with any certainty. Were +the pedigree of the canvas a less well-authenticated one, one might be +tempted to deny Titian's authorship altogether, so extraordinary are, +apart from other considerations, the disproportions in the figure of +the +youth Francesco. Restoration must in this instance have amounted to +entire repainting. Del Vasto appears more robust, more martial, and +slightly younger than the armed leader in the <i>Allegory</i> of the +Louvre. +If this last picture is to be accepted as a semi-idealised presentment +of the +Spanish captain, it must, as has already been pointed out, have been +painted nearer to the time of his death, which took place in 1546. The +<a name="Page_47"></a>often-cited biographers of our master are clearly +in error in their conclusion +that the painting described in the collection of Charles I. as "done by +Titian, the picture of the Marquis Guasto, containing five half-figures +so +big as the life, which the king bought out of an Almonedo," is +identical +with the large sketch made by Titian as a preparation for the <i>Allocution</i> +<a name="Page_48"></a>of Madrid. This description, on the contrary, +applies perfectly to the +<i>Allegory</i> of the Louvre, which was, as we know, included in the +collection +of Charles, and subsequently found its way into that of Louis Quatorze.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="The_Magdalen"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 659px;" + alt="The Magdalen. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by Anderson." + title="The Magdalen. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by Anderson." + src="images/image14.jpg"></p> +<p>It was in 1542 that Vasari, summoned to Venice at the suggestion of +Aretino, paid his first visit to the city of the Lagoons in order to +paint +the scenery and <i>apparato</i> in connection with a carnival +performance, which +included the representation of his fellow-townsman's <i>Talanta.<a + name="FNanchor_30"></a></i><a href="#Footnote_30"><sup>[30]</sup></a> +It was +on this occasion, no doubt, that Sansovino, in agreement with Titian, +obtained for the Florentine the commission to paint the ceilings of +Santo +Spirito in Isola—a commission which was afterwards, as a consequence of +his departure, undertaken and performed by Titian himself, with whose +grandiose canvases we shall have to deal a little later on. In weighing +the value of Vasari's testimony with reference to the works of Vecellio +and other Venetian painters more or less of his own time, it should be +borne +in mind that he paid two successive visits to Venice, enjoying there +the +company of the great painter and the most eminent artists of the day, +and +that on the occasion of Titian's memorable visit to Rome he was his +close +friend, cicerone, and companion. Allowing for the Aretine biographer's +well-known inaccuracies in matters of detail and for his royal +disregard of +chronological order—faults for which it is manifestly absurd to blame +him +over-severely—it would be unwise lightly to disregard or overrule his +testimony with regard to matters which he may have learned from the +lips of Titian himself and his immediate <i>entourage</i>.</p> +<p>To the year 1542 belongs, as the authentic signature and date on the +picture affirm, that celebrated portrait, <i>The Daughter of Roberto +Strozzi</i>, +once in the splendid palace of the family at Florence, but now, with +some +other priceless treasures having the same origin, in the Berlin Museum. +Technically, the picture is one of the most brilliant, one of the most +subtly exquisite, among the works of the great Cadorine's maturity. It +well serves to show what Titian's ideal of colour was at this time. The +canvas is all silvery gleam, all splendour and sober strength of +colour—yet +not of colours. These in all their plentitude and richness, as in the +crimson drapery and the distant landscape, are duly subordinated to the +main effect; they but set off discreetly the figure of the child, +dressed all +in white satin with hair of reddish gold, and contribute without +fanfare to +<a name="Page_49"></a>the fine and harmonious balance of the whole. +Here, as elsewhere, more +particularly in the work of Titian's maturity, one does not in the +first +place pause to pick out this or the other tint, this or the other +combination +of colours as particularly exquisite; and that is what one is +<a name="Page_50"></a>so easily led to do in the contemplation of the +Bonifazi and of Paolo +Veronese.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="The_Infant_Daughter"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 647px;" + alt="The Infant Daughter of Roberto Strozzi. Royal Gallery, Berlin. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstängl." + title="The Infant Daughter of Roberto Strozzi. Royal Gallery, Berlin. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstängl." + src="images/image15.jpg"></p> +<p>As the portrait of a child, though in conception it reveals a marked +progress towards the <i>intimité</i> of later times, the Berlin +picture lacks +something of charm and that quality which, for want of a better +word, must be called loveableness. Or is it perhaps that the eighteenth +and +nineteenth centuries have spoilt us in this respect? For it is only in +these latter days that to the child, in deliberate and avowed +portraiture, +is allowed that freakishness, that natural <i>espièglerie</i> +and freedom from +artificial control which has its climax in the unapproached portraits +of Sir Joshua Reynolds. This is the more curious when it is remembered +how tenderly, with what observant and sympathetic truth the relation of +child to mother, of child to child, was noted in the innumerable +"Madonnas" and "Holy Families" of the fifteenth and sixteenth +centuries; how both the Italians, and following them the Netherlanders, +relieved the severity of their sacred works by the delightful +roguishness, +the romping impudence of their little angels, their <i>putti</i>.</p> +<p>It has already been recorded that Titian, taking up the commission +abandoned by Vasari, undertook a great scheme of pictorial decoration +for +the Brothers of Santo Spirito in Isola. All that he carried out for +that +church has now found its way into that of the Salute. The three ceiling +pictures, <i>The Sacrifice of Isaac, Cain and Abel</i>, and <i>David +victorious +over Goliath</i>, are in the great sacristy of the church; the <i>Four +Evangelists</i> +and <i>Four Doctors</i> are in the ceiling of the choir behind the +altar; the +altar-piece, <i>The Descent of the Holy Spirit</i>, is in one of the +chapels which +completely girdle the circular church itself. The ceiling pictures, +depicting +three of the most dramatic moments in sacred history, have received +the most enthusiastic praise from the master's successive biographers. +They were indeed at the time of their inception a new thing in Venetian +art. Nothing so daring as these foreshortenings, as these scenes of +dramatic violence, of physical force triumphant, had been seen in +Venice. +The turbulent spirit was an exaggeration of that revealed by Titian in +the <i>St. Peter Martyr</i>; the problem of the foreshortening for the +purposes +of ceiling decoration was superadded. It must be remembered, too, that +even in Rome, the headquarters of the grand style, nothing precisely of +the same kind could be said to exist. Raphael and his pupils either dis<a + name="Page_51"></a>dained, +or it may be feared to approach, the problem. Neither in the +ceiling decorations of the Farnesina nor in the Stanze is there any +attempt +on a large scale to <i>faire plafonner</i> the figures, that is, to +paint them so that +they might appear as they would actually be seen from below. +Michelangelo +himself, in the stupendous decoration of the ceiling to the Sixtine +Chapel, had elected to treat the subjects of the flat surface which +constitutes +the centre and climax of the whole, as a series of pictures designed +under +ordinary conditions. It can hardly be doubted that Titian, in +attempting +these <i>tours de force</i>, though not necessarily or even probably +in any other +way, was inspired by Correggio. It would not be easy, indeed, to +exaggerate +the Venetian master's achievement from this point of view, even though +in two at least of the groups—the <i>Cain and Abel</i> and the <i>David +and +Goliath</i>—the modern professor might be justified in criticising with +considerable severity his draughtsmanship and many salient points in +his +design. The effect produced is tremendous of its kind. The power +suggested is, however, brutal, unreasoning, not nobly dominating force; +and this not alone in the <i>Cain and Abel</i>, where such an +impression is +rightly conveyed, but also in the other pieces. It is as if Titian, in +striving to go beyond anything that had hitherto been done of the same +kind, had also gone beyond his own artistic convictions, and thus, +while +compassing a remarkable pictorial achievement, lost his true balance. +Tintoretto, creating his own atmosphere, as far outside and above mere +physical realities as that of Michelangelo himself, might have +succeeded +in mitigating this impression, which is, on the whole, a painful one. +Take for instance the <i>Martyrdom of St. Christopher</i> of the +younger +painter—not a ceiling picture by the way—in the apse of S. Maria del +Orto. Here, too, is depicted, with sweeping and altogether irresistible +power, an act of hideous violence. And yet it is not this element of +the subject which makes upon the spectator the most profound effect, +but the impression of saintly submission, of voluntary self-sacrifice, +which +is the dominant note of the whole.</p> +<p>It may be convenient to mention here <i>The Descent of the Holy +Spirit</i>, +although in its definitive form, as we see it in its place in the +Church of +the Salute, it appears markedly more advanced in style than the works +of +the period at which we have now arrived, giving, both in manner and +feeling, a distinct suggestion of the methods and standpoint which +<a name="Page_52"></a>mark the later phase of old age. Vasari tells us +that the picture, +originally painted in 1541, was seriously damaged and subsequently +repainted; Crowe and Cavalcaselle state that the work now seen at the +Salute was painted to replace an altar-piece which the Brothers of +Santo +Spirito had declined to accept. Even as the picture now appears, +somewhat faded, and moreover seen at a disadvantage amid its cold +surroundings of polished white marble, it is a composition of +wonderful, +of almost febrile animation, and a painting saturated with light, +pierced +through everywhere with its rays. The effect produced is absolutely +that which the mystical subject requires.<a name="FNanchor_31"></a><a + href="#Footnote_31"><sup>[31]</sup></a> Abandoning the passionless +serenity which has been the rule in sacred subjects of the middle time, +Titian shows himself more stimulated, more moved by his subject.</p> +<p>It was in the spring of 1543 that the master first came into +personal +contact with Pope Paul III. and the Farnese family. The meeting took +place at Ferrara, and our painter then accompanied the papal court to +Busseto, and subsequently proceeded to Bologna. Aretino's +correspondence +proves that Titian must at that time have painted the Pope, and +that he must also have refused the sovereign pontiff's offer of the <i>Piombo</i>, +which was then still, as it had been for years past, in the possession +of +Sebastiano Luciani. That Titian, with all his eagerness for wealth and +position, could not find it in his heart to displace his +fellow-countryman, a +friend no doubt of the early time, may legitimately excite admiration +and +sympathy now, as according to Aretino it actually did at the time. The +portraits of the Farnese family included that of the Pope, repeated +subsequently for Cardinal Santafiore, that of Pier Luigi, then that of +Paul III. and this monstrous yet well-loved son together,<a + name="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> and +a likeness +of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Upon the three-quarter length portrait +of Paul III. in the Naples Museum, Crowe and Cavalcaselle have lavished +their most enthusiastic praise, placing it, indeed, among his +masterpieces. +All the same—interesting as the picture undoubtedly is, remarkable +in finish, and of undoubtedly Titianesque origin—the writer finds it +difficult, +<a name="Page_53"></a>nay impossible, to accept this <i>Paul III.</i> +as a work from the hand of Titian +himself. Careful to excess, and for such an original too much wanting +in +brilliancy and vitality, it is the best of many repetitions and +variations; +of this particular type the original is not at present forthcoming. +Very +different is the "Paul III." of the Hermitage, which even in a +reproduction +loudly proclaims its originality.