The Venetian School of Painting Part 10

CHAPTER XIX

t.i.tian (_continued_)

While t.i.tian was executing portraits of the Doges, of Aretino and of Isabella of Portugal, and of himself and his daughter Lavinia, he was also striking out a new line in the ceiling pictures for the Church of San Spirito, which have since been transferred to the Salute. Though painted before his journey to Rome, it may be suspected that he had Michelangelo's work in the Sixtine Chapel in mind, and that he was setting himself the task of bold foreshortening and technical problems.

The daring of the conception is great, yet we feel sure that this is not t.i.tian's element; his figures in violent movement give a vivid idea of strength and muscular force, but fail both in grace and drawing, and though the colour and light and shade distract our attention from defects of form, he does not possess that mastery over the flowing silhouette which Tintoretto attained.

It was in 1543 that his relations with the Farnese, whose young cardinal he had been painting, drew him at last to Rome. Leo X. had tried to attract him there without success, but now at sixty-eight he found himself as far on the road as Urbino. His son Orazio was with him, and Duke Guidobaldo was himself his escort, and sent him on with a band of men-at-arms from Pesaro. He was received in Rome by Cardinal Bembo; Paul III. gave him a cordial welcome and Vasari was appointed his cicerone.

It is interesting to inquire what impression Rome, with its treasures of antique statuary and contemporary painting, made upon t.i.tian. "He is filled with wonder and glad that he came," writes Bembo. In a letter to Aretino he regrets that he had not come before. He stayed eight months in Rome, and was made a Roman citizen. He visits the Stanze of Raphael in company with Sebastian del Piombo, and Michelangelo comes to see him at his lodgings, and he receives a long letter from Aretino advising him to compare Michelangelo with Raphael, and Sansovino and Bramante with the sculptors and architects of antiquity. t.i.tian was well established in his own style, and was received as the creator of acknowledged masterpieces, and he never painted a more magnificent portrait-piece than that of Paul III., the peevish old Pope, ailing and humorous, suspicious of the two nephews who are painted with him, and who he guessed to be conspiring against him. The characteristic att.i.tude of the old man of eighty, bent down in his chair, his quick, irritable glance, the steady, determined gaze of the cardinal, the obsequious att.i.tude and weak, wily face of Ottavio Farnese are all immortalised in a broader, more careless technique than t.i.tian has. .h.i.therto used. Though he does not seem to have been directly influenced by all he saw in Rome, we undoubtedly find a change coming over his work between 1540 and 1550, which may be in part ascribed to a widening of his artistic horizon and a consciousness of what others were doing, both around him and abroad.

In its whole handling and character his late is different from his early manner. It begins at this time to take on a blurred, soft, impressionist character. His delight in rich colouring seems to wane, and he aims at intensifying the power of light. He reaches that point in the Venetian School of painting which we may regard as its climax, when there is little strong local colour, but the canvas seems illumined from within.

There are no clear-cut lines, but the shapes are suggested by sombre enveloping shades in which the radiant brightness is embedded. His landscapes alter too; they are no longer blue and smiling, filled with loving detail, but grander, more mysterious. In the "St. Jerome" in Paris the old Saint kneels in wild and lonely surroundings, and the moon, slowly rising behind the dark trees, sends a sharp, silver ray across the crucifix. The "Supper at Emmaus" has the grandiose effect that is given by avoidance of detail and simplification of method.

t.i.tian painted several portraits of himself, and we know what sort of stately figure was presented by the old man of seventy who, at Christmas in 1547, set forth to ride across the Alps in the depths of winter to obey Charles V.'s call to Augsburg. The excitement of the public was great at his departure, and Aretino describes how his house was besieged for the sketches and designs he left behind him. For nearly forty years t.i.tian was employed by the House of Hapsburg. He had been working for Charles since 1530, and when the Emperor abdicated, his employment by Philip II. lasted till his death. The palace inventory of 1686 contained seventy-six t.i.tians, and though probably not all were genuine, yet an immense number were really by him, and the gallery, even now, is richer in his works than any other.

