connection with the frescoes of Giorgione upon the facade of the Fondaco
de Tedeschi, about which there was a dispute. To Carpaccio we are
indebted for the most vivid realization of the contemporary life of
Venice; for although his subjects were nominally taken from sacred
history or legend, they are treated in a thoroughly secular fashion,
giving the clearest idea of the buildings, people, and costume of the
Venice of his time, with the greatest variety and richest development.
His object is not only to represent single events, but a complete scene,
and while we observe this characteristic in one or two pictures by the
Bellini, Carpaccio not only shows it much oftener, but carries it to a
much fuller development--possibly influenced by the Netherlandish
masters.
Many of his works are in the Academy at Venice; eight large pictures,
painted between 1490 and 1495, represent the history of S. Ursula and
the eleven thousand virgins. Such a wealth of charming material might
have embarrassed a less capable painter, but "the monotonous incident
which forms the groundwork of many of them," as Kugler coldly puts it,
"is throughout varied and elevated by a free style of grouping and by
happy moral allusions." Another series is that of the _Miracles of the
Holy Cross_, among which may be especially noticed the cure of a man
possessed by a devil; the scene is laid in the loggia of a Venetian
palace, and is watched from below by a varied group of figures on the
Canal and its banks. Larger and broader treatment may be seen in the
_Presentation in the Temple_, painted in 1510, which is also in the
Academy, and in the altar-piece of _S. Vitale_, dated 1514. This last
brings Carpaccio into closer comparison with the later Venetian
painters, being in the nature of a _Santa Conversazione_, where the holy
personages are grouped in some definite relation to each other, and not
independent figures.
PALMA VECCHIO (1480-1528), so called to distinguish him from Giacomo
Palma the younger--Palma Giovane,--was so much influenced by Giorgione
and Titian that his indebtedness to Bellini appears to have been
comparatively slight. The beautiful _Portrait of a Poet_ in the National
Gallery has been attributed both to Giorgione and to Titian.
The number of pictures which are now permitted by the experts to be
called Giorgione's is so small, that we may learn more about him as an
influence on the work of other painters--especially Titian--than from
the meagre materials available for his own biography. The only
unquestioned examples of his work are three pictures at the Uffizi, _The
Trial of Moses_, _The Judgment of Solomon_, and _The Knight of Malta_;
the _Venus_ at Dresden; _The Three Philosophers_ at Vienna; and the
famous _Concert Champetre_ in the Louvre. But until the critics deprive
him even of these, we are able to agree that "his capital achievement
was the invention of the modern spirit of lyrical passion and romance in
pictorial art, and his magical charm has never been equalled."
II
TIZIANO VECELLIO
TITIAN occupies almost, if not quite, as important a place in the
history of painting as does Shakespeare in that of literature. His fame,
his popularity, the wide range as well as the immense quantity of his
works, entitle him to be ranked with our poet, if only for the
[Illustration: PLATE XIII.--GIORGIONE
VENETIAN PASTORAL
_Louvre, Paris_]
enormous influence they have both exercised on posterity: and without
carrying the parallel farther than the limits imposed by the difference
of their circumstances and their method of expression, it may fairly be
said that Titian, in painting, stands for us to-day much as Shakespeare
stands for in letters. "Titian," says M. Caro Delvaille,[2] "is the
father of modern painting. As the blood of the patriarchs of old infused
the veins of a whole race, so the genius of the most productive of
painters was destined to infuse those of artists through all the ages
even to the present day. He bequeathed, in his enormous _oeuvre_, a
heritage in which generations of painters have participated."
Not only was he the father of modern painting, but he was himself the
first modern painter, just as Shakespeare was, to all present intents
and purposes, the first modern writer. Among a thousand readers of
Shakespeare, there is possibly not more than one who has ever read a
line of Chaucer, or who has ever heard of any of his other predecessors.
So it is with Titian. To the connoisseur, Titian is one of the latest
painters; to the public he is the earliest. "In certain of his
portraits," we read in the National Gallery Catalogue, "he ranks with
the supreme masters; in certain other aspects he is seen as the greatest
academician, as perhaps he was the first."
