TITIAN (_continued_)
With the "Assumption," finished in 1518 for the Church of the Frari,
Titian rose to the very highest among Renaissance painters. The
"Glorious S. Mary" was his theme, and he concentrated all his efforts on
the realisation of that one idea. The central figure is, as it were, a
collective rather than an individual type. Well proportioned and elastic
as it is, it has the abundance of motherhood. Harmonious and serene, it
combines dramatic force and profound feeling. Exultant Humanity, in its
hour of triumph, rises with her, borne up lightly by that throbbing
company of child angels and followed by full recognition and awestruck
satisfaction in the adoring gaze of the throng below, yet Titian has
contrived to keep some touch of the loving woman hurrying to meet her
son. The flood of colour, the golden vault above, the garment of glowing
blues and crimsons, have a more than common share in that spirit of
confident joy and poured-out life which envelops the whole canvas. In
the worthy representation of a great event, the visible assumption of
Humanity to the Throne of God, Titian puts forth all his powers and
steeps us in that temper of sanguine emotion, of belief in life and
confidence in the capacity of man, which was so characteristic of the
ripe Renaissance. In looking at this splendid canvas, we must call to
mind the position for which Titian painted it. Hung in the dusky
recesses of the apse, it was tempered by and merged in its stately
surroundings. The band of Apostles almost formed a part of the
whispering crowd below, and the glorious Mother was beheld soaring
upwards to the golden light and the mysterious vistas of the vaulted
arches above.
The patronage of courts had by this time altered the tenor of Titian's
life. In 1516 Duke Alfonso d'Este had invited him to Ferrara, where he
had finished Bellini's "Bacchanals." It bears the marks of Titian's
hand, and he has introduced a well-known point of view at Cadore into
the background. In 1518 Alfonso writes to propose another painting, and
Titian's acceptance is contained in a very courtier-like letter, in
which we divine a touch of irony. "The more I thought of it," he ends,
"the more I became convinced that the greatness of art among the
ancients was due to the assistance they received from great princes, who
were content to leave to the painter the credit and renown derived from
their own ingenuity in bespeaking pictures." Alfonso's requirements for
his new castle were frankly pagan. Mythological scenes were already
popular. Mantegna had adorned Isabela d'Este's "Paradiso" with revels
of the gods, Botticelli had given his conception of classic myth in the
Medici villa, already Bellini had essayed a Bacchanal, and Titian was to
make designs for similar scenes to complete the decorations of the halls
of Este. The same exuberant feeling he shows in the "Assumption" finds
utterance in the "Garden of Loves" and the "Bacchanals," both painted
for Alfonso of Ferrara. The children in the former may be compared with
the angels in the "Assumption." Their blue wings match the heavenly blue
sky, and they are painted with the most delicate finish.
We can imagine the beauty of the great hall at Ferrara when hung with
this brilliant series, which was completed in 1523 by the "Bacchus and
Ariadne" of the National Gallery. The whole company of bacchanals is
given up to wanton merrymaking. Above them broods the deep blue sky and
great white clouds of a summer day. The deep greens of the foliage throw
the creamy-white and burning colour of the draperies and the fair forms
of the nymphs into glowing relief, while by a convention the satyrs
are of a deep, tawny complexion. On a roll of music is stamped the
rollicking device, "_Chi boit et ne reboit, ne sçeais que boir soit_."
The purple fruit hangs ripened from the vines, its crimson juice shines
like a jewel in crystal goblets and drips in streams over rosy limbs.
The influence of such pictures as these was absorbed by Rubens, but
though they hardly surpass him in colour, they are more idyllic and
less coarse. The perfect taste of the Renaissance is never shown more
victoriously than here, where indulgence ceases to be repulsive, and the
actors are real flesh and blood, yet more Arcadian than revolting. In
the "Bacchus and Ariadne," Titian gives triumphant expression to a mood
of wild rejoicing, so gay, so good-tempered, so simple, that we must
smile in sympathy. The conqueror flinging himself from his golden
chariot drawn by panthers, his deep red mantle fluttering on high, is so
full of reckless life that our spirit bounds with him. His rioting band,
marching with song and laughter, seems to people that golden country-side
with fit inhabitants. The careless satyrs and little merry, goat-legged
fauns shock us no more than a herd of forest ponies, tossing their manes
and dashing along for love of life and movement.[3] Yet almost before
this series was put in place Titian was showing the diversity of his
genius by the "Deposition," now in the Louvre, which was painted at the
instance of the Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua and nephew of Alfonso d'Este.
