Giorgione Part 12

P. 288. Pontormo at 65 (he died actually in his 63rd year).

P. 564. Giovanni da Udine at 70 (really 77).

A still more glaring instance is to be found when Vasari not only makes misstatements about his own life but is actually out by several years in giving his own age. One and the same event--viz. his journey with Cardinal Pa.s.serini to Florence--is given in his own autobiography to the year 1524, in the "Life of Salviati," to the year 1523, and in the "Life of Michael Angelo" to 1525. When he speaks of himself in the same pa.s.sage in the "Life of Salviati" as the "putto, che allora non aveva piu di nove anni," he is making a mistake of at least three years in his own age. And not less delightful is it to read in the "Life of Giovanni da Udine": "Giorgio Vasari, giovinetto di diciotto anni, quando serviva il duca Alessandro de' Medici suo primo signore l'anno 1535." We are obviously not dealing with Messer Giorgio's strongest point, for, as a matter of fact, he was at that time twenty-four years of age! The same false statement of age is found again in his own biography (vii. p. 656, with the variation, "poco piu di diciotto anni").

But I think these instances suffice to prove how little one dare build on such a.s.sertions of Vasari. Who dare say if t.i.tian was really only seventy-six in 1566 when the Aretine visited him?

And now a few remarks on the other points raised by Mr. Cook. As a fact, it is an astonis.h.i.+ng thing that we have no doc.u.mentary evidence about t.i.tian before 1511; but does he not share this fate with very many of his great countrymen, with Bellini, Giorgione, Sebastiano, and others? An unfriendly chance has left us entirely in the dark as to the early years of nearly all the great Venetian painters. That Durer makes no mention of t.i.tian's name in his letters gives no cause for surprise, for even the most celebrated of the younger artists, Giorgione, is not alluded to, and of all those with Bellini, whose fame outshone even then that of all others, only Barbari is mentioned. That t.i.tian's name does not occur in the doc.u.ments about the Fondaco frescoes may be due to the fact that Giorgione alone was commissioned to undertake the frescoes for the magistrates, and that the latter painter in his turn brought his a.s.sociate t.i.tian into the work.

Mr. Cook says that t.i.tian still signed himself in 1511 "Dipintore"

instead of "Maestro." I am not aware whether in this respect definite regulations or customs were usual in Venice.[166] At any rate, the painter is still described in official doc.u.ments as late as 1518 as "ser Tizian depentor" (Lorenzi, "Monumenti," No. 366), when, even according to Mr. Cook's theory, he must have been thirty years old; and he is actually so called in 1528 (_ibid_. No. 403), after appearing in several intermediate doc.u.ments as "maestro" (Nos. 373, 377). If this argument, however, proves unsound, the last point--viz. that the well-known pet.i.tion to the senate in 1513 reads more like that of a man of twenty-four than one of thirty-seven--must be left to the hypothesis of individual conjecture.

Must we really close these very long inquiries by confessing they are beyond our ken? It almost seems so. For, with regard to the testimony afforded by family doc.u.ments, Dr. Jacobi (whose labours were utilised by Crowe and Cavalcaselle) so conscientiously examined all that is left, that a discovery in this direction is not to be looked for. Is the statement of Tizianello that t.i.tian's year of birth was 1477 to be rejected without further question when we remember that, as a relative of the painter, he could have had in 1622 access to doc.u.ments possibly since lost?

Under these circ.u.mstances the only thing left to do is to question the works of t.i.tian. Of these, two can be dated, not indeed with certainty, but with some degree of probability: the dedicatory painting of the Bishop of Pesaro with the portrait of Alexander VI. of 1502-03, and the picture of St. Mark, already mentioned, of the year 1504. Both are, to judge by the style, clearly early works, and both can be connected with definite historical events of the years just mentioned. That these paintings, however, could be the work of a fourteen- to fifteen-year-old artist Mr. Cook will also admit to be impossible.

