TIZIANO, VECELLIO

TITIAN (TIZIANO VECELLIO). — Painter, born in Pieve di Cadore, probably around 1488-90, died in Venice on 27 August 1576.

Son of Gregorio and Lucia, brother of Francesco, father of Orazio. One of the greatest artists of all time. His birth year was long considered to be 1477, which would have made Titian nearly a centenarian. But it is highly probable that Titian was younger than he, or others for him, wished to make him appear (the question is not without importance, since it makes a great difference whether one imagines Titian painting the Assumption at 40 or at 30 — Dolce even says that he painted it in his youth — in the development of Venetian painting). At the age of nine — and this account is quite credible — his father would have sent him to Venice to study art under the musician Sebastiano Zaccato. From there he would have moved on to the workshops of Gentile and then Giovanni Bellini. But then, drawn to the art of Giorgione, he placed himself under his guidance, and when Giorgione frescoed in 1508 the façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi overlooking the Grand Canal, Titian was entrusted by him with painting the side facing the Mercerie (frescoes now lost, and only partially preserved in the engravings by Zanetti, 1760). Giorgione was then just over thirty and already famous; Titian was at his side.

TITIAN — Madonna and Child with Saints (photo Anderson) Madrid, Prado Gallery.

By 1511 he is found working independently in Padua, at the Scuola del Santo, where he frescoed three Stories of St Anthony, still extant. After Giorgione’s death from plague in 1511, Titian took it upon himself to complete some of the Master’s unfinished canvases.

In 1513 he offered his services to the Republic of Venice, declaring that he had refused foreign offers, and stated his readiness to paint for the Sala del Gran Consiglio the Battle of Cadore. At the same time he requested the same concessions for the “senseria” of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, under the same conditions already granted to Giambellino. After some hesitation, the Council of Ten granted him the requested “senseria” and a painter’s studio at S. Samuel. In return, Titian undertook to paint every ruling Doge in life size. Finally, in 1516, he was also commissioned for the Battle (portraits and Battle destroyed in the fire of 1577). From 1516 he was in contact with the Court of Ferrara for the Bacchanal paintings destined for the camerini of Alfonso I d’Este; but it was not until 1523 that Titian completed the canvas of Bacchus and Ariadne. In that same year he began his relations with the Court of Mantua. In 1530 his wife Cecilia died; they had lived together freely since 1525 and had three children: Pomponio, who became a priest; Orazio, a painter; and Lavinia. In 1530 he met Charles V in Bologna and painted his portrait; from that day began his relations with the Habsburgs, which were to have such weight in Titian’s life and fortune. In September 1531 he left the workshop at S. Samuel and took a house at “Birri,” in the northern part of the city, with a view over the lagoon and the surrounding mountains; he would live there until his death. In 1533 Charles V appointed him court painter, count palatine, knight of the Golden Spur, and with a noble title transmissible to his sons (in 1541 he was granted an annual pension of 100 scudi, increased to 200 in 1548).

In the autumn of 1542 his relations with the Farnese began; and in April of the following year Titian painted the Portrait of Pope Paul III Farnese (who was staying in Bologna, Ferrara and Busseto). By July he was already back in Venice. In 1545 Titian went to Rome, stopping in Ferrara and Pesaro, where he was received by Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino. Arriving on 15 October, he was accorded great honours both by Cardinal Bembo and by the Pope himself and lodged in the Belvedere. Vasari acted as his guide, he met Michelangelo, and was made an honorary citizen. He remained there until the spring of 1546. On his return he stopped in Florence, as a guest of Cosimo de’ Medici at Poggio a Caiano. Already at the beginning of 1548 he went to Augsburg at the invitation of Charles V, and stayed until October. In 1550 he was summoned again and remained there until the summer of 1551. During these two sojourns in Germany, Titian painted the portraits of Charles V, Philip II and the leading personalities who gathered there; from then on his paintings began to be sent to the Spanish court (as well as his repeated and pressing requests for payment, which earned him the reputation of being greedy and avaricious).

At “Birri,” Titian lived like a grand seigneur, surrounded by friends, among whom, first and foremost, were Aretino and Sansovino (who had settled in Venice since 1527). But it was also a life of strenuous, constant work, aimed at ever greater heights. Perhaps no artist in his lifetime received more honours than he; and history has confirmed them.