Here he makes a great step in the use of chiaroscuro. While it is
satisfying in balance and sweeping rhythm, and by the way in which every
line follows and intensifies the helpless, slackened lines of the dead
Body, it escapes Raphael's academic treatment of the same subject. Its
splendid colours are not noisy; they merge into a scene of solemn pathos
and tragedy. The scene has a simplicity and unity in its passion, and
what above all gives it its intense power is the way in which the
flaming hues are absorbed into the twilight shadows. The dark heads
stand out against the dying sunset, the pallor of the dead is half
veiled by the falling night. It is a picture which has the emotional
beauty of a scene in nature, and makes a profound impression by its
depth and mystery. This same solemnity and gravity temper the brilliant
colouring of the great altarpiece painted for the Pesaro family in the
Frari. Columns rise like great tree-trunks, light and air play through
the clouds seen between them. The grouping is a new experiment, but the
way in which the Mother and Child, though placed quite at one side of
the picture, are focussed as the centre of interest, by the converging
lines, diagonal on the one hand and straight on the other, crowns it
with success. The scheme of colour brings the two figures into high
relief, while St. Francis and the family of the donor are subordinated
to rich, deep tints. Titian has abandoned, more completely than ever
before, any attempt to invest the Child with supernatural majesty. He is
a delightful, spoiled baby, fully aware of his sovereignty over his
mother, pretending to take no notice of the kneeling suppliants, but
occupying himself in making a tent over his head out of her veil. The
"Madonna in Glory with six Saints" of the Vatican is another example of
the rich and "smouldering" colour in which Titian was now creating his
great altarpieces, kneading his pigments into a quality, a solidity,
which gives reality without heaviness, and finishing with that
fine-grained texture which makes his flesh look like marble endowed
with life.
[3] It is this quality of unarrested movement, so conspicuous
above all in the figure of Bacchus, which attracts us irresistibly in
the Huntress, in Lord Brownlow's "Diana and Actaeon." The construction
of the form of the goddess in this beautiful but little-known picture is
admirable. Worn as the colour is, appearing almost as a monochrome, the
landscape is full of atmospheric suggestion. It is in Titian's latest
manner, and its ample lines and free unimpeded motion can be due to no
inferior brush.
[Illustration: _Titian._
DIANA AND ACTAEON.
_Earl Brownlow._
(_The Medici Society, Ltd._)]
Venuses, altarpieces, and portraits all tell us how boldly his own style
was established. His sacred persons are not different from his pagans
and goddesses. Yet though he has gone far, he still reminds us of
Giorgione. He has been constant to the earliest influences which
surrounded him, and to that temperament which made him accept those
influences so instantaneously--and this constancy and unity give him the
untroubled ascendancy over art which is such a feature of his position.
With Leonardo and with Titian, painters had sprung to a recognised
status in the great world of the Renaissance. They were no longer the
patronised craftsmen. They had become the courted guests, the social
equals. Titian, passing from the courts of Ferrara to those of Mantua
and Urbino, attended by a band of assistants, was a magnificent
personage, whose presence was looked upon as a favour, and who undertook
a commission as one who conferred a coveted boon. Among those who
clustered closest round the popular favourite, no one did more to
enhance his position than Aretino, the brilliant unscrupulous debauchee,
wit, bully, blackmailer, but a man who, with all his faults, had
evidently his own power of fascination, and, the friend of princes,
must have been himself the prince of good company. Aretino, as far
as he could be said to be attached to any one, was consistent in his
attachment to Titian from the time they first met at the court of the
Gonzaga. He played the part of a chorus, calling attention to the great
painter's merits, jogging the memory of his employers as to payments,
and never ceasing to flatter, amuse, and please him. Titian, for his
part, shows himself equally devoted to Aretino's interests, and has left
various characteristic portraits of him, handsome and showy in his
prime, sensual and depraved as age overtook him.
In the spring of 1528 the confraternity of St. Peter Martyr invited
artists to send in sketches for an altarpiece to their patron-saint, in
SS. Giovanni and Paolo, to replace an old one by Jacobello del Fiore.
Palma Vecchio and Pordenone also competed, but Titian carried off the
prize. The picture was delivered in 1530, and during the autumn of 1529
Sebastian del Piombo had returned to Venice from Rome, and Michelangelo
had sought refuge there from Florence and had stayed for some months. A
quarrel with the monks over the price had delayed the picture, so that
it may quite probably have only been begun after intercourse with the
Roman visitors had given a fresh turn to Titian's ideas; for though he
never ceases to be himself, it certainly seems as if the genius of
Michelangelo had had some effect. From what we know of the altarpiece,
which perished by fire in 1867, but of which a good copy by Cigoli
remains, Titian embarked suddenly upon forms of Herculean strength
in violent action, but there his likeness to the Florentine ended;
the figures were, indeed, drawn with a deep, though not altogether
successful, attention to anatomy and foreshortening, but the picture
obtained its effect and derived its impressiveness from the setting in
which the figures were placed--the great trees, bending and straining,
the hurrying clouds, as if nature were in portentous harmony with the
sinister deed, and overhead the enchanting gleam of light which shot
downward and irradiated the face of the martyr and the two lovely
winged boys, bathed in a flood of blue æther, who held aloft the palm of
victory. Many copies of it remain, and we only regret that one which
Rubens executed is not preserved among them.