<a name="FNanchor_33"></a><a + href="#Footnote_33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> This is by no means identical +in +design with the Naples picture, but appears much less studied, much +more directly taken from the life. The astute Farnese Pope has here +the same simiesque type, the same furtive distrustful look, as in the +great unfinished group now to be described.<a name="FNanchor_34"></a><a + href="#Footnote_34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> This Titian, which doubtless +passed into the Hermitage with the rest of the Barbarigo pictures, +may have been the first foundation for the series of portraits of the +Farnese Pope, and as such would naturally have been retained by the +master for his own use. The portrait-group in the Naples Museum, +showing, with Paul III., Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio +Farnese +(afterwards Duke of Parma), is, apart from its extraordinary directness +and swift technical mastery, of exceptional interest as being +unfinished, +and thus doubly instructive. The composition, lacking in its unusual +momentariness the repose and dignity of Raphael's <i>Leo X. with +Cardinals +Giulio de' Medici and de' Rossi</i> at the Pitti, is not wholly happy. +Especially is the action of Ottavio Farnese, as in reverence he bends +down +to reply to the supreme Pontiff, forced and unconvincing; but the +unflattered +portrait of the pontiff himself is of a bold and quite unconventional +truth, and in movement much happier. The picture may possibly, by +reason of this unconventional conception less than perfectly realised, +have +failed to please the sitters, and thus have been left in its present +state.<a name="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35"><sup>[35]</sup></a></p> +<p>Few of Titian's canvases of vast dimensions have enjoyed a higher +degree of popularity than the large <i>Ecce Homo</i> to which the +Viennese +proudly point as one of the crowning ornaments of the great Imperial +<a name="Page_54"></a>Gallery of their city. Completed in 1543<a + name="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36"><sup>[36]</sup></a> for +Giovanni d'Anna, a son of +the Flemish merchant Martin van der Hanna, who had established himself +in Venice, it was vainly coveted by Henri III. on the occasion of his +memorable +visit in 1574, but was in 1620 purchased for the splendid favourite, +George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by the English envoy Sir Henry +Wotton. From him the noblest and most accomplished of English +collectors, +Thomas, Earl of Arundel, sought to obtain the prize with the +unparalleled +offer of £7000, yet even thus failed. At the time of the great +<i>débâcle</i>, in 1648, the guardians and advisers of his +youthful son and successor +were glad enough to get the splendid gallery over to the Low Countries, +and +to sell with the rest the <i>Ecce Homo</i>, which brought under these +circumstances +but a tenth part of what Lord Arundel would have given for it. Passing +into the collection of the Archduke Leopold William, it was later on +finally incorporated with that of the Imperial House of Austria. From +the point of view of scenic and decorative magnificence combined with +dramatic propriety, though not with any depth or intensity of dramatic +passion, the work is undoubtedly imposing. Yet it suffers somewhat, +even in this respect, from the fact that the figures are not more than +small life-size. With passages of Titianesque splendour there are to be +noted others, approaching to the acrid and inharmonious, which one +would rather attribute to the master's assistants than to himself. So +it is, +too, with certain exaggerations of design characteristic rather of the +period than the man—notably with the two figures to the left of the +foreground. The Christ in His meekness is too little divine, too heavy +and inert;<a name="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37"><sup>[37]</sup></a> +the Pontius Pilate not inappropriately reproduces the features +of the worldling and <i>viveur</i> Aretino. The mounted warrior to the +extreme right, who has been supposed to represent Alfonso d'Este, shows +the genial physiognomy made familiar by the Madrid picture so long +deemed to be his portrait, but which, as has already been pointed out, +represents much more probably his successor Ercole II. d'Este, whom +we find again in that superb piece by the master, the so-called <i>Giorgio +Cornaro</i> of Castle Howard. The <i>Ecce Homo</i> of Vienna is +another of +<a name="Page_55"></a><a name="Page_56"></a>the works of which both the +general <i>ordonnance</i> and the truly Venetian +splendour must have profoundly influenced Paolo Veronese.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Ecce_Homo"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 360px;" + alt="Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Löwy." + title="Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Löwy." + src="images/image16.jpg"></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Aretino"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 676px;" + alt="Aretino. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + title="Aretino. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + src="images/image17.jpg"></p> +<p>To this period belongs also the <i>Annunciation of the Virgin</i> +now in the +Cathedral of Verona—a rich, harmonious, and appropriate altar-piece, +but +not one of any special significance in the life-work of the painter.</p> +<p><a name="Page_57"></a>Shall we not, pretty much in agreement with +Vasari, place here, just +before the long-delayed visit to Rome, the <i>Christ with the Pilgrims +at +Emmaus</i> of the Louvre? A strong reason for dating this, one of the +noblest, one of the most deeply felt of all Titian's works, before +rather +than after the stay in the Eternal City, is that in its <i>naïveté</i>, +in its +realistic episodes, in its fulness of life, it is so entirely and +delightfully +Venetian. Here again the colour-harmony in its subdued richness and +solemnity has a completeness such as induces the beholder to accept it +in its unity rather than to analyse those infinite subtleties of +juxtaposition +and handling which, avoiding bravura, disdain to show themselves on +the surface. The sublime beauty of the landscape, in which, as often +elsewhere, the golden radiance of the setting sun is seen battling with +masses of azure cloud, has not been exceeded by Titian himself. With +all the daring yet perfectly unobtrusive and unconscious realism of +certain details, the conception is one of the loftiest, one of the most +penetrating in its very simplicity, of Venetian art at its apogee. The +divine mansuetude, the human and brotherly sympathy of the Christ, +have not been equalled since the early days of the <i>Cristo della +Moneta</i>. +Altogether the <i>Pilgrims at Emmaus</i> well marks that higher and +more +far-reaching conception of sacred art which reveals itself in the +productions +of Titian's old age, when we compare them with the untroubled +serenity and the conventional assumptions of the middle time.<a + name="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38"><sup>[38]</sup></a></p> +<p>To the year 1545 belongs the supremely fine <i>Portrait of Aretino</i>, +which is one of the glories of the Pitti Gallery. This was destined to +propitiate the Grand Duke Cosimo of Tuscany, the son of his +passionately +<a name="Page_58"></a>attached friend of earlier days, Giovanni delle +Bande Nere. Aretino, who +had particular reasons for desiring to appear before the obdurate +Cosimo +in all the pomp and opulence of his later years, was obviously wounded +that Titian, true to his genius, and to his method at this moment, +should +have made the keynote of his masterpiece a dignified simplicity. For +once unfaithful to his brother Triumvir and friend, he attacks him in +the accompanying letter to the Tuscan ruler with the withering sarcasm +that "the satins, velvets, and brocades would perhaps have been better +if +Titian had received a few more scudi for working them out." If +Aretino's pique had not caused the momentary clouding over of his +artistic vision, he would have owned that the canvas now in the +Pitti was one of the happiest achievements of Titian and one of the +greatest things in portraiture. There is no flattery here of the +"Divine Aretino," as with heroic impudence the notorious publicist +styles himself. The sensual type is preserved, but rendered acceptable, +and in a sense attractive, by a certain assurance and even dignity of +bearing, such as success and a position impregnable of its unique and +unenviable kind may well have lent to the adventurer in his maturity. +Even Titian's brush has not worked with greater richness and freedom, +with an effect broader or more entirely legitimate than in the head +with +its softly flowing beard and the magnificent yet not too ornate robe +and +vest of plum-coloured velvet and satin.</p> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 35%;"> +<h2><a name="Page_59"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<h4><i>The Visit to Rome—Titian and Michelangelo—The "Danaë" of +Naples—"St. John +the Baptist in the Desert"—Journey to Augsburg—"Venus and Cupid" of the +Tribuna—"Venus with the Organ Player" of Madrid—The Altar-piece of +Serravalle—"Charles V. at the Battle of Mühlberg"—"Prometheus +Bound" +and companion pictures—Second Journey to Augsburg—Portraits of Philip +of +Spain—The so-called "Marqués del Vasto" at Cassel—The "St. +Margaret"—"Danaë" +of Madrid—The "Trinity"—"Venus and Adonis"—"La Fede."</i></h4> +<br> +<p>At last, in the autumn of 1545, the master of Cadore, at the age of +sixty-eight +years, was to see Rome, its ruins, its statues, its antiquities, and +what to the painter of the Renaissance must have meant infinitely more, +the Sixtine Chapel and the Stanze of the Vatican. Upon nothing in the +history of Venetian art have its lovers, and the many who, with +profound +interest, trace Titian's noble and perfectly consistent career from its +commencement to its close, more reason to congratulate themselves than +on +this circumstance, that in youth and earlier manhood fortune and his +own +success kept him from visiting Rome. Though his was not the eclectic +tendency, the easily impressionable artistic temperament of a +Sebastiano +Luciani—the only eclectic, perhaps, who managed all the same to prove +and +to maintain himself an artist of the very first rank—if Titian had in +earlier +life been lured to the Eternal City, and had there settled, the glamour +of +the grand style might have permanently and fatally disturbed his +balance. +Now it was too late for the splendid and gracious master, who even +at sixty-eight had still before him nearly thirty fruitful years, to +receive +any impressions sufficiently deep to penetrate to the root of his art. +There is some evidence to show that Titian, deeply impressed with the +highest manifestations of the Florentine and Umbro-Florentine art +transplanted to Rome, considered that his work had improved after the +visit +of 1545-1546. If there was such improvement—and certainly in the +<a name="Page_60"></a>ultimate phases of his practice there will be +evident in some ways a wider +view, a higher grasp of essentials, a more responsive sensitiveness in +the +conceiving anew of the great sacred subjects—it must have come, not +from +any effort to assimilate the manner or to assume the standpoint which +had +obtained in Rome, but from the closer contact with a world which at its +centre was beginning to take a deeper, a more solemn and gloomy view +of religion and life. It should not be forgotten that this was the +year when the great Council of Trent first met, and that during the +next +twenty years or more the whole of Italy, nay, the whole of the Catholic +world, was overshadowed by its deliberations.