The early years of Titian are not yet fully clarified. It must be considered certain that from his long years of youthful observation of the mosaics he was strongly impressed by Zaccato, impressions that may well have formed the germ of his intense colouristic sensitivity and his painting “alla macchia.”

Of little consequence was his study with Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, so different was Titian’s style from theirs. And this style (that is, this new way of painting) took its cue from Giorgione, his master. Dolce, in his Dialogue of 1557, reports that Giorgione would say of Titian: “he was a painter in his mother’s womb”; a clear allusion to the artist’s precocity, who, not yet twenty, was frescoing alongside him on one side of the Fondaco. Certainly Titian’s early works were Giorgionesque, imbued with intense lyricism. Such are the Louvre’s Concert champêtre, mistakenly attributed to Giorgione, the Noli me tangere of the National Gallery in London, the Legend of Orpheus in the Carrara Gallery in Bergamo, the Madonna with Saints Roch and Anthony in the Prado, the Adulteress in the Glasgow Museum, and finally Sacred and Profane Love in the Borghese Gallery — all works datable to around 1508-12; to these must be added another masterpiece, the famous Dresden Sleeping Venus, which belongs to Titian and not to Giorgione, as was long believed. The canvas with Jacopo Pesaro and Pope Alexander before St Mark, in the Antwerp Museum, also dates from around 1510-15.

To this early period also belong the altarpiece in the sacristy of the Salute with St Mark enthroned and four saints, the Gypsy Girl in the Vienna Museum, the Three Ages in the Bridgwater Gallery in London, the Sacred Conversation in the Balbi Gallery in Genoa, and the famous Concert in the Pitti Palace (also mistakenly attributed to Giorgione), to name the most important. Among his portraits from these years, one should recall the Knight of Malta in the Uffizi, the so-called Ariosto in the National Gallery; the so-called Parma in Vienna, and the most beautiful female figures — also somewhat idealized portraits — such as Flora in the Uffizi, Salome in the Doria Gallery in Rome, Lucretia in Vienna, and the so-called Laura Dianti in the Louvre: all works full of dreamy sweetness, with light touch, but of intense fiery colour, rich in glazes. The lyrical element is predominant, although in some frescoes of the Scuola del Santo and in some passages of the Adulteress and elsewhere, a powerfully effective dramatic expression is already evident. And if one recalls other early masterpieces by Titian, such as the Christ of the Coin in Dresden, the Annunciation in the cathedral of Treviso, or finally the exquisite Baptism of Christ in the Capitoline Gallery in Rome, one will have a revealing vision of the artist’s creative power up to about his thirtieth year.

With the Assumption of the Frari, Titian’s period of maturity begins, fervent with great creations and profoundly innovative. As Dolce relates, when the altarpiece was unveiled to the public in 1519, it was not understood, so different was it from “the dead and cold things of the Bellinis, the Vivarinis,” etc.; yet soon people began to marvel at the new manner that Titian had discovered in Venice. This new manner consisted in a monumental grandeur of conception, in the expressive vivacity of the figures, in the bold movement of the composition; but above all

in the way he used colour, no longer superimposed upon the drawing but itself creating form through a new technique of fat, patch-like application, alive with vibrant resonance. Thus, from the seed of Giorgione (whom Dolce calls “that faint spark which Titian had discovered in Giorgione’s work”) was born the idea of modern painting.

The Assumption was followed by a series of masterpieces, each marking a new stage in the history of Venetian painting: the altarpiece showing the Madonna appearing to SS. Francis and Blaise, executed in 1520 for the church of S. Francesco in Ancona; the Pesaro Madonna in the Frari, commissioned in 1519 and unveiled in 1526; the polyptych of the Resurrection, painted for Bishop Altobello Averoldo and installed in 1522 in the church of SS. Nazaro and Celso in Brescia, a work that revealed new luministic concepts; and the large panel of the Madonna of S. Niccolò, formerly in the Frari church but now in the Vatican. In 1528 Titian won the competition (in which Palma and Pordenone also took part) for the altarpiece of the Martyrdom of St Peter in SS. Giovanni e Paolo, a work installed on the altar in 1530 that won universal admiration before being destroyed by fire in 1867. Meanwhile, between about 1520 and 1523, Titian painted for the court of Ferrara three sublime pagan subjects: The Feast of Venus, The Bacchanal and Bacchus and Ariadne; the first two are now in the Prado, the third in the National Gallery, London.