When we look at the delicious "Madonna del Coniglio" in the Louvre and
our own "Marriage of S. Catherine," the first of which certainly, and
the second probably, was painted about this time, we cannot doubt that
the charm of the idea of motherhood had particularly arrested the
painter. About 1525 his first son, Pomponio, was born, and was followed
by another son and a daughter. In the S. Catherine he paints that
passion of mother-love with an intensity and reality that can only be
drawn from life, and on the wheel at her feet he has inscribed his name,
Ticianus, F. His feeling for landscape is increasing, and the landscape
in these pictures equals the figures in importance and has engrossed the
painter quite as much. Every year Titian paid a visit to Cadore, and in
the rich woodlands, the distant villages, the great white villa on the
hill-side, and, above all, in the far-off blue mountains and the glooms
and gleams of storm and sunshine, the sudden dart of rays through the
summer clouds, which he has painted here, we see how constant was his
study of his native country, and how profoundly he felt its poetry and
its charm. He had married Cecilia, the daughter of a barber belonging
to Perarolo, a little town near Cadore. In 1530 she died, and he
mourned her deeply. He went on working and planning for his children's
future, and his sister came from Cadore to take charge of the motherless
household; but his friends' letters speak of his being ill from
melancholy, and he could not go on living in the old house at San
Samuele, which had been his home for sixteen years. He took a new house
on the north side of the city, in the parish of San Canciano. The Casa
Grande, as it was called, was a building of importance, which the
painter first hired and finally bought, letting off such apartments as
he did not need. The first floor had a terrace, and was entered by a
flight of steps from the garden, which overlooked the lagoons, and had a
view of the Cadore mountains. It has been swept away by the building of
the Fondamenta Nuove, but the documents of the leases are preserved, and
the exact site is well established. Here his children grew up, and he
worked for them unceasingly. Pomponio, his eldest son, was idle and
extravagant, a constant source of trouble, and Aretino writes him
reproachful letters, which he treats with much impertinence. Orazio took
to his father's profession, and was his constant companion, and often
drew his cartoons; and his beautiful daughter, Lavinia, was his greatest
joy and pride. In this house Titian showed constant hospitality, and
there are records of the princely fashion in which he entertained his
friends and distinguished foreign visitors. Priscianese, a well-known
Humanist and _savant_ of the day, describes a Bacchanalian feast on
the 1st of August, in a pleasant garden belonging to Messer Tiziano
Vecellio. Aretino, Sansovino, and Jacopo Nardi were present. Till the
sun set they stayed indoors, admiring the artist's pictures. "As soon as
it went down, the tables were spread, looking on the lagoons, which soon
swarmed with gondolas full of beautiful women, and resounded with music
of voices and instruments, which till midnight, accompanied our
delightful supper. Titian gave the most delicate viands and precious
wines, and the supper ended gaily."
In the year 1532 Titian for the first time sought other than Italian
patronage. Charles V., who was then at the height of his power, with all
Italy at his feet, passed through Mantua, and among all the treasures
that he saw was most struck by Titian's portrait of Federigo Gonzaga.
After much writing to and fro, it was arranged that Titian should meet
the Emperor at Bologna, where he had just been crowned. He made his
first sketch of him, from which he afterwards produced a finished full
length. It was the first of many portraits, and Vasari declares that
from that time forth Charles would never sit to any other master. He
received a knighthood, and many commissions from members of the
Emperor's court. It was for one of his nobles, da Valos, Marquis of
Vasto, that he painted the allegorical piece in the Louvre, in which
Mary of Arragon, the lovely wife of da Valos, is parting with her
husband, who is bound on one of the desperate expeditions against the
terrible Turks. Da Valos is dressed in armour, and the couple are
encircled by Hymen, Victory, and the God of Love. The composition was
repeated more than once, but never with quite the same success. We again
suspect the influence of Michelangelo in the altarpiece painted before
Titian next left Venice, of St. John the Almsgiver, for the Church of
that name, of which the Doge was patron. The figures are life-size, the
types stern and rugged, daringly foreshortened, and the colours, though
gorgeous, are softened and broken by broad effects of light and shade.
It is painted in a solemn mood, a contrast to that in which about this
time he produced a series of beautiful female portraits, nude or
semi-nude, chiefly, it would appear, at the instance of the Duke of
Urbino. The Duke at this time was the General-in-Chief of the Venetian
forces, a position which took him often to Venice, and Titian's
relations with him lasted till the painter's death. At least twenty-five
of his works must have adorned the castles of Urbino and Pesaro. Among
these were the Venus of the Uffizi, "La Bella di Tiziano," in her
gorgeous scheme of blue and amethyst, the "Girl in a Fur Cloak," besides
portraits of the Duke and Duchess. It would be impossible to enumerate
here the numbers of portraits which Titian was now supplying. The
reputation he had acquired, not only in Italy, but in Spain, France, and
Germany, was greater than had ever been attained by any painter, while
his social position was established among the highest in every court.