</p> +<p>Titian's friend and patron of that time, Guidobaldo II., Duke of +Urbino, had at first opposed Titian's visit to the Roman court, +striving to +reserve to himself the services of the Venetian master until such time +as he should have carried out for him the commissions with which he was +charged. Yielding, however, to the inevitable, and yielding, too, with +a +good grace, he himself escorted his favourite with his son Orazio from +Venice through Ferrara to Pesaro, and having detained him a short while +there, granted him an escort through the Papal States to Rome. There +he was well received by the Farnese Pope, and with much cordiality by +Cardinal Bembo. Rooms were accorded to him in the Belvedere section +of the Vatican Palace, and there no doubt he painted the unfinished +portrait-group <i>Paul III. with Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and +Ottavio +Farnese</i>, which has been already described, and with it other pieces +of the +same type, and portraits of the Farnese family and circle now no longer +to be traced. Vasari, well pleased no doubt to renew his acquaintance +with the acknowledged head of the contemporary Venetian painters, acted +as his cicerone in the visits to the antiquities of Rome, to the +statues and +art-treasures of the Vatican, while Titian's fellow-citizen Sebastiano +del +Piombo was in his company when he studied the Stanze of Raphael.</p> +<p>It was but three years since Michelangelo's <i>Last Judgment</i> +had been +uncovered in the Sixtine, and it would have been in the highest degree +interesting to read his comments on this gigantic performance, towards +which it was so little likely that his sympathies would spontaneously +go +out. Memorable is the visit paid by Buonarroti, with an unwonted regard +for ceremonious courtesy, to Titian in his apartments at the Belvedere, +as +it is recalled by Vasari with that naïve touch, that power of +suggestion, which +<a name="Page_61"></a>gives such delightful colour to his unstudied +prose. No <i>Imaginary +Conversation</i> among those that Walter Savage Landor has devised +equals +in significance this meeting of the two greatest masters then living, +simply +as it is sketched in by the Aretine biographer. The noble Venetian +representing the alternating radiance and gloom of earth, its fairest +pages +as they unfold themselves, the joys and sorrows, the teeming life of +humanity; the mighty Florentine disdainful of the world, its colours, +its +<a name="Page_62"></a>pulsations, its pomps and vanities, incurious of +mankind save in its great +symbolical figures, soaring like the solitary eagle into an atmosphere +of +his own where the dejected beholder can scarce breathe, and, sick at +heart, +oppressed with awe, lags far behind!</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Pope_Paul_III"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 635px;" + alt="Pope Paul III. with Cardinal Farnese and Ottavio Farnese. Naples Gallery. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + title="Pope Paul III. with Cardinal Farnese and Ottavio Farnese. Naples Gallery. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + src="images/image18.jpg"></p> +<p>Titian the gracious, the serene, who throughout a long life of +splendid +and by comparison effortless achievement has openly and candidly drunk +deep of all the joys of life, a man even as others are! Michelangelo +the +austere, the scornful, to whom the pleasures of the world, the company +in +well-earned leisure of his fellow-man, suggest but the loss of precious +hours +which might be devoted to the shaping in solitude of masterpieces; in +the +very depths of whose nature lurk nevertheless, even in old age, the +strangest +ardours, the fiercest and most insatiate longings for love and +friendship!</p> +<p>Let Vasari himself be heard as to this meeting. "Michelangelo and +Vasari going one day to pay a visit to Titian in the Belvedere, saw, in +a +picture which he had then advanced towards completion, a nude female +figure representing <i>Danaë</i> as she receives the embrace of +Jove transformed +into a rain of gold, and, as the fashion is in people's presence, +praised it +much to him. When they had taken leave, and the discussion was as to +the art of Titian, Buonarroti praised it highly, saying that the colour +and +handling pleased him much, but that it was a subject for regret that at +Venice they did not learn from the very beginning to design correctly, +and that its painters did not follow a better method in their study of +art." +It is the battle that will so often be renewed between the artist who +looks +upon colour as merely a complement and adjunct to design, and the +painter who regards it as not only the outer covering, but the body and +soul of art. We remember how the stiff-necked Ingres, the greatest +Raphaelesque of this century, hurled at Delacroix's head the famous +dictum, "Le dessin c'est la probité de l'art," and how his +illustrious rival, +the chief of a romanticism which he would hardly acknowledge, +vindicated +by works rather than by words his contention that, if design was +indeed art's conscience, colour was its life-blood, its very being.</p> +<p>The <i>Danaë</i>, seen and admired with reservations by +Buonarroti in the +painting-room of Titian at the Belvedere, is now, with its beauty +diminished in important particulars, to be found with the rest of the +Farnese pictures in the gallery of the Naples Museum. It serves to show +that if the artist was far beyond the stage of imitation or even of +assimila<a name="Page_63"></a><a name="Page_64"></a>tion +on the larger scale, he was, at any rate, affected by the Roman +atmosphere in art. For once he here comes nearer to the realisation of +Tintoretto's ideal—the colour of Titian and the design of +Michelangelo—than +his impetuous pupil and rival ever did. While preserving in the +<i>Danaë</i> his own true warmth and transparency of Venetian +colour—now +somewhat obscured yet not effaced—he combines unusual weightiness +and majesty with voluptuousness in the nude, and successfully +strives after a more studied rhythm in the harmony of the composition +generally than the art of Venice usually affected.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Danae_and_the_Golden_Rain"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 376px;" + alt="Danae and the Golden Rain. Naples Gallery. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + title="Danae and the Golden Rain. Naples Gallery. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + src="images/image19.jpg"></p> +<p>Titian, in his return from Rome, which he was never to revisit, made +a stay at Florence with an eye, as we may guess, both to business and +pleasure. There, as Vasari takes care to record, our master visited the +artistic sights, and <i>rimase stupefatto</i>—remained in breathless +astonishment—as +he had done when he made himself acquainted with the artistic glories +of Rome. This is but vague, and a little too much smacks of +self-flattery +and adulation of the brother Tuscans. Titian was received by Duke +Cosimo at Poggio a Caiano, but his offer to paint the portrait of the +Medici ruler was not well received. It may be, as Vasari surmises, that +this attitude was taken up by the duke in order not to do wrong to the +"many noble craftsmen" then practising in his city and dominion. More +probably, however, Cosimo's hatred and contempt of his father's minion +Aretino, whose portrait by Titian he had condescended to retain, yet +declined to acknowledge, impelled him to show something less than +favour to the man who was known to be the closest friend and intimate +of this self-styled "Scourge of Princes."</p> +<p>Crowe and Cavalcaselle have placed about the year 1555 the +extravagantly +lauded <i>St. John the Baptist in the Desert</i>, once in the +church of S.M. Maria Maggiore at Venice, and now in the Accademia +there. To the writer it appears that it would best come in at this +stage—that +is to say in or about 1545—not only because the firm close +handling in the nude would be less explicable ten years later on, but +because the conception of the majestic St. John is for once not +pictorial +but purely sculptural. Leaving Rome, and immediately afterwards +coming into contact for the first time with the wonders of the earlier +Florentine art, Titian might well have conceived, might well have +painted +thus. Strange to say, the influence is not that of Michelangelo, but, +<a name="Page_65"></a>unless the writer is greatly deceived, that of +Donatello, whose noble +ascetic type of the <i>Precursor</i> is here modernised, and in the +process +deprived of some of its austerity. The glorious mountain landscape, +with its brawling stream, fresher and truer than any torrent of +Ruysdael's, +is all Titian. It makes the striking figure of St. John, for all its +majesty, +appear not a little artificial.</p> +<p>The little town of Serravalle, still so captivatingly Venetian in +its +general aspect, holds one of the most magnificent works of Titian's +late +time, a vast <i>Virgin and Child with St. Peter and St. Andrew</i>. +This +hangs—or did when last seen by the writer—in the choir of the Church +of St. Andrew; there is evidence in Titian's correspondence that it was +finished in 1547, so that it must have been undertaken soon after the +return from Rome. In the distance between the two majestic figures of +the saints is a prospect of landscape with a lake, upon which Titian +has +shown on a reduced scale Christ calling Peter and Andrew from their +nets; an undisguised adaptation this, by the veteran master, of the +divine +Urbinate's <i>Miraculous Draught of Fishes</i>, but one which made of +the +borrowed motive a new thing, no excrescence but an integral part of the +conception. In this great work, which to be more universally celebrated +requires only to be better known to those who do not come within the +narrow circle of students, there is evidence that while Titian, after +his stay at the Papal court, remained firm as a rock in his style and +general principles—luckily a Venetian and no pseudo-Roman,—his +imagination became more intense in its glow, gloomier but grander, than +it had been in middle age—his horizon altogether vaster. To a grand if +sometimes too unruffled placidity succeeded a physical and psychical +perturbation which belonged both to the man in advanced years and +to the particular moment in the century. Even in his treatment of +classic myth, of the nude in goddess and woman, there was, as we shall +see presently, a greater unrest and a more poignant sensuality—there +was +evidence of a mind and temperament troubled anew instead of being +tranquillised by the oncoming of old age.</p> +<p>Are we to place here, as Crowe and Cavalcaselle do, the <i>Venus +and +Cupid</i> of the Tribuna and the <i>Venus with the Organ Player</i> of +the +Prado? The technical execution of these canvases, the treatment of +landscape in the former, would lead the writer to place them some years +<a name="Page_66"></a>farther on still in the <i>oeuvre</i> of the +master. There are, however, certain +reasons for following them in this chronological arrangement. The +<i>Venus and Cupid</i> which hangs in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, as the +pendant to the more resplendent but more realistic <i>Venus of Urbino</i>, +is a +darker and less well-preserved picture than its present companion, but +a +grander if a more audacious presentment of the love-goddess. Yet +even here she is not so much the Cytherean as an embodiment of the +Venetian ideal of the later time, an exemplification of the undisguised +worship of fleshly loveliness which then existed in Venice. It has been +pointed out that the later Venus has the features of Titian's fair +daughter +Lavinia, and this is no doubt to a certain extent true. The goddesses, +nymphs, and women of this time bear a sort of general family +resemblance +to her and to each other. This piece illustrates the preferred type of +Titian's old age, as the <i>Vanitas, Herodias</i>, and <i>Flora</i> +illustrate the +preferred type of his youth; as the paintings which we have learnt to +associate with the Duchess of Urbino illustrate that of his middle +time. +The dignity and rhythmic outline of Eros in the <i>Danaë</i> of +Naples have +been given up in favour of a more naturalistic conception of the +insinuating +urchin, who is in this <i>Venus and Cupid</i> the successor of those +much +earlier <i>amorini</i> in the <i>Worship of Venus</i> at Madrid. The +landscape in +its sweeping breadth is very characteristic of the late time, and would +give good reason for placing the picture later than it here appears. +The difficulty is this. The <i>Venus with the Organ Player</i><a + name="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39"><sup>[39]</sup></a> of +Madrid, which in many essential points is an inferior repetition of the +later <i>Venus</i> of the Tribuna, contains the portrait of Ottavio +Farnese, +much as we see him in the unfinished group painted, as has been +recorded, at Rome in 1546. This being the case, it is not easy to place +the <i>Venus and Cupid</i>, or its subsequent adaptation, much later +than just +before the journey to Augsburg. The <i>Venus with the Organ Player</i> +has +been overrated; there are things in this canvas which we cannot without +offence to Titian ascribe to his own brush. Among these are the +tiresome, +formal landscape, the wooden little dog petted by Venus, and perhaps +some other passages. The goddess herself and the amorous Ottavio, +though this last is not a very striking or successful portrait, may +perhaps +<a name="Page_67"></a>be left to the master. He vindicates himself more +completely than +in any other passage of the work when he depicts the youthful, supple +form of the Venetian courtesan, as in a merely passive pose she +personates +the goddess whose insignificant votary she really is. It cannot be +denied +that he touches here the lowest level reached by him in such +delineations. +What offends in this <i>Venus with the Organ Player</i>, or rather <i>Ottavio +Farnese with his Beloved</i>, is that its informing sentiment is not +love, +or indeed any community of sentiment, but an ostentatious pride in the +possession of covetable beauty subdued like that of Danaë herself +by gold.