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THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN
By
CLAUDE PHILLIPS
Keeper of the Wallace Collection
1898
[Illustration: Titian. From a photograph by G. Brogi.]
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COPPER PLATES
Portrait of Titian, by himself. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Frontispiece
La Bella di Tiziano. Pitti Palace, Florence.
Titian's daughter Lavinia. Berlin Gallery.
The Cornaro Family. Collection of the Duke of Northumberland.
ILLUSTRATIONS PRINTED IN SEPIA
Drawing of St. Jerome. British Museum.
Landscape with Stag. Collection of Professor Legros.
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist. In the
National Gallery.
Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence.
Francis the First. Louvre.
Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence.
S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of that name at
Venice.
The Girl in the Fur Cloak. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
The Battle of Cadore (from a reduced copy of part only). Uffizi Gallery,
Florence.
The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Accademia delle Belle
Arti, Venice.
The Magdalen. Pitti Palace, Florence.
The Infant Daughter of Roberto Strozzi. Royal Gallery, Berlin.
Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna
Aretino. Pitti Palace, Florence
Pope Paul III. with Cardinal Farnese and Ottavio Farnese. Naples Gallery
Danaë and the Golden Rain. Naples Gallery
Charles V. at the Battle of Mühlberg. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid
Venus with the Mirror. Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Christ crowned with Thorns. Louvre
The Rape of Europa
Portrait of Titian, by himself. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid
St. Jerome in the Desert. Gallery of the Brera, Milan
The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese, Rome
Religion succoured by Spain. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid
Portrait of the Antiquary Jacopo da Strada. Imperial Gallery, Vienna
Madonna and Child. Collection of Mr. Ludwig Mond
Christ crowned with Thorns. Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Pietà. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice
THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN
CHAPTER 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._
Having followed Titian as far as the year 1530, rendered memorable by
that sensational, and, of its kind, triumphant achievement, _The
Martyrdom of St. Peter the Dominican_, 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 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 _raison d'être_ 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.
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 _La Vie et L'Oeuvre du Titien_, 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. 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.
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
_Sonetti Lussuriosi_ 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 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 _Charles V. at
Mühlberg_ 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.
The second period, following upon the completion of the _St. Peter
Martyr_, is one less of great altar-pieces and _poesie_ such as the
miscalled _Sacred and Profane Love_ (_Medea and Venus_), the
_Bacchanals_, and the _Bacchus and Ariadne_, 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 which
Titian's latest years are passed, and the patrons for whom he paints. Of
the _poesie_ there is then a new upspringing, a new efflorescence, and
we get by the side of the _Venus and Adonis_, the _Diana and Actæon_,
the _Diana and Calisto_, the _Rape of Europa_, such pieces of a more
exquisite and penetrating poetry as the _Venere del Pardo_ of Paris, and
the _Nymph and Shepherd_ of Vienna.
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 _Biography_ (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.
Some reasons were given in the former section of this monograph[1] for
the assertion that the _Madonna with St. Catherine_, 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
_Madonna del Coniglio_ of the Louvre, but the _Madonna and Child with
St. John the Baptist and St. Catherine_, which is No. 635 at the
National Gallery.[2] 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 _Madonna del
Coniglio_.[3] 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,[4] 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
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
_Madonna del Coniglio_, and the gigantic _St. Peter Martyr_, 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.
[Illustration: _Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the
Baptist. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli._]
Vasari states, speaking confessedly from hearsay, that in 1530, the
Emperor Charles V. being at Bologna, Titian was summoned thither by
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, _La Cornelia_, 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[5] 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;[6]
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 dilettante, but impairing his own
position as an artist of supreme rank.[7] It is not necessary to include
in this category the popular _Caterina Cornaro_ 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 _entourage_. Take, however, as an instance the _Francis
the First_, which was painted some few years later than the time at
which we have now arrived, and at about the same period as the _Isabella
d'Este_. Though as a _portrait d'apparat_ 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 _Charles the Fifth_, the _Ippolito
de' Medici_, the _Francesco Maria della Rovere_? 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.
It was in the earlier part of 1531 that Titian painted for Federigo
Gonzaga a _St. Jerome_ and a _St. Mary Magdalene_, 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[8]:--"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.
It is not possible at present to identify with any extant painting the
_St. Jerome_, of which we know that it hung in the private apartments
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
_Venus and Cupid_ of the Tribuna.[9] 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 _St. Jerome_ 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 _Magdalen_ 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 _Magdalen_ painted for
Federigo Gonzaga, we must hold, nevertheless, that Titian with his
masterpiece of painting only half satisfied the requirements of his
patron. _Bellissima_ this Magdalen undoubtedly is, but hardly _lagrimosa
pin che si puo_. She is a _belle pécheresse_ whose repentance sits all
too lightly upon her, whose consciousness of a physical charm not easily
to be withstood is hardly disguised. 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 _Venus of the Tribuna_. 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 _Magdalen_ 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.
[Illustration: ST. JEROME. PEN DRAWING BY TITIAN (?) _British Museum_.]
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.
In 1531 we read of a _Boy Baptist_ 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 _Virgin and Child
with St. Catherine_ of the National Gallery, which belongs, as has been
shown, to the same time.
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
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.
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 _Giorgio Cornaro_ of
Castle Howard, is a likeness of his son and successor, Ercole II.
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 _Sala de la Reina Isabel_ 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 _£_150.
There is, however, no valid reason for doubting that this is the very
picture owned for a time by Charles I., and which busy intriguing
Gerbier afterwards bought, only to part with it to Cardenas the Spanish
ambassador.[10] 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 _grandeza_,
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 _arrière-pensée_
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.
Again the writer hesitates to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle when
they place at this period, that is to say about 1533, the superb
_Allegory_ of the Louvre (No. 1589), which is very generally believed to
represent the famous commander Alfonso d'Avalos, 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.
[Illustration: _Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence.
From a Photograph by G. Brogi_.]
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 _Allegory_ 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 _Allocution_ 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.[11]
To this year, 1533, belongs one of the masterpieces in portraiture of
our painter, the wonderful _Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici in a Hungarian
habit_ of the Pitti. This youthful Prince of the Church, the natural
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. 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. 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 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 (_guardaroba_) of Cosimo, Duke
of Tuscany--is not now known to exist.[12]
[Illustration: _Francis the First. Louvre. From a Photograph by
Neurdein_.]
[Illustration: _Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a
Photograph by E. Alinari_.]
It may be convenient to mention here one of the most magnificent among
the male portraits of Titian, the _Young Nobleman_ 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 _Howard
duca di Norfolk_,[13] 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.[14]
[Illustration: _S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of
that name at Venice. From a Photograph by Naya._]
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.[15] 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 _Madonna di S. Niccola_, 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
_Prophets_ and _Sibyls_ of the Sixtine Chapel.
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 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 _SS. Anthony, Cornelius, and Cyprian with a Page_,
in the Brera, for which he invented a harmony as delicious as it is
daring, composed wholly of violet-purple, green, and gold.