As it happens, too, Titian stands in much the same relation to Giorgione
as Shakespeare did to Marlowe. Giorgione was really the great innovator,
and Giorgione died young, leaving Titian to carry on the work. It has
always been supposed that Titian and Giorgione, like Marlowe and
Shakespeare, were born within the same year; but in this respect the
parallel is no longer admissible, as Mr Herbert Cook has shown to the
verge of actual proof that the story of Titian being born in 1577, and
having lived to be ninety-nine years old, is unworthy of acceptance. If
this were merely a question of biography, it would not be worth dwelling
upon; but as it seriously affects the whole study of early Venetian
painting, it is necessary to point out that the probability, according
to a critical study of all the evidence available, is that Titian was
not born till 1488 or 1489, and was thus really the pupil rather than
the contemporary of Giorgione, and therefore more slightly influenced by
Giovanni Bellini than has been generally supposed.
Without going into all the evidence adduced by Mr Cook (_Reviews and
Appreciations,_ Heinemann, 1913) it is nevertheless pretty evident that
in the account given by his friend and contemporary, Lodovico Dolce,
published in 1557, we have the most authentic story of Titian's early
years, and from this it is quite clear that Titian was considerably
younger than Giorgione. "Being born at Cadore," he writes, "of
honourable parents, he was sent, when a child of nine years old, by his
father to Venice, to the house of his father's brother, in order that he
might be put under some proper master to study painting; his father
having perceived in him even at that tender age strong marks of genius
towards the art.... His uncle directly carried the child to the house of
Sebastanio, father of the _gentilissimo_ Valerio and of Francesco
Zuccati (distinguished masters of the art of mosaic, ...) to learn the
principles of the art. From them he was removed to Gentile Bellini,
brother of Giovanni, but much inferior to him, who at that time was at
work with his brother in the Grand Council Chamber. But Titian, impelled
by nature to greater excellence and perfection in his art, could not
endure following the dry and laboured manner of Gentile, but designed
with boldness and expedition. Whereupon Gentile told him he would make
no progress in painting because he diverged so much from the old style.
Thereupon Titian left the stupid Gentile and found means to attach
himself to Giovanni Bellini; but not perfectly pleased with his manner,
he chose Giorgio da Castel Franco. Titian, then, drawing and painting
with Giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished
in art that when Giorgione was painting (in 1507-8) the facade of the
Fondaco de'Tedeschi, or Exchange of the German merchants, which looks
towards the Grand Canal, Titian was allotted the other side which faces
the market place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old. Here he
represented a Judith of wonderful design and colour, so remarkable
indeed, that when the work came to be uncovered it was commonly thought
to be the work of Giorgione, and all the latter's friends congratulated
him (Giorgione) as being by far the best thing he had produced.
Whereupon Giorgione, in great displeasure, replied that the work was
from the hand of his pupil, who showed already how he could surpass his
master and (what is more) Giorgione shut himself up for some days at
home, as if in despair, seeing that a young (_i.e._ younger) man knew
more than he did."
Again, in speaking of the famous altar-piece--the _Assumption_, now in
the Academy at Venice--painted by Titian in 1516, Dolce mentions him
twice as "giovinetto." "Not long afterwards he was commissioned to paint
a large picture for the high altar of the Church of the Frate Minori,
where Titian, quite a young man, painted in oil the Virgin ascending to
Heaven.... This was the first public work which he painted in oil, and
he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man."
Vasari's account of Titian's early years is substantially the same, but
unfortunately opens with the statement that he was "born in the year
1480." This might easily have been a slip of the pen or a printer's
mistake for 1488 or 1489, and subsequent passages in the life bear out
this supposition. But partly because Titian was a Venetian and not a
Florentine, and partly, no doubt, because he was still alive, and had
been producing picture after picture for over sixty years at the time
Vasari published his second edition in 1568, the whole account is so
confused and inaccurate that its credit has been severely shaken by
modern critics, with the result that it is hardly nowadays considered
authentic in any respect. The following extracts, however, there seems
no reason to question:----
"About the year 1507, Giorgione not being satisfied [with the
old-fashioned methods of Bellini and others] began to give his works an
unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner."