An astonishing number of portraits of the most important figures of his time issued from Titian’s brush: from that of Duke Alfonso d’Este, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, to that of Duke Federico Gonzaga in the Prado; from the portraits of Francesco Maria della Rovere and his wife Eleonora Gonzaga, Duke and Duchess of Urbino, in the Uffizi, to those of the Marquis Davalos (Paris) and Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici in magian costume at the Pitti Palace; and so on, down to the more complex likenesses of Charles V and Philip II, which inaugurated a new era in portraiture. The artist portrayed his sitters with extreme simplicity, without external poses or contrived settings; his figures appear with great naturalness, in an atmosphere of austerity that lends them a lofty human ethos. Even his colours, especially in male portraits, are restrained, balanced in warm harmonies. When Titian wished to convey, along with the sitter, the environment that surrounded him, he achieved his aim without declamatory gestures, with a nobility of accents that few in the history of painting can match: the portrait of Duke Alfonso d’Avalos haranguing his troops (Prado), that of Bishop Madruzzo (once in Trent), and those of Charles V on horseback and Philip II in armour (both in the Prado) remain unsurpassable examples, not only of stupendous pictorial power but of profound psychology. They represent not merely physical persons but the very idea incarnate within them.

Titian’s pictorial activity never ceased. Great public paintings followed one another in quick succession. After the aforementioned altarpiece of St Peter the Martyr (1530), he supplied for the Ducal Palace the much-requested Battle of Cadore, likewise destroyed by fire and of which only an engraving survives; yet this suffices to show how it set a new, dramatic and vivid model for future battle painting. He painted the Annunciation for the church of S. Rocco; the Presentation in the Temple and St John, both now in the Accademia, Venice, and the three canvases with Sacrifice of Abraham, David and Goliath, Cain and Abel, now on the ceiling of the sacristy of the Salute. He provided the Assumption for the cathedral of Verona, the Crowning with Thorns for the church of the Grazie in Milan (now in the Louvre), the Supper and the Resurrection for the Ducal Palace of Urbino, and the series of Roman Emperors for the Ducal Palace of Mantua. He continued to create, alongside religious works, pagan scenes of ideal beauty such as the Venus of Urbino, the Venus of Pardo (Louvre) and other Venuses and deities of the classical world without interruption.

Titian finally encountered this classical world when he came to Rome in 1543, and his spirit received fresh impetus from the sight of ancient monuments and statues as well as from his contacts with Michelangelo; yet the influence of Michelangelo’s creations—previously known to him only through prints and drawings—had already been absorbed on several occasions, for example in the canvases mentioned above from the sacristy of the Salute. He saw and interpreted that classical world in his own way, intensifying it into a new expression of heightened chromatic power. His initial contacts with Pope Paul III Farnese and later with Emperor Charles V must have immeasurably stimulated Titian’s creative energies. The works he produced in this period are of the highest calibre; yet it is impossible to single out the very highest. For Paul III he painted several portraits, the most famous being that showing the Pope with his nephews Ottavio and Alessandro Farnese, now in the Museum of Naples (1546). From this point begins the group portrait, of which a splendid example is the Vendramin Family, now in the National Gallery, London. At the same time his colour became progressively freer, bolder, softer and more impetuous, attaining a depth and intensity hitherto unknown. For the Emperor’s court he supplied a series of works in Madrid, now almost all in the Prado and the Escorial: Sisyphus and Prometheus; Venus and Adonis; the Glory of Charles V (1551–54); the Deposition (1559), the Adoration of the Magi and Christ in the Garden of Olives—works that breathe a profoundly religious pictorial atmosphere and already touch upon that complete dissolution of colour which characterizes Titian’s final style.