Much, far too much, in the story of Venetian painting must, for want of definite information, be left to conjecture; and however unsatisfactory it is, we must make the confession that we know as little about the date of the birth of the greatest of the Venetians as we know of Giorgione's, Sebastiano's, Palma's, and the rest. But supposing all of a sudden information turned up giving us the exact date of t.i.tian's birth, would the picture of the development of Venetian painting be any the different for it? In no wise. The relation to one another of the individual artists of the younger generation is so clearly to be read in each man's work, that no external particulars, however interesting they might be on other grounds, could make the smallest difference. t.i.tian's relations with Giorgione especially could not be otherwise represented than has been long determined, and that whether t.i.tian was born in 1476, 1477, 1480, or even two or three years later.[167] GEORG GRONAU.

WHEN WAS t.i.tIAN BORN?

_Reply to Dr. Gronau. Reprinted from "Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft," vol. xxv., parts 1 and 2_

I must thank Dr. Georg Gronau for his very fair reply, published in these pages[168] (to my article in the _Nineteenth Century_ on the subject of t.i.tian's age[169]). He has also most kindly pointed out two pieces of contemporary evidence which had escaped my notice, and although neither of these pa.s.sages is conclusive proof one way or the other, they deserve to be reckoned with in arriving at a decision.

Dr. Gronau formulates the evidence shortly thus:

Vasari in 1566 or 1567 says t.i.tian is over 76 The Spanish Consul in 1567 " " 85 t.i.tian himself in 1571 " he is " 95

and he adds that this new piece of evidence--viz. the letter of the Spanish Consul to King Philip--instead of helping us, only makes the confusion worse.

What then are we to think when yet another--a fourth--contemporary statement turns up, differing from any of the three just quoted? Yet such a letter exists, and I am happy in my turn to point out this fresh piece of evidence, in the hope that instead of making the confusion worse, it will help us to arrive at some decision.

On October the 15th, 1564, Garcia Hernandez, Envoy in Venice from King Philip II., writes to the King his master that t.i.tian begged that His Majesty would condescend to order that he should be paid what was due to him from the court and from Milan.... For the rest the painter was in fine condition, and quite capable of work, and this was the time, if ever, to get "other things" from him, as according to some people who knew him, t.i.tian was about ninety years old, though he did not show it, and for money everything was to be had of him.[170]

In 1564 then the Spanish Envoy writes that t.i.tian was said to be about ninety. Let us then enlarge Dr. Gronau's table by this additional statement, and further complete it by including the earliest piece of evidence, the statement of Dolce in 1557 that t.i.tian was scarcely twenty when he worked at the Fondaco de' Tedeschi frescoes (1507-8). The year of t.i.tian's birth thus works out:

Writing in 1557, Dolce makes out t.i.tian was born about 1489 " " 1566-7, Vasari " " " 1489 " " 1564, Spanish Envoy " " 1474 " " 1567, Spanish Consul " " 1482 " " 1571, t.i.tian himself " " 1476

Now it is curious to notice that the last three statements are all made in letters to King Philip, either by t.i.tian himself, or at his request by the Spanish agents.

It is curious to notice these statements as to t.i.tian's great age occur in begging letters.[171]

It is curious to notice they are mutually contradictory.

What are we to conclude?

Surely that the Spanish Envoy, the Spanish Consul, and t.i.tian himself, out of their own mouths stand convicted of inconsistency of statement, and further that they betray an identical motive underlying each representation--viz. an appeal _ad misericordiam._

Before, however, contrasting the value of the evidence as found in these Spanish letters with the evidence as found in Dolce and Vasari, let us note two points in these letters.

Garcia Hernandez, the Spanish Envoy, writes: "According to some people who knew him, t.i.tian was about ninety years old, though he did not show it." Now, if t.i.tian was really about ninety in the year 1564, he will have lived to the age of one hundred and two, a feat of longevity of which no one has ever accused him! Apart, therefore, from the healthy scepticism which Hernandez betrays in this letter, we may certainly conclude that "some people who knew him" were exaggerating t.i.tian's age.