And a little later "Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early
resolved to abandon that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded
therein. He now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a
short time so closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were
sometimes taken for those of this master, as will be related below.
Increasing in age, judgment and facility of hand, our young artist
executed numerous works in fresco.... At the time when he began to adopt
the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the
portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend, and
this was considered very beautiful, the colouring being true and
natural, the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted,
as might also the stitches in a satin doublet painted in the same work;
in a word, it was so well and carefully done that it would have been
taken for a work of Giorgione if Titian had not written his name on the
dark ground."
With this we may leave the question of Titian's birth date, and consider
the exceptional interest attaching to the question of this Barberigo
portrait. According to Mr. Cook, and also, under reserve, to several
other eminent authorities, it is no other than the so-called _Ariosto_,
which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1904. The chief
difficulties in deciding the question are, first, whether it is possible
that a youth of eighteen could have painted such a masterpiece, second,
that the signature _Titianus_ is supposed not to have been used by the
artist before about 1520, and lastly, that the head, at any rate, is
decidedly more in the manner of Giorgione than that of Titian. This
last, of course, did not trouble Vasari, and his testimony is therefore
all the more valuable; but all difficulties vanish if we accept Mr.
Cook's theory that the portrait was begun by Giorgione in 1508, was left
incomplete at his sudden death in 1510, and finished by Titian in 1520.
That is to say, the head and general design is that of Giorgione, the
marvellous finish of the sleeve and other parts that of Titian.
Of works left unfinished at a master's death and completed by a pupil
there are numerous instances; the famous _Bacchanal_ at Alnwick is one
which takes us a step further in Titian's career. This was begun by
Giovanni Bellini, and Titian was invited by the Duke of Ferrara, in
1516, to finish it. The landscape is entirely his. To complete the
decoration of the apartment in which the picture was hung, he was
called upon to paint two others of the same size, one the _Triumph of
Bacchus_, or as it is usually called _Bacchus and Ariadne_ (now in the
National Gallery) and the other a similar subject, the _Bacchanal_, now
in the Prado (No. 418, formerly 450).
Ridolfi, in his life of Titian characterises our picture as one to whose
unparalleled merits he is inadequate to do justice; "There is," he says,
"such a graceful expression in the figure of Ariadne, such beauty in the
children--so strongly marked both in the looks and attitudes is the
joyous character of the licentious votaries of Bacchus--the roundness
and correct drawing of the man entwined with snakes, the magnificence of
the sky and landscape, the sporting play of the leaves and branches of
the most vivid tints, and the detailed herbage on the ground tending to
enliven the scene, and the rich tone of colour throughout, form
altogether such a whole that hardly any other work of Titian can stand
in competition with it."
In the composition of the second picture, _The Bacchanal_ at Madrid, a
number of the votaries of Bacchus are assembled on the bank of a
rivulet, flowing with red wine from a hill in the distance; some of them
are distributing the liquor to their associates, while a nymph and two
men are dancing. The nymph is supposed to be a portrait of Violante,
Titan's mistress, as he has painted, in allusion to her name, a violet
on her breast and his own name round her arm. Her light drapery is
raised by the breeze, and discovers the beautiful form and _morbidezza_
of her limbs. In the foreground Ariadne lies asleep, her head resting on
a rich vase in place of a pillow.[3]
[Illustration: PLATE XIV.--TITIAN
PORTRAIT SAID TO BE OF ARIOSTO
_National Gallery, London_]
Cumberland says that Raphael Mengs, who lived long at Madrid at the time
when this picture was in the reception room of the New Palace, was of
opinion that Titian's superior taste was nowhere more strikingly
displayed, and remarks that he himself could never pass by it without
surprise and admiration, more particularly excited by the beauty of the
sleeping Ariadne in the foreground.