</p> +<p>If we are to assume with Crowe and Cavalcaselle that the single +figure <i>Ecce Homo</i> of the Prado Gallery was the piece taken by +the master to +Charles V. when, at the bidding of the Emperor, he journeyed to +Augsburg, +we can only conclude that his design was carried out by pupils or +assistants. The execution is not such as we can ascribe to the brush +which is so shortly to realise for the monarch a group of masterpieces.</p> +<p>It was in January 1548 that Titian set forth to obey the command of +the Emperor, "per far qualche opera," as Count Girolamo della Torre +has it in a letter of recommendation given to Titian for the Cardinal +of +Trent at Augsburg. It is significant to find the writer mentioning the +painter, not by any of the styles and titles which he had a right to +bear, +especially at the court of Charles V., but extolling him as "Messer +Titiano Pittore et il primo huomo della Christianita."<a + name="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40"><sup>[40]</sup></a></p> +<p>It might be imagined that it would be a terrible wrench for Titian, +at the age of seventy, to transplant himself suddenly, and for the +first +time, into a foreign land. But then he was not as other men of seventy +are. The final years of his unexampled career will conclusively show +that he preserved his mental and physical vigour to the end. Further, +the imperial court with its Spanish etiquette, its Spanish language and +manners, was much the same at Augsburg as he had known it on +previous occasions at Bologna. Moreover, Augsburg and Nuremberg<a + name="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> +had, during the last fifty years, been in close touch with Venice in +all +matters appertaining to art and commerce. Especially the great banking +<a name="Page_68"></a>house of the Fuggers had the most intimate +relations with the queen-city +of the Adriatic. Yet art of the two great German cities would doubtless +appeal less to the Venetian who had arrived at the zenith of his +development +than it would and did to the Bellinis and their school at the beginning +of the century. The gulf had become a far wider one, and the +points of contact were fewer.</p> +<p>The trusted Orazio had been left behind, notwithstanding the success +which he had achieved during the Roman tour, and it may be assumed +that he presided over the studio and workshop at Biri Grande during his +father's absence. Titian was accompanied to Augsburg by his second +cousin, Cesare Vecellio,<a name="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42"><sup>[42]</sup></a> +who no doubt had a minor share in very many +of the canvases belonging to the period of residence at Augsburg. Our +master's first and most grateful task must have been the painting of +the +great equestrian portrait of the Emperor at the Battle of +Mühlberg, +which now hangs in the Long Gallery of the Prado at Madrid. It suffered +much injury in the fire of the Pardo Palace, which annihilated so many +masterpieces, but is yet very far from being the "wreck" which, with +an exaggeration not easily pardonable under the circumstances, Crowe +and Cavalcaselle have described it. In the presence of one of the +world's +masterpieces criticism may for once remain silent, willingly renouncing +all its rights. No purpose would be served here by recording how much +paint has been abraded in one corner, how much added in another. A +deep sense of thankfulness should possess us that the highest +manifestation +of Titian's genius has been preserved, even though it be shorn of +some of its original beauty. Splendidly armed in steel from head to +foot, +and holding firmly grasped in his hand the spear, emblem of command +in this instance rather than of combat, Cæsar advances with a +mien +impassive yet of irresistible domination. He bestrides with ease his +splendid dark-brown charger, caparisoned in crimson, and heavily +weighted +like himself with the full panoply of battle, a perfect harmony being +here +subtly suggested between man and beast. The rich landscape, with a +gleam +of the Elbe in the distance, is still in the half gloom of earliest +day; but +on the horizon, and in the clouds overhead, glows the red ominous light +of +<a name="Page_69"></a>sunrise, colouring the veils of the morning mist. +The Emperor is alone—alone +as he must be in life and in death—a man, yet lifted so high above +other men that the world stretches far below at his feet, while above +him +this ruler knows no power but that of God. It is not even the sneer of +cold command, but a majesty far higher and more absolutely convinced +<a name="Page_70"></a>of its divine origin, that awes the beholder as +he gazes. In comparison +with the supreme dignity of this ugly, pallid Hapsburger, upon whom +disease and death have already laid a shadowy finger, how artificial +appear the divine assumptions of an Alexander, how theatrical the +Olympian +airs of an Augustus, how merely vulgar and ill-worn the imperial poses +of a Napoleon.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Charles_V"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 646px;" + alt="Charles V. at the Battle of Mühlberg. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement & Cie." + title="Charles V. at the Battle of Mühlberg. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement & Cie." + src="images/image20.jpg"></p> +<p>No veracious biographer of Titian could pretend that he is always +thus imaginative, that coming in contact with a commanding human +individuality he always thus unfolds the outer wrappings to reveal the +soul within. Indeed, especially in the middle time just past, he not +infrequently contents himself with the splendid outsides of splendid +things. To interpret this masterpiece as the writer has ventured to do, +it is not necessary to assume that Titian reasoned out the poetic +vision, +which was at the same time an absolutely veracious presentment, +argumentatively +with himself, as the painter of such a portrait in words might +have done. Pictorial genius of the creative order does not proceed by +such methods, but sees its subject as a whole, leaving to others the +task +of probing and unravelling. It should be borne in mind, too, that this +is the first in order, as it is infinitely the greatest and the most +significant +among the vast equestrian portraits of monarchs by court painters. +Velazquez on the one hand, and Van Dyck on the other, have worked +wonders in the same field. Yet their finest productions, even the +<i>Philip IV.</i>, the <i>Conde Duque Olivarez</i>, the <i>Don +Balthasar Carlos</i> of +the Spaniard, even the two equestrian portraits of Charles I., the <i>Francisco +de Moncada</i>, the <i>Prince Thomas of Savoy</i> of the Fleming, are +in comparison +but magnificent show pieces aiming above all at decorative pomp +and an imposing general effect.</p> +<p>We come to earth and every-day weariness again with the full-length +of Charles V., which is now in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. +Here the monarch, dressed in black and seated in a well-worn crimson +velvet chair, shows without disguise how profoundly he is ravaged by +ill-health and <i>ennui</i>. Fine as the portrait still appears +notwithstanding +its bad condition, one feels somehow that Titian is not in this +instance, as +he is in most others, perfect master of his material, of the main +elements +of his picture. The problem of relieving the legs cased in black +against a +relatively light background, and yet allowing to them their full +plastic +<a name="Page_71"></a>form, is not perfectly solved. Neither is it, by +the way, as a rule in the +canvases of those admirable painters of men, the quasi-Venetians, +Moretto +of Brescia and Moroni of Bergamo. The Northerners—among them +Holbein and Lucidel—came nearer to perfect success in this particular +matter. The splendidly brushed-in prospect of cloudy sky and +far-stretching +country recalls, as Morelli has observed, the landscapes of +Rubens, and suggests that he underwent the influence of the Cadorine +in this respect as in many others, especially after his journey as +ambassador +to Madrid.</p> +<p>Another portrait, dating from the first visit to Augsburg, is the +half-length of the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, now in the +Imperial +Gallery at Vienna. He sits obese and stolid, yet not without the +dignity +that belongs to absolute simplicity, showing on his left cheek the +wound +received at the battle of Mühlberg. The picture has, as a portrait +by +Titian, no very commanding merit, no seduction of technique, and it is +easy to imagine that Cesare Vecellio may have had a share in it. +Singular +is the absence of all pose, of all attempt to harmonise the main lines +of the +design or give pictorial elegance to the naïve directness of the +presentment. This mode of conception may well have been dictated to the +courtly Venetian by sturdy John Frederick himself.</p> +<p>The master painted for Mary, Queen Dowager of Hungary, four +canvases specially mentioned by Vasari, <i>Prometheus Bound to the +Rock, +Ixion, Tantalus</i>, and <i>Sisyphus</i>, which were taken to Spain at +the +moment of the definitive migration of the court in 1556. Crowe and +Cavalcaselle state that the whole four perished in the all-devouring +conflagration of the Pardo Palace, and put down the <i>Prometheus</i> +and +<i>Sisyphus</i> of the Prado Gallery as copies by Sanchez Coello. It is +difficult +to form a definite judgment on canvases so badly hung, so darkened and +injured. They certainly look much more like Venetian originals than +Spanish copies. These mythological subjects may very properly be +classed with the all too energetic ceiling-pictures now in the Sacristy +of +the Salute. Here again the master, in the effort to be grandiose in a +style not properly his, overreaches himself and becomes artificial. +He must have left Augsburg this time in the autumn of 1548, since +in the month of October of that year we find him at Innsbruck making +a family picture of the children of King Ferdinand, the Emperor's +<a name="Page_72"></a>brother. That monarch himself, his two sons and +five daughters, he +had already portrayed.</p> +<p>Much feasting, much rejoicing, in the brilliant and jovial circle +presided over by Aretino and the brother Triumvirs, followed upon our +master's return to Venice. Aretino, who after all was not so much the +scourge as the screw of princes, would be sure to think the more highly +of the friend whom he really cherished in all sincerity, when he +returned +from close and confidential intercourse with the mightiest ruler of the +age, the source not only of honour but of advantages which the Aretine, +like Falstaff, held more covetable because more substantial. To the +year +1549 belongs the gigantic woodcut <i>The Destruction of Pharaoh's Host</i>, +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).</p> +<p>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 +<a name="Page_73"></a>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 <i>Pietà</i> +left unfinished +when the end comes a quarter of a century later still.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Prince Philip of Austria in +Armour</i> 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 +<a name="Page_74"></a>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>quand même</i> a striking designation +for a great +picture, it was christened <i>Alfonso d'Avalos, Marqués del +Vasto</i>. More +recently, with some greater show of probability, it has been called +<i>Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino</i>. In the <i>Jahrbuch der +königlich-preussischen +Kunstsammlungen</i>,<a name="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43"><sup>[43]</sup></a> +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<a name="FNanchor_44"></a><a + href="#Footnote_44"><sup>[44]</sup></a> is the great crimson, +<a name="Page_75"></a>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 <i>amorino</i>. 