Of this last period one may recall at the Prado the St Margaret, the Ecce Homo, Christ Carrying the Cross, the impressive Votive Picture of Philip II for the victory of Lepanto, the allegory of Spain Defending Religion, and finally the marvellous painting of Adam and Eve. At the Escorial: the great Last Supper and the monumental Crucifixion. Yet other works he provided for his native Venice and for contemporary princes: for the church of the Jesuits, the Martyrdom of St Lawrence (1548–88); for S. Maria della Salute, the Descent of the Holy Spirit; for S. Salvatore, the Transfiguration and the Annunciation; for the Library of S. Mark, the Allegory of History (1560). For the cathedral of Serravalle, near Vittorio Veneto, Titian painted a large altarpiece of the Madonna with SS. Peter and Paul; for the church of Medole near Mantua, a Christ Appearing to the Madonna; and for S. Domenico in Ancona, an impressive Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John.

and s. DOMENICO. His masterpieces of maturity, dispersed in various museums, include the following most important works: *The Rape of Europa*, from the Gardner Museum in Boston, begun in 1559 and sent to Spain in 1562, a work of unmatched freshness; *Diana and Callisto*, *Diana and Actaeon*, both at Bridgewater House in London; *The Hunt of Actaeon* at Harewood House, also in London; *Perseus and Andromeda* at the Wallace Collection; *Tarquin and Lucretia* at the Cambridge Museum; another canvas with *Tarquin and Lucretia*, from a very late period, at the Academy in Vienna; *Nymph and Shepherd*, with the gorgon-like gathering of the last years of T., at the Vienna Museum; and in Austria, specifically in the archbishop of Kremsier’s collection, another—almost unknown—masterpiece from his final years: *Marsyas Flayed*. Works from his last period also include *Venus with Cupid* at the Borghese Gallery, the *Madonna and Child*, formerly at the Escorial, now in the Pinacoteca in Munich, where another striking late masterpiece is preserved: the nocturnal scene of *Christ Crowned with Thorns*; the *Madonna* (formerly Mond) at the National Gallery in London, the *St. Sebastian* at the Hermitage; the two portraits of the artist, one in profile at the Prado, the other three-quarters view at the Berlin Museum; and finally the grand *Pietà* at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Venice, a work T. had intended for the Crucifix altar in the Frari church, where he wished to be buried, but which remained unfinished due to the artist’s death. It was completed by Palma the Younger with reverent care.

In approximately seventy—or slightly more—years of activity, T. created such an imposing body of masterpieces that it surpasses the output of any artist who came after him, including those of a Rubens, a Rembrandt, or a Goya. Yet the singular aspect of T.’s creative spirit is that, from his beginnings around 1505–1507 to the year of his death in 1577, there is in him not only a continuous crescendo of expressive power but also a continuous enhancement, or transformation, if one prefers, of his pictorial means. Dividing T.’s activity into periods is arbitrary and has only a scholarly and practical significance.

It has been divided into three or four periods, but it could be done differently. There is in him a continuous progression, never a change of course. And within this progression, a continual ascent. Between *Sacred and Profane Love* and *The Gypsy Madonna* there is an essential shift, in the sense that one moves from gorgonian lyrical concepts to a bold, fiery pictorial interpretation; from a gently tonal execution to a rich impasto of color. From *The Gypsy Madonna* to the portrait of Paul III with his Nephews (c. 1545), the pictorial material becomes more pliable, assumes warmer and deeper tones, and is enriched with immense sensitivity; it is an entirely new process, a blend of thick impasto with patches and glazes and scratches. This is his final pictorial period, in which the great artist, in his process of optical and chromatic synthesis, continues the boldest experiments ever attempted in painting—not out of vain aestheticism, but out of a need for an immediate, flexible, lightning-fast expressive language. It is well known that T. sketched his canvases without preparatory drawings, directly with the brush, then placed the large light and shadow masses, still like ghosts; then he turned the canvases against the wall and continued them only after several days to gain a fresher impression; and he took them up again, with strokes and scratches, until from the barely sketched ghosts the figures took on body, life, and spirit. Yet these revolutionary pictorial methods were not understood by all at the time, nor were they always grasped by posterity; least of all in periods when drawing was not in favor, namely in the Neoclassical era. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century, when painting regained a deeper and more human sense, did people begin to understand again the immense pictorial power of the old T., whose works are the most genuine expression of "pure" painting, so dear to the moderns. — See pls. XVIII–XIX.