The great hall of the Pardo must have been a wonderful sight, with t.i.tian's finest portrait of himself in the midst, and the magnificent portraits and sacred and allegorical pieces which he continued from this time forward to contribute to it. In this year, which was the last before Charles's abdication, and during this visit to South Germany, he painted the great equestrian portrait of the Emperor on the field of Muhlberg, and two years later came the first of his many portraits of Philip II. The face, in the first sketch, is laid in with a sort of fury of impressionism, and in the parade portrait the sitter is realised as a man of great distinction. Ugly and sensual as he is, we never tire of looking at t.i.tian's conception--a full length of distinguished mien rendered attractive by magnificent colour. Everything in it lives, and the slender, aristocratic hands are, as Morelli says, a whole biography in themselves.

The splendid series of allegorical subjects which t.i.tian contributed to the Pardo, while he was still supplying sacred pictures and altarpieces to Venice and the neighbouring mainland, are among his most mature and important works. Never has his gamut of tones been fuller and stronger than in the "Jupiter and Antiope," or the "Venus of the Pardo" as it is sometimes called. The Venus herself has the att.i.tude of Giorgione's dreaming G.o.ddess, with her arm flung up above her head. It is, perhaps, the only time that t.i.tian succeeds in giving anything ideal to one of his Venuses. The famous nudes of the Uffizi and the Louvre are splendid courtesans, far removed from Giorgione's idyllic vision; but Antiope, slumbering on her couch of skins, and her woodland lover, gazing with adoring eyes on her beautiful face, have a whole world of sweet and joyful fancy. The whole scene is full of a _joie de vivre_, which carries us back to the Baccha.n.a.ls painted so many years before, and in these t.i.tian gives King Philip his most perfect work, every touch of which is his own. This picture, now in the Louvre, was given to Charles I. by the King of Spain, and bought for Cardinal Mazarin in 1650.

"Danae," "Venus and Adonis," "Europa and the Bull," and a "Last Supper"

followed in quick succession, but t.i.tian was now employing many a.s.sistants, and great parts of the canvases issuing from his workshop show weak, imitative hands, while replicas were made of other works.

His later feeling for the religious in art is expressed in the now bedimmed paintings in San Salvatore in Venice. Vasari describes these in 1566. Painted when t.i.tian was nearly ninety years old, the "Transfiguration" is remarkable for forcible, majestic movement, while in the "Annunciation" he invents quite a new treatment. Mary turns round and raises her veil, while she grasps the book as if she depended on it for stay and support. The four angels are full of life and gaiety, and the whole has much grace and colour, though it is dashed in, in the painter's later style, in broad and sweeping planes without patience of detail. The old man has signed it "t.i.tia.n.u.s, fecit, fecit," a contemptuous reply to some critics who complained of its want of finish.

He knew well what it was in composition and execution, and that all that he had ever known or done lay within the careless strength of his last manner.

A letter written to the King of Spain's secretary in 1574 gives a list "in part" of fourteen pictures sent to Madrid during the last twenty-five years, "with many others which I do not remember." On every hand we hear of lost pictures from the master's brush, and the number produced even during the last ten years of his life must have been enormous, for till the end he was full of great undertakings and achievements. Very late in life he painted a "Shepherd and Nymph"