Respecting the merits of both pictures the testimony of Agostino
Carracci should not be omitted; when he viewed them in the possession of
the Duke of Ferrara he declared that he considered them the first in the
world, and that no one could say he was acquainted with the most
marvellous works of art without having seen them.
Commenting upon another picture of Titian's early period, Sir Joshua
Reynolds delivers himself of the following criticisms on Titian as
compared with Raphael, "It is to Titian that we must turn," he says, "to
find excellence in regard to colour, and light and shade in the highest
degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art; by a
few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of
whatever object he attempted, and produced by this alone a truer
representation of nature than his master, Giovanni Bellini, or any of
his predecessors, who finished every hair. His greatest object was to
express the general colour, to preserve the masses of light and shade,
and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable
from natural objects....
"Raphael and Titian seemed to have looked at nature for different
purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole,
but one looked only at the general effect as produced by form, the
other as produced by colour. We cannot refuse Titian the merit of
attending to the general form of the object, as well as colour; but his
deficiency lay--a deficiency at least when he is compared with
Raphael--in not possessing the power, like him, of correcting the form
of his model by any general idea of beauty in his own mind. Of this his
_St. Sebastian with other Saints_ (in the Vatican) is a particular
instance. This figure appears to be a most exact representation both of
the form and colour of the model which he then happened to have before
him, and has all the force of nature, and the colouring of flesh itself;
but unluckily the model was of a bad form, especially the legs. Titian
has with much care preserved these defects, as he has imitated the
beauty and brilliancy of the colouring...."
Of the Sebastian, Vasari says very much the same as Reynolds. "He is
nude," he writes, "and has been exactly copied from the life without the
slightest admixture of art, no efforts for the sake of beauty have been
sought in any part--trunk or limbs; all is as nature left it, so that it
might seem to be a sort of cast from the life. It is nevertheless
considered very fine, and the figure of our Lady with the infant in her
arms, whom all the other figures are looking at, is also accounted most
beautiful."
Two more of the pictures of Titian's earliest period are in the National
Gallery--the _Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen_ (No. 270), and the
_Holy Family_ (No. 4). The former is ascribed to about the year 1514,
partly on the ground that the group of buildings in the landscape is
identical, line for line, with that in the Dresden _Venus_ painted by
Giorgione but completed by Titian after his death. The same landscape
also occurs in the beautiful little _Cupid_ in the Vienna
[Illustration: PLATE XV.--TITIAN
THE HOLY FAMILY
_National Gallery, London_]
Academy, and, as Mr Herbert Cook suggests, possibly represents some
cherished spot in Titian's memory connected with his mountain home at
Pieve di Cadore.
The _Holy Family_, above mentioned, is a most charming example of the
_sacra conversazione_ as developed by Titian from the somewhat formal
and austere conception of Bellini and his contemporaries into something
eminently characteristic of the secular side of his genius. The very
titles of two of his most beautiful and most famous pictures of this
sort proclaim the hold they have taken on the popular mind. The one is
the _Madonna of the Cherries_, in the Vienna Gallery. The other is the
_Madonna with the Rabbit_, in the Louvre. In our picture the
distinguishing feature is the kneeling shepherd, with his little
water-cask slung on his belt, who puts us at once in touch with the
whole scene by the simple appeal to our common human experience. Raphael
could move our religious feelings to revere the godhead in the child,
but could seldom, like Titian, stir our human emotions and bring home to
us that Christ was born on earth for our sakes.
If this particular characteristic of Titian were confined to the
pastoral setting of these Holy Conversations, it might be taken as
merely accidental, and without further significance than should be
accorded to a youthful fancy. But in the wonderful _Entombment_, now in
the Louvre, in which he displays "the full splendour of his early
maturity," the human element is such an important factor in the
presentment of the divine tragedy that even a painter, M.
