_Titian_ (Venetian: 1477-1576). _See_ 4.
A picture which is at once a school of poetry and a school of art--"in
its combination of all the qualities which go to make a great work
of art possibly the finest picture in the world" (Poynter). It is
a translation on canvas of the scene described in Catullus, where
Bacchus, the wine-god, returning with his revel rout from a sacrifice,
finds Ariadne on the seashore, after she had been deserted by Theseus,
her lover. Bacchus no sooner sees her than he is enamoured and
determines to make her his bride--
Bounding along is blooming Bacchus seen,
With all his heart aflame with love for thee,
Fair Ariadne! and behind him, see,
Where Satyrs and Sileni whirl along,
With frenzy fired, a fierce tumultuous throng....
There some wave thyrsi wreathed with ivy, here
Some toss the limbs of a dismembered steer....
Others with open palms the timbrel smite,
Or with their brazen rods make tinklings light.
_Carmen_ lxiv.: Sir T. Martin's translation.
Nothing can be finer than the painter's representation of Bacchus and
his rout: there is a "divine inebriety" in the god which is the very
"incarnation of the spirit of revelry." "With this telling of the
story," says Charles Lamb (Essay on _Barrenness of the Imaginative
Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art_), "an artist, and no ordinary
one, might remain richly proud.... But Titian has recalled past time,
and made it contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect.
With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals of his followers, made
lucid with the presence and new offers of a god,--as if unconscious
of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning
pageant, her soul undistracted from Theseus, Ariadne is still pacing
the solitary shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same
local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn
last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian." But though
as yet half unconscious, Ariadne is already under her fated star:
for above is the constellation of Ariadne's crown--the crown with
which Bacchus presented his bride. And observe in connection with the
astronomical side of the allegory the figure in Bacchus's train with
the serpent round him: this is the serpent-bearer (Milton's "Orphiucus
huge") translated to the skies with Bacchus and Ariadne. Notice too
another piece of poetry: the marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne took place
in the spring, Ariadne herself being the personification of its return,
and Bacchus of its gladness; hence the flowers in the foreground which
deck his path.
The picture is as full of the painter's art as of the poet's. Note
first the exquisite painting of the vine leaves,[67] and of the
flowers in the foreground, as an instance of the "constant habit of
the great masters to render every detail of their foreground with
the most laborious botanical fidelity": "The foreground is occupied
with the common blue iris, the _aquilegia_, and the wild rose (more
correctly the _Capparis spinosa_); _every stamen_ of which latter is
given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult
flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy."
But this detail is sought not for its own sake, but only so far as is
necessary to mark the typical qualities of beauty in the object. Thus
"while every stamen of the rose is given because this was necessary
to mark the flower, and while the curves and large characters of the
leaves are rendered with exquisite fidelity, there is no vestige of
particular texture, of moss, bloom, moisture, or any other accident,
no dewdrops, nor flies, nor trickeries of any kind; nothing beyond the
simple forms and hues of the flowers, even those hues themselves being
simplified and broadly rendered. The varieties of _aquilegia_ have in
reality a grayish and uncertain tone of colour, and never attain the
purity of blue with which Titian has gifted his flower. But the master
does not aim at the particular colour of individual blossoms; he seizes
the type of all, and gives it with the utmost purity and simplicity
of which colour is capable." A second point to be noticed is the way
in which one kind of truth has often to be sacrificed in order to
gain another. Thus here Titian sacrifices truth of aerial effect to
richness of tone--tone in the sense, that is, of that quality of colour
which makes us feel that the whole picture is in one climate, under
one kind of light, and in one kind of atmosphere. "It is difficult to
imagine anything more magnificently impossible than the blue of the
distant landscape; impossible, not from its vividness, but because it
is not faint and aerial enough to account for its purity of colour; it
is too dark and blue at the same time; and there is indeed so total
a want of atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it
would be impossible to tell the mountains intended to be ten miles
off, from the robe of Ariadne close to the spectator. Yet make this
blue faint, aerial, and distant; make it in the slightest degree to
resemble the tint of nature's colour; and all the tone of the picture,
all the intensity and splendour, will vanish on the instant" (_Modern
Painters_, vols. i., xxvii., xxx. (Preface to the Second Edition),
pt. i. sec. ii. ch. i. § 5, pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 15; vol. iii.
pt. iv. ch. ix. § 18; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 31; _Arrows of the
Chace_, i. 58). We may notice lastly what Sir Joshua Reynolds points
out (Discourse viii.), that the harmony of the picture--that wonderful
bringing together of two times of which Lamb speaks above, is assisted
by the distribution of colours. "To Ariadne is given (say the critics)
a red scarf, to relieve the figure from the sea, which is behind her.
It is not for that reason alone, but for another of much greater
consequence; for the sake of the general harmony and effect of the
picture. The figure of Ariadne is separated from the great group, and
is dressed in blue, which, added to the colour of the sea, makes that
quantity of cold colour which Titian thought necessary for the support
and brilliancy of the great group; which group is composed, with very
little exception, entirely of mellow colours. But as the picture in
this case would be divided into two distinct parts, one half cold and
the other warm, it was necessary to carry some of the mellow colours
of the great group into the cold part of the picture, and a part of
the cold into the great group; accordingly, Titian gave Ariadne a red
scarf, and to one of the Bacchantes a little blue drapery."
This famous picture was a commission from the Duke Alfonso I. of
Ferrara. There were great delays in its delivery, the Duke and his
agents resorting alternately to threats and cajolery in order to
extract the promised canvas from the painter. Among other excuses
Titian said he had no canvas for it. The Duke supplied the canvas, and
sent at the same time a frame. But the picture did not come. Ultimately
Titian took it with him to Ferrara in 1522, and finished it there. He
seems to have been engaged on it, off and on, for some three years. The
picture subsequently passed into the Aldobrandini collection at Rome,
from which it was purchased for an English collector in 1806. Twenty
years later it was acquired by the National Gallery.