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 <i>prestance</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<a name="Page_76"></a>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.<a name="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45"><sup>[45]</sup></a> +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 <i>Queen of Persia</i>, which +the artist +does not expressly declare to be his own work, and of a <i>Landscape</i> +and +<i>St. Margaret</i> 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 <i>Venere del Pardo</i>, or <i>Jupiter and Antiope</i>, +as "La nuda +con il paese con el satiro," would it not be fair to assume that the +description <i>Il Paesaggio et il ritratto di Sta. Margarita</i> means +one and +the same canvas—<i>The Figure of St. Margaret in a Landscape</i>? 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 <i>St. Margaret</i> is evidently the picture which, having been +many +years at the Escorial, now hangs in the Prado Gallery. Obscured and +<a name="Page_77"></a>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 undis<a + name="Page_78"></a>turbed. +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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Venus_with_the_Mirror"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 656px;" + alt="Venus with the Mirror. Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie." + title="Venus with the Mirror. Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie." + src="images/image21.jpg"></p> +<p>In the spring and summer of 1554 were finished for Philip of Spain +the <i>Danaë</i> of Madrid; for Mary, Queen of Hungary, a <i>Madonna +Addolorata</i>; +for Charles V. the <i>Trinity</i>, to which he had with Titian devoted +so much anxious thought. The <i>Danaë</i> of the Prado, less +grandiose, less +careful in finish than the Naples picture, is painted with greater +spontaneity +and <i>élan</i> 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 +Danaë, 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 <i>Danaë</i> +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.</p> +<p>Satisfaction of a very different kind was afforded to Queen Mary of +Hungary and Charles V. The lady obtained a <i>Christ appearing to the +Magdalen</i>, 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 +<i>Madonna Addolorata</i> and the great <i>Trinity</i>. These, +together with another +<a name="Page_79"></a><i>Virgen de los Dolores</i> ostensibly by +Titian, and the <i>Ecce Homo</i> 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 <i>La Dolorosa</i>, +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 <i>Addolorata</i> cannot be acknowledged as his own work. Still +less +can we accept as his own that other <i>Virgen de los Dolores</i>, now +No. 475 +in the same gallery.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Landscape"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 363px;" + alt="Landscape drawing in pen and bistre by Titian." + title="Landscape drawing in pen and bistre by Titian." + src="images/image22.jpg"></p> +<p>It is very different with the <i>Trinity</i>, called in Spain <i>La +Gloria</i>, +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 <i>Trinity</i> +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 <i>Assunta</i> +or the +<i>St. Peter Martyr</i>. 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.</p> +<p>There is another descent, though not so marked a one as in the case +of the <i>Danaë</i>, with the <i>Venus and Adonis</i> 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 <i>Sala de la Reina +<a name="Page_80"></a>Isabel</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46"><sup>[46]</sup></a> +That the aim of the artist was not a very high one, or this +<i>poesia</i> 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 <i>Danaë</i> 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 <i>Camerino</i>." 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.</p> +<p>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 +<a name="Page_81"></a>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 <i>pulli</i> 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 naïve 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.</p> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 35%;"> +<h2><a name="Page_82"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<h4><i>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 "Pietà"—Death of Titian</i>.</h4> +<br> +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47"><sup>[47]</sup></a> +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 <i>Ecce Homo</i> 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 <i>Lavinia +with a +Dish of Fruit</i>, 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, +<a name="Page_83"></a>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 <i>Lavinia as a Bride</i> 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 <i>Salome</i> of the Prado +Gallery, which is in +general design a variation of the <i>Lavinia</i> 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 <i>Salome</i> 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 naïve +and +fearless truth of the rendering—is the <i>Lavinia Sarcinelli as a +Matron</i> 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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><i><a name="Titians_Daughter_Lavinia"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 698px;" alt="Titian's Daughter Lavinia." + title="Titian's Daughter Lavinia." src="images/image23.jpg"></i></p> +<p>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 +<a name="Page_84"></a>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.</p> +<p>In the year 1558 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, for very sufficient +reasons, place +the <i>Martyrdom of St. Lawrence</i>, 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.<a name="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48"><sup>[48]</sup></a> +Of a design more studied in its rhythm, more akin to the +Florentine and Roman schools, than anything that has appeared since the +<i>St. Peter Martyr</i>, with a <i>mise-en-scène</i> 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.</p> +<p>The <i>Christ crowned with Thorns</i>, 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 +<a name="Page_85"></a>crowns the rude archway through which the figures +have issued into the +open space. Titian is here the precursor of the <i>Naturalisti</i>—of +Caravaggio and his school. Yet, all the same, how immeasurable is the +distance between the two!</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Christ_crowned_with_Thorns"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 808px;" + alt="Christ crowned with Thorns. Louvre. From a Photograph by Neurdein." + title="Christ crowned with Thorns. Louvre. From a Photograph by Neurdein." + src="images/image24.jpg"></p> +<p>On the 21st of September 1558 died the imperial recluse of Yuste, +once +<a name="Page_86"></a>Charles V., and it is said his last looks were +steadfastly directed towards +that great canvas <i>The Trinity</i>, 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.<a name="FNanchor_49"></a><a + href="#Footnote_49"><sup>[49]</sup></a> 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.</p> +<p>Titian's letter of September 22, 1559, to Philip II. announces the +despatch of the companion pieces <i>Diana and Calisto</i> and <i>Diana +and +Actæon</i>, as well as of an <i>Entombment</i> intended to +replace a painting of the +same subject which had been lost on the way. The two celebrated +canvases,<a name="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50"><sup>[50]</sup></a> +now in the Bridgewater Gallery, are so familiar that they need +no new description. Judging by the repetitions, reductions, and copies +<a name="Page_87"></a>that exist in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna, the +Prado Gallery, the +Yarborough Collection, and elsewhere, these mythological <i>poesie</i> +have +captivated the world far more than the fresher and lovelier painted +poems of the earlier time—the <i>Worship of Venus</i>, the <i>Bacchanal</i>, +the +<i>Bacchus and Ariadne</i>. At no previous period has Titian wielded +the +brush with greater <i>maestria</i> 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 <i>poesie</i> +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.</p> +<p>The <i>Entombment</i>, 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 <i>Entombment</i> 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.</p> +<p>In this same year Titian painted on the ceiling of the ante-chamber +to +Sansovino's great Library in the Piazzetta the allegorical figure <i>Wisdom</i>, +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 +<a name="Page_88"></a>della Segnatura, but excels them as much in +decorative splendour +and facile breadth of execution as it falls behind them in sublimity of +inspiration.</p> +<p>Crowe and Cavalcaselle are probably right in assigning the great +<i>Cornaro Family</i> 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 <i>Madonna di Casa Pesaro</i>, +where +he is hampered by the necessity for combining a votive picture with a +series of avowed portraits. It is pretty clear that this <i>Cornaro</i> +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 +<a name="Page_89"></a>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.<a name="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51"><sup>[51]</sup></a></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="The_Cornaro_Family"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 398px;" + alt="The Cornaro Family. In the Collection of the Duke of Northumberland." + title="The Cornaro Family. In the Collection of the Duke of Northumberland." + src="images/image25.jpg"></p> +<p>To the year 1561 belongs, according to the elaborate inscription on +the picture, the magnificent <i>Portrait of a Man</i> 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 <i>St. Dominic</i> of the +Borghese +Gallery and the <i>Knight of Malta</i> 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.</p> +<p>On the 1st of December 1561 Titian wrote to the king to announce +the despatch of a <i>Magdalen</i>, 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 +<a name="Page_90"></a>which remained in Venice cannot be identified +with any certainty. The +finest extant example of this type of <i>Magdalen</i> 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 <i>magna peccatrix</i>, lovely still in +her penitence. +It is an embodiment of the favourite subject, infinitely finer and more +moving than the much earlier <i>Magdalen</i> of the Pitti, in which +the artist's +sole preoccupation has been the alluring portraiture of exuberant +feminine +charms. This later <i>Magdalen</i>, as Vasari says, "ancorchè +che sia bellissima, +non muove a lascivia, ma a commiserazione," and the contrary +might, without exaggeration, be said of the Pitti picture.<a + name="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52"><sup>[52]</sup></a> +Another of +the Barbarigo heirlooms which so passed into the Hermitage is the +ever-popular +<i>Venus with the Mirror</i>, 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.</p> +<p>At this date, or thereabouts, is very generally placed, with the <i>Rape +of Europa</i> presently to be discussed, the <i>Jupiter and Antiope</i> +of the +Louvre, more popularly known as the <i>Venere del Pardo</i>.<a + name="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53"><sup>[53]</sup></a> +Seeing that the +picture is included in the list<a name="FNanchor_54"></a><a + href="#Footnote_54"><sup>[54]</sup></a> 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 +<a name="Page_91"></a>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 <i>Venere del Pardo</i> 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 <i>Venere del Pardo</i>, is conspicuously earlier in +manner than, +for instance, the backgrounds to the <i>Diana and Actæon</i> and +<i>Diana and +Calisto</i> 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 +<a name="Page_92"></a>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 <i>Bacchanals</i> 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 +<i>Sacred and Profane Love</i>. The figure comes in some ways nearer +even +in design, and infinitely nearer in feeling, to Giorgione's <i>Venus</i> +at Dresden +than does the <i>Venus of Urbino</i> 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 <i>Nymph surprised by a Satyr</i>—one +of the +engravings in the <i>Hypnerotomachia Poliphili</i> first published in +1499, but +republished with the same illustrations in 1545.