"He had rivals in Venice," says Vasari, "but none that he did not
crush by his excellence and knowledge of the world in converse with
gentlemen." There is not a writer of the day who does not acclaim his
genius. Titian was undoubtedly very fond of money, and had amassed a
good fortune. He was constantly asking for favours, and had pensions and
allowances from royal patrons. Lavinia, when she married, brought her
husband a dowry of 1400 ducats. He had painted the portraits of the
Doges with tolerable regularity, but all through his life complaints
were heard of his neglect of the work of the Hall of Grand Council.
Occupied as he was with the work of his foreign patrons, he had
systematically neglected the conditions enjoined by his possession of a
Broker's patent, and the Signoria suddenly called on him to refund the
salary amounting to over 100 ducats a year, for the twenty years during
which he had drawn it without performing his promise, while they
prepared to instal Pordenone, who had lately appeared as his bitter
rival, in his stead. Though Titian must have been making large sums of
money at this time, his expenses were heavy, and he could not calmly
face the obligation to repay such a sum as 2000 ducats at the same time
that he lost the annual salary, nor was it pleasant to be ousted by a
second-rate rival. His easy remedy was, however, in his own hands; he
set to work and soon completed a great canvas of the "Battle of Cadore,"
which, though it is only known to us from a contemporary print and a
drawing by Rubens, evidently deserved Vasari's verdict of being the
finest battlepiece ever placed in the hall. The movement and stir he
contrives to give with a small number of figures is astonishing. The
fortress burns upon the hill-side, a regiment advancing with lances and
pennons produces the illusion that it is the vanguard of a great army,
the desperate conflict by the narrow bridge realises all the terrors of
war. It was an atonement for his long period of neglect, but it was not
till 1439 [TN: Pordenone died in 1539] that, Pordenone having suddenly
died, the Signoria relented and reinstated Titian in his Broker's
patent. One of his later paintings for the State still keeps its place,
"The Triumph of Faith," in which Doge Grimani, a splendid, steel-clad
form with flowing mantle, kneels before the angelic apparition of Faith,
who holds a cross, which angels and cherubs help her to support.
Beneath the clouds are seen the Venetian fleet, the Ducal Palace, and
the Campanile. It is an allegory of Grimani's life; his defeat and
captivity are symbolised by the cross and chalice, and the magnificent
figure of St. Mark with the lion is introduced to show that the Doge
believes himself to owe his freedom to the saint's intercession. The
prophet and standard-bearer at the sides were added by Marco Vecellio.
Though the battlepiece perished in the fire of 1577, another masterpiece
of this time marks a climax in Titian's brilliantly coloured and highly
finished style. The "Presentation of the Virgin" was painted for the
refectory of the Confraternity of the Carità, which was housed in the
building now used as the Academy, so that the picture remains in the
place for which it was executed. It is one of the most vivid and
life-like of all his works. The composition is the traditional one;
the fifteen steps of the "Gospel of Mary," the High Priest of the old
dispensation welcoming the childish representative of the new. Below is
a great crowd, but it is this little figure which first attracts the
eye. The contrast between the mass of architecture and the free and
glowing country beyond is not without meaning, and a broken Roman torso,
lying neglected on the ground, symbolises the downfall of the Pagan
Empire. The flight of steps, with the figure sitting below them, is
an idea borrowed from Carpaccio, and perhaps taken by him from the
sketch-book of Jacopo Bellini. The men on the left are portraits of
members and patrons of the confraternity. Most Titianesque are the
beautiful women in rich dresses at the foot of the steps. In this
stately composition we see what is often noticeable in Titian's scenes;
he brings in the bystanders after the manner of a Greek chorus. They
all, with one accord, express the same sentiment. There is a certain
acceptation of the obvious in Titian, a vein of simplicity flows through
his nature. He has not the sensitive and subtle search after the motives
of humanity which we find in Tintoretto or Lotto. He has great
intellectual power, but not great imagination. It is a temper which
helps to keep the unity, the monumental quality of his scenes
undisturbed and adds to their effect. In the "Ecce Homo" Christ is shown
to the populace by Pilate, who with dubious compliment is a portrait of
Aretino, and the contrast of the lonely, broken-down man with the crowd
which, with all its lower instincts let loose, thunders back the cry of
"Crucify Him," is the more dramatic because of the unanimous spirit
which possesses the raging multitude. Other artists would have given
more incidental byplay, and drawn off our attention from the main
issue.