Six Centuries of Painting Part 6

_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 circ.u.mstances and their method of expression, it may fairly be said that t.i.tian, in painting, stands for us to-day much as Shakespeare stands for in letters. "t.i.tian," 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 partic.i.p.ated."

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 t.i.tian. To the connoisseur, t.i.tian 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, t.i.tian stands in much the same relation to Giorgione as Shakespeare did to Marlowe. Giorgione was really the great innovator, and Giorgione died young, leaving t.i.tian to carry on the work. It has always been supposed that t.i.tian 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 t.i.tian 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 t.i.tian 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 t.i.tian's early years, and from this it is quite clear that t.i.tian 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 t.i.tian, 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 t.i.tian 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. t.i.tian, 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 Ca.n.a.l, t.i.tian 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 surpa.s.s 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 _a.s.sumption_, now in the Academy at Venice--painted by t.i.tian 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 t.i.tian, 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 t.i.tian'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 pa.s.sages in the life bear out this supposition. But partly because t.i.tian 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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, t.i.tian 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 st.i.tches 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 t.i.tian had not written his name on the dark ground."

With this we may leave the question of t.i.tian'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 _t.i.tia.n.u.s_ 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 t.i.tian. 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 t.i.tian 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 t.i.tian.

Of works left unfinished at a master's death and completed by a pupil there are numerous instances; the famous _Baccha.n.a.l_ at Alnwick is one which takes us a step further in t.i.tian's career. This was begun by Giovanni Bellini, and t.i.tian 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 _Baccha.n.a.l_, now in the Prado (No. 418, formerly 450).

Ridolfi, in his life of t.i.tian 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 att.i.tudes 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 t.i.tian can stand in compet.i.tion with it."

In the composition of the second picture, _The Baccha.n.a.l_ at Madrid, a number of the votaries of Bacchus are a.s.sembled 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 a.s.sociates, while a nymph and two men are dancing. The nymph is supposed to be a portrait of Violante, t.i.tan'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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XIV.--t.i.tIAN

PORTRAIT SAID TO BE OF ARIOSTO

_National Gallery, London_]

c.u.mberland 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 t.i.tian's superior taste was nowhere more strikingly displayed, and remarks that he himself could never pa.s.s 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 t.i.tian's early period, Sir Joshua Reynolds delivers himself of the following criticisms on t.i.tian as compared with Raphael, "It is to t.i.tian 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 ma.s.ses of light and shade, and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable from natural objects....

"Raphael and t.i.tian 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 t.i.tian 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. t.i.tian 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 t.i.tian'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 t.i.tian after his death. The same landscape also occurs in the beautiful little _Cupid_ in the Vienna

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XV.--t.i.tIAN

THE HOLY FAMILY

_National Gallery, London_]

Academy, and, as Mr Herbert Cook suggests, possibly represents some cherished spot in t.i.tian'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 t.i.tian 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 t.i.tles 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.dhead in the child, but could seldom, like t.i.tian, stir our human emotions and bring home to us that Christ was born on earth for our sakes.

If this particular characteristic of t.i.tian 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 douloureus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.serent par ces epreuves se souviennent de ce deuil qui semble se prolonger dans la nature entiere."

t.i.tian'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, t.i.tian'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 t.i.tian. The accession of the sculptor

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XVI.--t.i.tIAN

THE ENTOMBMENT

_Louvre, Paris_]

Sansovino to the comrades.h.i.+p earned for the group the name of the Triumvirate.

So far from t.i.tian 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 "t.i.tian'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 t.i.tian, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Cra.s.so, a lawyer, and certain monks of the convent following them.

We now find t.i.tian employed by the Duke of Urbino on some of the princ.i.p.al works of this period. Among these were the Uffizi _Venus_, said to be a portrait of the d.u.c.h.ess herself. The _Girl in a Fur Mantle_ at Vienna, portraits of the Duke and of the d.u.c.h.ess (1537), and the so-called _La Bella_ at the Uffizi. The so-called _Duke of Norfolk_ at the Pitti, supposed to represent the young Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino.