<a name="FNanchor_55"></a><a + href="#Footnote_55"><sup>[55]</sup></a></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="The_Rape_of_Europa"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 415px;" + alt="The Rape of Europa. From the Engraving by J.Z. Delignon." + title="The Rape of Europa. From the Engraving by J.Z. Delignon." + src="images/image26.jpg"></p> +<p>According to the correspondence published by Crowe and Cavalcaselle +there were completed for the Spanish King in April 1562 the <i>Poesy +of +Europa carried by the Bull</i>, and the <i>Christ praying in the Garden</i>, +while a +<i>Virgin and Child</i> was announced as in progress.</p> +<p>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 <i>Venere del Pardo</i>. The <i>Rape of +Europa</i>, 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 <i>pour la forme</i>. What gulfs +divide +<a name="Page_93"></a><a name="Page_94"></a>this conception from that +of the Antiope, from Titian's earlier renderings +of female loveliness, from Giorgione's supreme Venus!<a + name="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56"><sup>[56]</sup></a></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Portrait_of_Titian"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 709px;" + alt="Portrait of Titian, by himself. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clément, & Cie." + title="Portrait of Titian, by himself. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clément, & Cie." + src="images/image27.jpg"></p> +<p>The <i>Agony in the Garden</i>, 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 <i>Agony</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_57"></a><a + href="#Footnote_57"><sup>[57]</sup></a></p> +<p>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 <i>Sala de la Reina Isabel</i> 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 <i>Ecce Homo</i> of Munich +and +the last <i>Pietà</i>, 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.</p> +<p>Vasari, who, as will be seen, visited Venice in 1566, when he was +preparing that new and enlarged edition of the <i>Lives</i> 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 +<a name="Page_95"></a>especially of the <i>Diana and Actæon</i>, +the <i>Rape of Europa</i>, and the +<i>Deliverance of Andromeda</i>,<a name="FNanchor_58"></a><a + href="#Footnote_58"><sup>[58]</sup></a> 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."</p> +<p>No better proof could be given of Vasari's genuine <i>flair</i> 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.</p> +<p>Among the sacred works produced in this late time is a <i>Crucifixion</i>, +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 <i>Madonna and Child in a Landscape</i> +which is +<a name="Page_96"></a>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 <i>Bambino</i>, so disproportionate, so +entirely +wanting in tenderness and charm.</p> +<p>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 <i>St. Jerome</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The correspondence shows that the vast <i>Last Supper</i> 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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Page_97"></a><a name="St_Jerome"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 829px;" + alt="St. Jerome in the Desert. Gallery of the Brera, Milan. From a Photograph by Anderson." + title="St. Jerome in the Desert. Gallery of the Brera, Milan. From a Photograph by Anderson." + src="images/image28.jpg"></p> +<p><a name="Page_98"></a>Passing over the <i>Transfiguration</i> on +the high altar of San Salvatore at +Venice, we come to the <i>Annunciation</i> 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 naïve and pathetic renderings of an earlier time.</p> +<p>The <i>Education of Cupid</i>, popularly but erroneously known as <i>The +Three Graces</i><a name="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59"><sup>[59]</sup></a> +is one of the pearls of the Borghese Gallery. It is clearly +built in essentials on the master's own <i>d'Avalos Allegory</i>, +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 <i>di macchia</i>, 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 <i>Family Picture</i> 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 +<a name="Page_99"></a><a name="Page_100"></a>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, <i>Religion succoured by Spain</i>—otherwise <i>La Fé</i>—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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="The_Education_of_Cupid"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 341px;" + alt="The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese, Rome. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + title="The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese, Rome. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + src="images/image29.jpg"></p> +<p>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 <i>Martyrdom of St. Lawrence</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>di macchia</i>, 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.</p> +<p>It is curious and instructive to find the artist, in a letter +addressed to +<a name="Page_101"></a>Philip on the 2nd of December 1567, announcing +the despatch, together +with the just now described altar-piece, <i>The Martyrdom of St. +Lawrence</i>, +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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Religion_succoured"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 539px;" + alt="Religion succoured by Spain. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clément, & Cie." + title="Religion succoured by Spain. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clément, & Cie." + src="images/image30.jpg"></p> +<p>Our master, in his dealings with the Brescians, after the completion +<a name="Page_102"></a>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 +<a name="Page_103"></a>the trusty Orazio, who after much show of +indignation was compelled +at last to accept the proffered payment.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><i><a name="Portrait_of_the_Antiquary"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 658px;" + alt="Portrait of the Antiquary Jacopo da Strada. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Löwy." + title="Portrait of the Antiquary Jacopo da Strada. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Löwy." + src="images/image31.jpg"></i></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Madonna"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 653px;" + alt="Madonna and Child. Collection of Mr. Ludwig Mond." + title="Madonna and Child. Collection of Mr. Ludwig Mond." + src="images/image32.jpg"></p> +<p>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 +<a name="Page_104"></a>celebrated votive picture of the Sala del +Collegio, for Tintoretto's +<i>Battle of Lepanto</i>, but also for one of Titian's feeblest works, +the +allegory <i>Philip II. offering to Heaven his Son, the Infant Don +Ferdinand</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Madonna and Child</i> here reproduced,<a + name="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> 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 <i>Christ crowned with Thorns</i> 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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Christ_crowned"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 857px;" + alt="Christ crowned with Thorns. Alte Pinakothek, Munich. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstängl." + title="Christ crowned with Thorns. Alte Pinakothek, Munich. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstängl." + src="images/image33.jpg"></p> +<p>It is nothing short of startling at the very end of Titian's career +to +<a name="Page_105"></a><a name="Page_106"></a>meet with a work which, +expressed in this masterly late technique of his, +vies in freshness of inspiration with the finest of his early <i>poesie</i>. +This +is the <i>Nymph and Shepherd</i><a name="FNanchor_61"></a><a + href="#Footnote_61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> 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 <i>Pietà</i>, 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 +<i>Three Ages</i> of Bridgewater House, divided from the <i>Nymph and +Shepherd</i> +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 <i>poesia</i> +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.</p> +<p>And now we come to the <i>Pietà</i>,<a name="FNanchor_62"></a><a + href="#Footnote_62"><sup>[62]</sup></a> which so nobly and +appropriately +closes a career unexampled for duration and sustained achievement. +<a name="Page_107"></a>Titian had bargained with the Franciscan monks +of the Frari, which +contained already the <i>Assunta</i> and the <i>Madonna di Casa Pesaro</i>, +for a +grave in the Cappella del Crocifisso, offering in payment a <i>Pietà</i>, +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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="Pieta"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 506px;" + alt="Pietà. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + title="Pietà. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by E. Alinari." + src="images/image34.jpg"></p> +<p>The well-known inscription on the base of the monumental niche +which occupies the centre of the <i>Pietà</i>, "Quod Titianus +inchoatum +reliquit, Palma reverenter absolvit, Deoque dicavit opus," records how +what Titian had left undone was completed as reverently as might be +<a name="Page_108"></a>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 <i>Pietà</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<a name="Page_109"></a>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 felicità." 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 <i>Pietà</i>. +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 <i>Battle of Cadore</i>, 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 +<a name="Page_110"></a>such conviction described him to be, "the man as +highly favoured by +fortune as any of his kind had ever been before him."<a + name="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63"><sup>[63]</sup></a></p> +<br> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1">[1]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> "The Earlier Work of Titian," <i>Portfolio</i>, October 1897.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2">[2]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3">[3]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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 <i>putto</i> 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 <i>Holy +Family</i>, 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4">[4]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i. pp. 396, 397; <i>Tizian</i>, von +H. Knackfuss, p. 55.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5">[5]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Appendix to vol. i. p. 448.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6">[6]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> No. 1288 in the Long Gallery of the Louvre.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7">[7]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8">[8]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i., Appendix, p. 451.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9">[9]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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)."</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10">[10]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> See "The Picture Gallery of Charles I.," <i>The Portfolio</i>, +January 1896, pp. 49 and 99.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11">[11]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> The somewhat similar <i>Allegories</i> 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 <i>Initiation +of a Bacchante</i>, 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 <i>pasticcio</i> +made up in a curiously +mechanical way, from the Louvre <i>Allegory</i> and the quite late <i>Education +of Cupid</i> 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 +<i>Allegory</i>.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12">[12]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13">[13]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> It has been photographed under this name by Anderson of Rome.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14">[14]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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 <i>Portrait of a Man in +Black</i>, 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 <i>Jeune Homme au Gant</i>. 