(Vienna), which in its idyllic feeling, its slumberous delight, its mingling of clothed and nude figures, recalls the early days with Giorgione, yet the blurred and smouldering richness, the absolute negation of all sharp lines and lights is in his very latest style, and he has gone past Giorgione on his own ground. Then in strange contrast is the "Christ Crowned with Thorns," at Vienna, a tragic figure stupefied with suffering. His last great work was the "Pieta" in the Academy, which, though unfinished, is n.o.bly designed and very impressive. He places the Virgin supporting the Body in a great dome-shaped niche, which gives elevation. It is flanked by two calm, antique, stone figures, whose impa.s.sive air contrasts with the wild pain and grief below. The Magdalen steps out towards the spectator with the wailing cry of a Greek tragedy. It perhaps hardly moves us like the concentrated feeling of Bellini's Madonna, or the hurried, trembling grief of Tintoretto's Magdalen, but it is monumental in the sweeping grace of its line, and full of n.o.bility of feeling. It is sadly rubbed and darkened and has lost much of t.i.tian's colour, but is still beautiful in its deep greys mingled with a sombre golden glow, as of half-extinguished fires. These late paintings are of the true impressionist order; looked at closely they present a ma.s.s of sc.u.mbled touches, of incoherent dashes, but if we step farther away, to the right focus, light and dark arrange themselves, order shines through the whole, and we see what the great master meant us to see. "t.i.tian's later creations," says Vasari, "are struck off rapidly, so that when close you cannot see them, but afar they look perfect, and this is the style which so many tried to imitate, to show that they were practised hands, but only produced absurdities." t.i.tian was preparing the picture for the Frari, in payment for the grant of a tomb for himself, when in August 1576 the plague broke out in Venice, and on the 27th the great painter died of it in his own house. The stringent regulations concerning infection were relaxed to do honour to one of the greatest sons of Venice, and he was laid to rest in the Frari, borne there in solemn procession, through a city stricken by terror and panic, and buried in the Chapel of the Crucified Saviour, for which his last work was ordered. The "a.s.sumption" of his prime looked down upon him, and close at hand was the "Madonna of Casa Pesaro." His son Orazio caught the plague and died immediately after, and the painter's house was sacked by thieves and many precious things stolen.

The great personality of t.i.tian stands out as that which of all others established and consolidated the school of Venice. He is its central figure. The century of life, of which eighty years were pa.s.sed in ceaseless industry of production, left its deep impression on the art of every civilised country of Europe. Every great man of the day who was a lover of art and culture fell under t.i.tian's spell. His influence on his contemporaries was enormous, and he had everything: genius, industry, personal distinction, character, social charm. He is, perhaps, of too intellectual a cast of mind to be quite typical of the Venetian spirit, in the way that Tintoretto is; it is conceivable that in another environment t.i.tian might have developed on rather different lines, but this temper gave him greater domination. He was free from the eccentricities which beset genius. He possessed the saving salt of practical common sense, so that the golden mean of sanity and healthful joy in his works commended them to all men, and they are not difficult to understand. Yet while all can see the beauty of his poetic instinct for colour, his interesting and original technique, his grasp and scope, his mastery and certainty have gained for him the t.i.tle of "the painter's painter." There is no one from whom men feel that they can so safely learn so much, and the grand breadth and power of elimination of his later years is justified by the way in which in his earlier work he has carried exquisite finish and rich impasto to perfection.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS

Ancona. Crucifixion (L.).

S. Domenico: Madonna with Saints and Donor, 1520.

Antwerp. Pope Alexander VI. presenting Jacopo Pesaro.

Berlin. Infant Daughter of Strozzi, 1542; Portrait of Himself (L.); Lavinia bearing Charges.

Brescia. SS. Nazaro e Celso: Altarpiece, 1522.

Dresden. Madonna with Saints (E.); Tribute Money (E.); Lavinia as Bride, 1555; Lavinia as Matron (L.); Portrait, 1561; Lady with Vase (L.); Lady in Red Dress.

Florence. Pitti: La Bella; Aretino, 1545; Magdalen; The Young Englishman; The Concert (E.); Philip II.; Ippolito de Medici, 1533; Tomaso Mosti.

Uffizi: Eleanora Gonzaga, d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino, 1537; Francesco della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, 1537; Flora; Venus, the head a portrait of Lavinia; Venus, the head a portrait of Eleanora Gonzaga; Madonna with S. Anthony Abbot.

London. Holy Family and Shepherd; Bacchus and Ariadne (E.); Noli me tangere (E.); Madonna with SS. John and Catherine.

Bridgewater House: Holy Family (E.); Venus of the Sh.e.l.l; Three Ages of Man; Diana and Actaeon, 1559; Callisto, 1559.

Earl Brownlow: Diana and Actaeon (L.).

Sir F. Cook: Portrait of Laura de Dianti.