Secondly, t.i.tian's letter of 1571 says he is ninety-five years old.

t.i.tian's similar letter of 1576, the year of his death, omits to say he is one hundred. Surely a strange omission, considering that he refers to his old age three times in this one letter.[172] Does not the second letter correct the inexactness of the first? and so t.i.tian's statement goes for nothing?

The collective evidence, then, of these Spanish letters amounts to this, that, in the words of the Envoy, "for money everything was to be had of t.i.tian," and accordingly any statement as to his great age when thus made for effect must be treated with the greatest suspicion.

But is the evidence of Dolce and Vasari any more trustworthy? Dr. Gronau is at pains to show that both these writers often made mistakes in their dates, a fact which no one can dispute. Their very incorrectness is the more reason however for trusting them in this instance, for they happen to agree about the date of t.i.tian's birth; and, although neither of them expressly gives the year 1489, they indicate separate and independent events in his life, the one, Dolce, at the beginning, the other, Vasari, at the end, which when looked into give the same result.

Moreover, be Dolce ever so anxious to cry up his hero t.i.tian, and make him out to have been precocious, and be Vasari ever so inexact in his chronology, we must remember that, when both of them wrote, the presumption of unusual longevity had not arisen, and that their evidence therefore is less likely to be prejudiced in this respect than the evidence given in obituary notices, such as occurs in Borghini's _Riposo_ of 1584, and in the later writers like Tizianello and Ridolfi.

That Borghini therefore says t.i.tian was ninety-eight or ninety-nine when he died, and that Tizianello and Ridolfi, thirty-eight and sixty-four years later respectively, put him down at ninety-nine, is by no means proof that such was the case. It would seem that there had been some speculation before and after t.i.tian's death as to his exact age; that no one quite knew for certain; and that t.i.tian with the credulousness of old age had come to regard himself as well-nigh a centenarian. Be this as it may, I still hold that the evidence of Dolce and Vasari that t.i.tian's birth occurred in 1489 is more trustworthy than either the evidence found in the three Spanish letters, or the evidence as given in the obituary notices of Borghini and others.

One word more. If t.i.tian was born in 1489, instead of 1476-7, it does make a great difference in the story of his own career; and, what is more, the history of Venetian art in the early sixteenth century, as it centres round Giorgione, Palma, and t.i.tian, will have to be carefully reconsidered.

HERBERT COOK.

NOTES:

[148] The picture now hangs in the Academia at Venice.

[149] e.g. the "Sacred and Profane Love" (so-called) in the Borghese Gallery; the "S. Mark" of the Salute; the "Concert" in the Pitti; the "Tribute Money" at Dresden; the "Madonna of the Cherries" at Vienna, etc., which one or other of his biographers a.s.sign to the years 1500-1510.

[150] _The Life and Times of t.i.tian_, 2 vols., 1881.

[151] _The Earlier and Later Work of t.i.tian. Portfolio_, October 1897 and July 1898.

[152] _Tizian_. Berlin, 1901.

[153] _La Vie et l'Oeuvre de t.i.tien_: Paris, 1886.

[154] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle: _t.i.tian_, i. 85. The fact that t.i.tian's name does not occur in these records is curious and suggestive.

[155] Ed. _Sansoni_, p. 459. The translation is that of Blashfield and Hopkins. Bell, 1897.

[156] _Ibid_. p. 425.

[157] _Ibid_. p. 428.

[158] The translation is that of Crowe and Cavalcaselle. _t.i.tian_, ii.

391. The original is given by them at p. 538.

[159] Quoted from Crowe and Cavalcaselle.

[160] Crowe and Cavalcaselle. _t.i.tian_, ii. 409.

[161] There is a collection of these in a volume in the British Museum.