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 <i>Portrait of a Man in Black</i> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15">[15]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> This is the exceedingly mannered yet all the same rich and +beautiful <i>St. +Catherine, St. Roch, with a boy angel, and St. Sebastian</i>.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16">[16]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> See Giorgione's <i>Adrastus and Hypsipyle (Landscape with the +Soldier and the Gipsy)</i> of +the Giovanelli Palace, the <i>Venus</i> of Dresden, the <i>Concert +Champêtre</i> of the Louvre.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17">[17]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> It is unnecessary in this connection to speak of the Darmstadt <i>Venus</i> +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 <i>Venus</i> of Dresden, which it is his greatest glory +to have restored to Barbarelli +and to the world.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18">[18]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Die Galerien zu München und Dresden von Ivan Lermolieff</i>, +p. 290.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19">[19]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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 <i>Venus</i> 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 <i>Venus of +Urbino</i> and the later <i>Venus</i>, 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 <i>Muses</i> at Hampton Court, and above all that +unique painted poem, <i>The +Rescue</i>, in the Dresden Gallery, serve to support this view of his +art.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20">[20]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Crowe and Cavalcaselle, <i>Life of Titian</i>, vol. i. p. 420.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21">[21]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Two of these have survived in the <i>Roman Emperor on Horseback</i>, +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 <i>chef d'atelier</i>, he did little work on them +himself. In the Mantuan +catalogue contained in d'Arco's <i>Notizie</i> they were entered +thus:—"Dieci altri quadri, +dipintovi un imperatore per quadro a cavallo—opera di mano di Giulio +Romano" (see +<i>The Royal Gallery of Hampton Court</i>, by Ernest Law, 1898).</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22">[22]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> The late Charles Yriarte in a recent article, "Sabionneta la petite +Athènes," published +in the <i>Gazette des Beaux Arts</i>, March 1898, states that +Bernardino Campi of +Cremona, Giulio's subordinate at the moment, painted the Twelfth <i>Cæsar</i>, +but adduces +no evidence in support of this departure from the usual assumption.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23">[23]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> See "The Picture Gallery of Charles I.," <i>The Portfolio</i>, +October 1897, pp. 98, 99.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24">[24]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Nos. 529-540—Catalogue of 1891—Provincial Museum of Hanover. The +dimensions are 0.19 <i>c.</i> by 0.15 <i>c.</i></p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25">[25]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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 <i>San Lorenzo Giustiniani</i> +altar-piece in the Accademia +delle Belle Arti; the magnificent though in parts carelessly painted <i>Madonna +del Carmelo</i> +in the same gallery; the vast <i>St. Martin and St. Christopher</i> in +the church of S. Rocco; +the <i>Annunciation</i> of S. Maria degli Angeli at Murano.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26">[26]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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 <i>Presentation +of the +Virgin</i>.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27">[27]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> See a very interesting article, "Vittore Carpaccio—La Scuola degli +Albanesi," by +Dr. Gustav Ludwig, in the <i>Archivio Storico dell' Arte</i> for +November-December 1897.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28">[28]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> A gigantic canvas of this order is, or rather was, the famous <i>Storm</i> +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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29">[29]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> This is an arrangement analogous to that with the aid of which +Tintoretto later on, +in the <i>Crucifixion</i> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30">[30]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Crowe and Cavalcaselle, <i>Life of Titian</i>, vol. vi. p. 59.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31">[31]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32">[32]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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).</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33">[33]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34">[34]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> This study from the life would appear to bear some such relation to +the finished +original as the <i>Innocent X.</i> of Velazquez at Apsley House bears +to the great portrait of +that Pope in the Doria Panfili collection.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35">[35]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> This portrait-group belongs properly to the time a few years ahead, +since it was +undertaken during Titian's stay in Rome.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36">[36]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> The imposing signature runs <i>Titianus Eques Ces. F. 1543.</i></p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37">[37]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> The type is not the nobler and more suave one seen in the <i>Cristo +della Moneta</i> and +the <i>Pilgrims of Emmaus</i>; it is the much less exalted one which +is reproduced in the +<i>Ecce Homo</i> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38">[38]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Vasari saw a <i>Christ with Cleophas and Luke</i> 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 £600. The picture bears the signature, +unusual for this +period, "Tician." There is another <i>Christ with the Pilgrims at +Emmaus</i> 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 +<i>pentimento</i> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39">[39]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Purchased at the sale of Charles I.'s collection by Alonso de +Cardenas for Philip +IV. at the price of £165.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40">[40]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Crowe and Cavalcaselle, <i>Life of Titian</i>, vol. ii., Appendix +(p. 502).</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41">[41]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Moritz Thausing has striven in his <i>Wiener Kunstbriefe</i> to +show that the coat of arms +on the marble bas-relief in the <i>Sacred and Profane Love</i> is that +of the well-known +Nuremberg house of Imhof. This interpretation has, however, been +controverted by +Herz Franz Wickhoff.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42">[42]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Cesare Vecellio must have been very young at this time. The +costume-book, +<i>Degli abiti antichi e moderni</i>, to which he owes his chief fame, +was published at Venice in +1590.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43">[43]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Das Tizianbildniss der königlichen Galerie zu Cassel," <i>Jahrbuch +der +königlich-preussischen Kunstsammlungen</i>, Funfzehnter Band, III. +Heft.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44">[44]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> See the <i>Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino</i> at the Uffizi; +also, for the modish +headpiece, the <i>Ippolito de' Medici</i> at the Pitti.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45">[45]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> A number of fine portraits must of necessity be passed over in +these remarks. The +superb if not very well-preserved <i>Antonio Portia</i>, 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 <i>Benedetto Varchi</i> and the <i>Fabrizio Salvaresio</i> +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 <i>Portrait of a Lady +in Mourning</i>, 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 <i>Portrait +of a Lady +with a Vase</i>, No. 173 in the same collection. Morelli accepts as a +genuine example of the +master the <i>Portrait of a Lady in a Red Dress</i> 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 <i>naïveté</i> +a curious exception in his +long series of portraits.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46">[46]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47">[47]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> For the full text of the marriage contract see Giovanni Morelli, <i>Die +Galerien zu +München und Dresden</i>, pp. 300-302.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48">[48]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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."</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49">[49]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. p. 272.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50">[50]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> They were, with the <i>Rape of Europa</i>, 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 £2500 apiece.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51">[51]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52">[52]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> The best repetition of this Hermitage <i>Magdalen</i> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53">[53]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> This picture was presented by Philip IV. to Prince Charles of +England, and was, +at the sale of his collection, acquired by Jabach for £600, and +from him bought by Cardinal +Mazarin, whose heirs sold it to Louis XIV. The Cardinal thus possessed +the two finest +representations of the <i>Jupiter and Antiope</i> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54">[54]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 340.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55">[55]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> See as to the vicissitudes through which the picture has passed an +article, "Les +Restaurations du tableau du Titien, <i>Jupiter et Antiope</i>" by +Fernand Engerand, in the +<i>Chronique des Arts</i> of 7th May 1898.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56">[56]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57">[57]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58">[58]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> This picture is mentioned in the list of 1574 furnished by Titian +to Secretary Antonio +Perez. A <i>Perseus and Andromeda</i> 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 <i>entourage</i> +and with the assistance +of Titian, and it corresponds perfectly to Vasari's description of the <i>Deliverance +of +Andromeda</i>. 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59">[59]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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 <i>Adam +and Eve</i> of +the Prado, in which, for the usual serpent with the human head of the +feminine type, +Titian has substituted as tempter an insignificant <i>amorino</i>. 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60">[60]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61">[61]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> This is No. 186 in the catalogue of 1895. An etching of the picture +appeared +with an article "Les Écoles d'Italie au Musée de Vienne," +from the pen of Herr Franz +Wickhoff, in the <i>Gazette des Beaux Arts</i> for February 1893. It +was badly engraved +for the Teniers Gallery by Lissebetius.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62">[62]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Now in the Accademia delle Belle Arti of Venice.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63">[63]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 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. <i>The Vision of St. Eustace</i>, 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 <i>St. Jerome</i> 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 <i>Landscape +with the Pedlar</i> 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.