Madrid. Madonna with SS. Ulfus and Bridget (E.); Baccha.n.a.l; The Garden of Loves; Danae, 1554; Venus and Youth playing Organ (L.); Salome (portrait of Lavinia); Trinity, 1554; Entombment, 1559; Prometheus; Religion succoured by Spain (L.); Sisyphus (L.); Alfonso of Ferrara; Charles V. at the Battle of Muhlberg, 1548; Charles V. and his Dog, 1533; Philip II., 1550; Philip II.; The Infant; Don Fernando and Victory; Portrait; Portrait of Himself; Duke of Alva; Venus and Adonis; Fall of Man; Empress Isabella.

Medole (near Brescia). Christ appearing to His Mother.

Munich. Vanitas; Portrait of Charles V., 1548; Madonna and Saints; Man with Baton.

Naples. Paul III. and Cardinals, 1545; Danae.

Padua. Scuola del Santo: Frescoes; S. Anthony granting Speech to an Infant; The Youth who cut off his Leg; The Jealous Husband, 1511.

Paris. Madonna with Saints (E.); La Vierge au Lapin; Madonna with S. Agnes; Christ at Emmaus (L.); Crowning with Thorns (L.); Entombment; S. Jerome (L.); Jupiter and Antiope (L.); Francis I.; Allegory; Marquis da Valos and Mary of Arragon; Alfonso of Ferrara and Laura Dianti; L'Homme au Gant (E.); Portraits.

Rome. Villa Borghese: Sacred and Profane Love (E.); St. Dominio (L.); Education of Cupid (L.).

Capitol: Baptism (E.).

Doria: Daughter of Herodias.

Vatican: Madonna in Glory and six Saints, 1523.

Treviso. Duomo: Annunciation.

Urbino. Resurrection (L.); Last Supper (L.).

Venice. Academy: Presentation of Virgin, 1540; S. John in the Desert; a.s.sumption, 1518; Pieta, 1573.

Palazzo Ducale Staircase: S. Christopher, 1523.

Sala di Quattro Porte: Doge Giovanni before Faith, 1555.

Frari: Pesaro Madonna, 1526.

S. Giovanni Elemosinario: S. John the Almsgiver, 1523.

Scuola di San Rocco: Annunciation (E.).

Salute Sacristy: Descent of the Holy Spirit; St. Mark enthroned with Saints; David and Goliath; Sacrifice of Isaac; Cain and Abel.

S. Salvatore: Annunciation (L.); Transfiguration (L.).

Verona. Duomo: a.s.sumption.

Vienna. Gipsy Madonna (E.); Madonna of the Cherries (E.); Ecce h.o.m.o, 1543; Isabela d'Este, 1534; The Tambourine Player; Girl in Fur Cloak; Dr. Parma (E.); Shepherd and Nymph (L.); Portraits; Doge Andrea Gritti; Jacopo Strada; Diana and Callisto; Madonna and Saints.

Wallace Collection. Perseus and Andromeda. (In collaboration with his nephew, Francesco Vecellio.) Louvre. Madonna and Saints. (The same by Francesco alone.) Glasgow. Madonna and Saints.

CHAPTER XX

PALMA VECCHIO AND LORENZO LOTTO

Among the many who cl.u.s.tered round t.i.tian's long career, Palma attained to a place beside him and Giorgione which his talent, which was not of the highest order, scarcely warranted. But he was cla.s.sed with the greatest, and influenced contemporary art because his work chimed in so well with the Venetian spirit. A Bergamasque by birth, he came of Venetian parentage, and learnt the first elements of his art in Venice.