Caro-Delvaille, must postpone his description of the picture to
sentences like these:--"Sur un ciel tourmente," he writes, in phrases
which it is impossible to render adequately in English, "se profile le
groupe tragique. Aucun geste superflu; le drame est interieur. La
Douleur plane dans l'air alourdi du crepuscule, comme une aile
fatale--Jesus est mort! Le grand cadavre livide, que les apotres
angoisses soutiennent, n'a rien dans sa robustesse inerte de la
depouille emaciee des Christs mystiques. Le fils de Dieu semble un
patriarche douloureusement frappe par le decret d'en haut.
"Une aprete primitive, ou les larmes se cachent comme une faiblesse,
communique a l'oeuvre un pathetique si poignant que le mystere de la
mort s'etend jusqu'a nous.
"La Vierge et la Madeleine sont la. Elle, la Mere, doute de la realite,
tant elle souffre! Son regard fixe sur le corps cheri, elle ne peut
croire que tout est consomme. La pecheresse pitoyable la prend dans ses
bras pour essayer de l'arracher a l'horreur de cette vision.
"Drame humain et divin! ne sont-ce point des fils qui ramenent le
cadavre de leur pere a la poussiere? Tous ceux qui passerent par ces
epreuves se souviennent de ce deuil qui semble se prolonger dans la
nature entiere."
Titian's first period may be said to end in 1530, by which time he had
completed the famous _Peter Martyr_, which was destroyed by fire in
1867. In 1530, too, Titian's wife died. This event of itself need not be
supposed to have greatly influenced his career, as there is no evidence
of her having appealed to his artistic nature as did his daughter
Lavinia. As it happened, however, a more certain influence was nearly
coincident with this event--the arrival in Venice of the notorious
Aretine, who, chiefly as it appears, with an eye to business, entered
into the most intimate relations with Titian. The accession of the
sculptor
[Illustration: PLATE XVI.--TITIAN
THE ENTOMBMENT
_Louvre, Paris_]
Sansovino to the comradeship earned for the group the name of the
Triumvirate.
So far from Titian being corrupted by the society of Aretine, there is
direct evidence in one of the poet's letters to him that he was not.
"You must come to our feast to-night," he writes, "but I may as well
warn you that you had better leave early, as I know how particular you
are about certain things." Nor is there anything in the artist's works
of this next period--which we may roughly date from 1530 to 1550, that
betrays a more serious devotion to the sensual side of life than can be
accounted for by the demands of the high and mighty patrons that Aretine
was soon to find for him. As an artist he looked upon woman as a
beautiful creature, as a man he most probably never troubled about her,
or was troubled by her. There is no proof that any of his pictures are
rightly called "Titian's mistress," and we may conclude that he was as
good a husband and a father as was Rubens, who revelled in painting
woman, or Velasquez, who seems to have frankly disliked it. Like
Rowlandson, whom the general public only know as a caricaturist, but who
when he once got away from London was the most pure minded and poetical
artist, so Titian, when once dissociated from the demands of corrupt
patrons, like Philip II., never reveals himself as having fallen under
the influence of Aretine--if indeed at all. The _Danae_ and the _Venus
and a Musician_ at the Prado are the only examples it is possible to
cite--unless it be the _Venus_, to which popular opinion would hardly
deny its place of honour in the Tribune at the Uffizi.
At the same time the difference in circumstances, the fuller, richer
life that he must have led in these years of patronage and prosperity,
accounts for a certain "shallowness and complacency" which
distinguishes his work during this period as sharply from that which
preceded as from that which followed it; and fine as is his
accomplishment during these years, especially in portraiture, it
includes fewer of those masterpieces which appeal to the heart as much
as to the eye.
To 1538 belongs the large and beautiful picture of the _Presentation of
the Virgin Mary in the Temple_, painted for the Scuola della Carita in
Venice, which is now occupied by the Academy, where it still hangs, as
is said, in its original place. It is twenty-two feet in length, and
contains several portraits, among which are those of his daughter
Lavinia (the Virgin, as is supposed), Andrea Franchescini, grand
chancellor of Venice, in a scarlet robe; next him, in black, Lazzaro
Crasso, a lawyer, and certain monks of the convent following them.