</p> +<br> +<br> +<h2>INDEX +</h2> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Agony in the Garden, The" (Escorial), <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + <li><a name="Alfonso_dAvalos"></a>Alfonso d'Avalos, Marqués +del +Vasto (Madrid), <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> + <li>Alfonso d'Avalos, with his Family, Portrait of (Louvre), <a + href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> + <li>"Alfonso d'Este" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a + href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + <li>"Annunciation, The" (Venice), <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li> + <li>"Annunciation of the Virgin" (Verona), <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + <li>Aretino, Portrait of (Pitti Gallery), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a + href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + <li>Acquaviva, Duke of Arti, Portrait of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Bacchanals, The" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a + href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> + <li>"Bacchus and Ariadne" (National Gallery), <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, + <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + <li>"Battle of Cadore, The," <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a + href="#Page_39">39</a></li> + <li>Beccadelli, Legate, Portrait of (Uffizi), <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, + <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> + <li>"Bella, La" (Pitti), <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> + <li>"Boy Baptist," <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Cain and Abel" (Venice), <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a + href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + <li>Charles V., Portrait of (Munich), <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + <li>"Charles V. at Mühlberg" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, + <a href="#Page_68">68</a>-<a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + <li>"Christ crowned with Thorns" (Louvre), <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> + <li>"Christ crowned with Thorns" (Munich), <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + <li>"Christ with the Pilgrims at Emmaus" (Louvre), <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + <li>Cornaro Family (Duke of Northumberland's Collection), <a + href="#Page_88">88</a></li> + <li>Cornaro, Portrait of (Castle Howard), <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + <li>"Cornelia, La," Portrait of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Danaë and the Golden Rain" (Naples Museum), <a + href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + <li>"Danaë with Venus and Adonis" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_78">78</a>-<a + href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + <li>"David victorious over Goliath" (Venice),<a href="#Page_50">50</a>, + <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + <li>"Deliverance of Andromeda, The," <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + <li>"Descent of the Holy Spirit, The" (Venice), <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, + <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + <li>"Destruction of Pharaoh's Host, The," <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + <li>"Diana and Actæon" (Bridgewater Gallery), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, + <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a + href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + <li>"Diana and Calisto" (Bridgewater Gallery), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, + <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Ecce Homo" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + <li class="indent">(Munich), <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li> + <li class="indent">(Vienna), <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> + <li>"Education of Cupid, The" (Rome), <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li> + <li>"Entombment, The" (Louvre), <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + <li>"Entombment, The" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + <li>Ercole d'Este, Portrait of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a + href="#Page_54">54</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>Farnese Family, Portrait of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + <li>"Flora" (Uffizi), <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + <li>Francis the First, Portrait of (Louvre), <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, + <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> + <li>Frederick of Saxony, Portrait of (Vienna), <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Girl in a Fur Cloak" (Vienna), <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a + href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + <li>Gonzaga, Eleonora, Portraits of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a + href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + <li>Gonzaga, Federigo, Portrait of, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> + <li>Gonzaga, Isabella d'Este, Portrait of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, + <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Herodias" (Doria Gallery), <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a + href="#Page_66">66</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Ixion," <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"<a name="Jupiter_and_Antiope"></a>Jupiter and Antiope," <a + href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>Lavinia, Titian's daughter, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a + href="#Page_83">83</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Madonna Addolorata," <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a + href="#Page_79">79</a></li> + <li>"Madonna and Child in a Landscape" (Munich), <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, + <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + <li>"Madonna and Child" (Mr. Ludwig Mond's Collection), <a + href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + <li>"Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John" (National +Gallery), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a + href="#Page_11">11</a></li> + <li>"Madonna and Child with St. Peter and St. Andrew" (Serravalle), <a + href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + <li>"Madonna del Coniglio" (Louvre), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>-<a + href="#Page_11">11</a></li> + <li>"Magdalen" (Florence), <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a + href="#Page_15">15</a></li> + <li>"Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, The" (Venice), <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, + <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + <li>Medici, Portrait of Ippolito de' (Pitti), <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, + <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>-<a + href="#Page_21">21</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Nymph and Shepherd" (Vienna), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a + href="#Page_106">106</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Ottavio Farnese with his Beloved": see <i><a + href="#Venus_with_the_Organ_Player">Venus with Organ Player</a></i></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>Philip II., Portrait of (Madrid), <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> + <li>"Pietà," <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, + <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + <li>Pope Paul III., Portrait of (Naples), <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</li> + <li class="indent">(Hermitage), <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + <li>Pope Paul III. with Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio Farnese +(Naples), <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + <li>"Portrait of a Man" (Dresden), <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + <li>"Portrait of a Man in Black" (Louvre), <a href="#FNanchor_22">22 +(footnote)</a></li> + <li>"Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple" (Venice), <a + href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + <li>"Prometheus Bound to the Rock," <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + <li>"Prince Philip of Austria in Armour" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</li> + <li class="indent">(Pitti), <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</li> + <li class="indent">(Naples), <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + </ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Rape of Europa," <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, + <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + <li>"Religion succoured by Spain" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Sacred and Profane Love" (Borghese Gallery), <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, + <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> + <li>"Sacrifice of Isaac" (Venice), <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + <li>"St. Jerome in Prayer" (Louvre), <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + <li>"St. Jerome in the Desert" (Milan), <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + <li>"St. John in the Desert" (Venice), <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + <li>"St. Margaret in a Landscape" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> + <li>"St. Peter Martyr," <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, + <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a + href="#Page_84">84</a></li> + <li>"Sisyphus" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + <li>Strada, Jacopo da, Portrait of (Vienna), <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Tantalus" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + <li>"Three Ages, The" (Bridgewater Gallery), <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + <li>Titian, Portrait of, by himself (Berlin), <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, + <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</li> + <li class="indent">(Madrid), <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li> + <li class="indent">(Pitti), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</li> + <li class="indent">(Uffizi), <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> + <li>"Titian and Franceschini" (Windsor Castle), <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + <li>"Trinity, The," <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + <li>"Twelve Cæsars, Series of," <a href="#Page_34">34</a>-<a + href="#Page_36">36</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>Vasto, Marqués del: see <i><a href="#Alfonso_dAvalos">Alfonso +d' Avalos</a></i></li> + <li>"Venere del Pardo" (Paris), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>; see also <i><a + href="#Jupiter_and_Antiope">Jupiter and Antiope</a></i></li> + <li>"Venetian Storm Landscape" (Buckingham Palace), <a + href="#Page_10">10</a></li> + <li>"Venus Anadyomene" (Bridgewater Gallery), <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + <li>"Venus and Cupid" (Tribuna), <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a + href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + <li>"Venus of Urbino," <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, + <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a + href="#Page_92">92</a></li> + <li>"Venus with the Mirror" (Hermitage), <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + <li>"<a name="Venus_with_the_Organ_Player"></a>Venus with the Organ +Player" +(Madrid), <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + <li>"Virgen de los Dolores" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Worship of Venus" (Madrid), <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a + href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<ul> + <li>"Young Nobleman, Portrait of" (Florence), <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> +</ul> +</div> +<br /> +<br /> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12657 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/12657-h/images/image01.jpg b/12657-h/images/image01.jpg Binary files differnew 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