He never really mastered the inner niceties of anatomy in its finest sense, and the broad generalisation of his forms may be meant to conceal uncertain drawing, but his large-bosomed, matronly women and plump children, his round, soft contours, his clean brilliancy, and the clear golden polish in which his pictures are steeped, made a great appeal to the public. His invention is the large Santa Conversazione, as compared with those in half-length of the earlier masters. The Virgin and saints and kneeling or bending donors are placed under the spreading trees of a rich and picturesque landscape. It is Palma's version of the Giorgionesque ideal, which he had his share in establishing and developing. The heavy tree-trunk and dark foliage, silhouetted almost black against the background, are characteristic of his compositions. As his life goes on, though he still clings to his full, ripe figures and to the same smooth fleshiness in his women, the features become delicate and chiselled, and the more refined type and subtler feeling of his middle stage may be due to his companionship with Lotto, with whom he was in Bergamo when they were both about twenty-five. He touches his highest, and at the same time keeps very near Giorgione, in the splendid St. Barbara, painted for the company of the _Bombadieri_ or artillerists. Their cannon guard the pedestal on which she stands; it was at her altar that they came to commend themselves on going forth to war, and where they knelt to offer thanksgiving for a safe return; and she is a truly n.o.ble figure, regal in conception and fine and firm in execution, attired in sumptuous robes of golden brown and green, with splendid saints on either hand. Palma was often approached by his patrons who wanted mythological scenes, G.o.ds, and G.o.ddesses; but though he produced a Venus, a handsome, full-blown model, he never excels in the nude, and his tendency is to seize upon the homely. His scenes have a domestic, familiar flavour. With all his golden and ivory beauty he lacks fire, and his personages have a sluggish, plethoric note. In his latest stage he hides all sharpness in a sort of sc.u.mble or haze. It would, however, be unfair to say he is not fine, and his portraits especially come very near the best. Vienna is rich in examples in half-lengths of one beautiful woman after another robed in the ample and gorgeous garments in which he is always interested. Among them is his handsome daughter, Violante, with a violet in her bosom, and wearing the large sleeves he admires. The "Ta.s.so" of the National Gallery has been taken from him and given first to Giorgione and then to t.i.tian, but there now seems some inclination to return it to its first author. It has a more dreamy, intellectual countenance than we are accustomed to a.s.sociate with Palma; but he uses elsewhere the decorative background of olive branches, and the waxen complexion, tawny colouring, and the p.r.o.nounced golden haze are Palmesque in the highest degree. The colouring is in strong contrast to the pale ivory glow of the Ariosto of t.i.tian, which hangs near it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Palma Vecchio._ HOLY FAMILY.

_Colonna Gallery, Rome._ (_Photo, Anderson._)]

No one could be more unlike Palma than his contemporary, Lorenzo Lotto, who has for long been cla.s.sed with the Bergamasques, but who is proved by recently discovered doc.u.ments to have been born in Venice. It was for long an accepted fact that Lotto was a pupil of Bellini, and his earliest altarpiece, to S. Cristina at Treviso, bears traces of Bellini's manner. A Pieta above has child angels examining the wounds with the grief and concern which Bellini made so peculiarly his own, and the St. Jerome and the branch of fig-leaves silhouetted against the light remind us of the altarpiece in S. Crisostomo. Lotto seems to have clung to quattrocento fashions. The ancona had long been rejected by most of his contemporaries, but he painted one of the last for a church in Recanati, in carved and gilt compartments, and he painted predellas long after they had become generally obsolete. We ask ourselves how it was that Lotto, who had so susceptible and easily swayed a nature, escaped the influence of Giorgione, the most powerful of any in the Venice of his youth--an influence which acted on Bellini in his old age, which t.i.tian practically never shook off, and which dominated Palma to the exclusion of any earlier master.

It would take too long to survey the train of argument by which Mr. Berenson has established Alvise Vivarini as the master of Lotto.

Notwithstanding that Bellini's great superiority was becoming clear to the more cultured Venetians, Alvise, when Lotto was a youth, was still the painter _par excellence_ for the ma.s.s of the public. In the S.

Cristina altarpiece the Child standing on its Mother's knee is in the same att.i.tude as the Child in Alvise's altarpiece of 1480, and the Mother's hand holds it in the same way. Other details which supply internal evidence are the shape of hands and feet, the round heads and the way the Child is often represented lying across the Mother's knees.

Lotto carries into old age the use of fruit and flowers and beads as decoration, a Squarcionesque feature beloved of the Vivarini, but which was never adopted by Bellini.