Also the _Isabella d'Este_ at Vienna, and somewhat earlier, the _Cardinal Ippolito_ in Hungarian dress, at the Pitti; and the _Daughter of Robert Strozzi_, at Berlin.

The large _Ecce h.o.m.o_ in the Vienna Gallery, dated 1543, measuring 11 ft. 3 in. by 7 ft. 7 in. was for some years in London, and with better fortune might still be in this country if not in our national collection. It was one of the nineteen pictures by t.i.tian in the wonderful collection of Rubens, which the Duke of Buckingham persuaded him to sell to him for a fabulous price. The collection was s.h.i.+pped to England in 1625, when the pictures were taken to York House in the Strand, and the statues and gems to Chelsea. In 1649 a portion of the collection was sold at Brussels, and the _Ecce h.o.m.o_ was purchased there by the Archduke Leopold for his gallery at Prague, which now forms part of that at Vienna. The Earl of Arundel offered the Duke of Buckingham 7000 for it--an unheard of price, especially when we remember the greater value of money at that time.

With another masterpiece--fortunately still preserved in the Prado, though not entirely uninjured by fire--we may close the second period.

This is the magnificent equestrian portrait of _The Emperor Charles V._ which was painted at Augsburg in 1548. A few years later the Emperor abdicated in favour of his egregious son, Philip II., of whom t.i.tian painted three portraits in succession. The second of these, now in the Prado, has an especial interest for us, inasmuch as it was painted for the benefit or the enticement of Queen Mary before her marriage to Philip. As might be expected, it is a highly flattering likeness,--in white and gold, in half armour. To quote M. Caro-Delvaille, this king of _auto da fes_ and sunken galleys is here nothing more than a gallant cavalier--neurasthenic but elegant. For England was also painted the _Venus and Adonis_, in 1554; but unfortunately the original is now in Madrid, and only a copy in our National Gallery. However, the remains of Philip are there too, and not in Westminster Abbey!

A copy of another famous picture painted by t.i.tian for the Emperor Charles V. was also in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham, who probably brought it with him when he returned from his madcap expedition with Prince Charles to Madrid. It is described in his catalogue as "One great Piece of the Emperor Charles, a copy called t.i.tian's Glory, being the princ.i.p.al in Spain, now in the Escurial." This was the great _Paradise_, or Apotheosis of Charles V. which Charles took with him into Spain at the time of his abdication and placed in the monastery of St.

Juste, in Estramadura, to which he retired. After his death it was removed by Philip II. to Madrid.

Of the two versions of _The Crowning with Thorns_, the earlier one at the Louvre, painted in 1560, is more familiar to, and probably more popular with, the general public than the much later one at Munich painted in 1571. But for the real merits of the two we need not hesitate to accept M. Caro-Delvaille's judgment, since if he had any bias it would be in favour of his own country's treasure. The former he characterises as an incoherent composition, in which useless gesticulation diminishes the dramatic effect, while striving to force it; and adds that all the false romanticism of painting comes from this sort of theatrical pathos. Of the other he writes "It was the picture at the Louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced blows that never hit anything. But here at Munich a mystery so profound broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. The scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. The great artist with a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it, to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. The veil of death descends and spreads over life.... t.i.tian might seem to have painted it as an offering to Rembrandt when he, too, should feel the approach of death."

Another of his latest pictures, the _Adam and Eve in Paradise_, is in the Prado (No. 429, formerly 456). This was copied, or one might almost say travestied, by Rubens when he was at Madrid in 1629, and his work was hung in the same room with it. As the colouring is of a lower tone than is usual with t.i.tian, and the att.i.tudes of the figures extremely simple and natural, the contrast is all the more marked, and was well expressed by c.u.mberland, who said that "when we contemplate t.i.tian's picture of Adam and Eve we are convinced they never wore clothes; turn to the copy, and the same persons seem to have laid theirs aside."