About 1512 Lotto comes into contact with Palma, and for a short time the two were in close touch. A "Santa Conversazione," of which a good copy exists in Villa Borghese, Rome, and one at Dresden, with the Holy Family grouped under spreading trees, is saturated with Palma's spirit, but it soon pa.s.ses away, and except for an occasional touch, disappears entirely from Lotto's work.

Lotto may have had relations in Bergamo, for when in 1515 a compet.i.tion between artists was set on foot by Alessandro Martino, a descendant of General Colleone, for an altarpiece for S. Stefano, he competed and carried off the prize. This was the first of the series of the great works for Bergamo, which enrich the little city, where at this period he can best be studied. The great altarpiece (now removed to San Bartolommeo) is a most interesting human doc.u.ment, a revelation of the painter's personality. He does not break away from hieratic conventions, like the rival school; his Madonna is still placed in the apse of the church with saints grouped round her, a form from which the Vivarini never departed, but the whole is full of intense movement, of a lyric grace and ecstasy, a desire to express fervent and rapturous devotion.

The architectural background is not in happy proportion in relation to the figures, but the effect of vista and s.p.a.ce is more remarkable than in any North Italian master. The vivid treatment of light and shade, and the gaiety and delicacy of the flying angels, who hold the canopy, and of the putti, who spread the carpet below, the shapes of throne and canopy and the decorations have led to the idea that Lotto drew his inspiration from Correggio, whom he certainly resembles in some ways; but at this time Correggio was only twenty, and had not given any examples of the style we are accustomed to call Correggiesque. We must look back to a common origin for those decorative details, which are so conspicuous in Crivelli and Bartolommeo Vivarini, which came to Lotto through the Vivarini and to Correggio through Ferrarese painters, and of which the fountain-head for both was the school of Squarcione. For the much more striking resemblances of composition and spirit, the explanation seems to be that Lotto on one side of his nature was akin to Correggio; he had the same lyrical feeling, the same inclination to exuberance and buoyancy. To both, painting was a vehicle for the expression of feeling, but Lotto had also common sense and a goodly share of that humour that is allied to pathos.

Till the year 1526 Lotto was much in Bergamo, where the first altarpiece gained him orders for others. The reputation of a member of the school of Venice was a sure pa.s.sport to employment. We trace Alvise's tradition very plainly in the altarpiece in San Bernardino, where the gesture of the Madonna's hand as she expounds to the listening saints recalls Alvise's of 1480. The little gathered roses, which Lotto makes use of to the end of his life, lie scattered on the step; angels, daringly foreshortened, sweep aside the curtain of the sanctuary. The colour is in Lotto's scarlet, light blues, and violet. He soon shows himself fond of genre incidents, and in "Christ taking leave of His Mother" gives a view into a bedroom and a cat running across the floor. The donor kneels with her hair fashionably dressed and wearing a pearl necklace. In the "Marriage of S. Catherine" at Bergamo the saint is evidently a portrait, with hair pearl-wreathed. She kneels very simply and naturally before the Child, and the exquisitely lovely and elaborately gowned young woman who represents the Madonna, looks out towards the spectator with a mundane and curiously modern air. It was probably the recognition of Lotto's success with portraits that led to their being so often introduced into his sacred pieces. In the one we have just noticed, the donor, Niccolas Bonghi, is brought in, and is on rather a larger scale than the rest, but Lotto has evidently not found him interesting. The portraits of the brothers della Torre, and that of the Prothonotary Giuliano in the National Gallery, inaugurate that wonderful series of characterisations which are his greatest distinction. A series of frescoes in village churches round Bergamo must also be noticed. They are remarkable for spontaneous and original decoration, and may compare with the ceremonial groups of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio. Lotto's personages, as they chatter in the market-places, are full of natural animation and gaiety, and we realise what a step had been made in the painting of actual life.

Owing to the unsettled state of the rest of Italy, the years from 1530 to 1540, which Lotto spent in Venice, found that city the gathering-ground of many of the most distinguished scholars and deepest thinkers of the day. Men of all shades of religious thought were engaged in learned discussion, and Lotto's ardent and inquiring temperament must have been stimulated by such an environment. During these years, too, he became intimate with t.i.tian, and experimented in t.i.tian's style, with the result that his painting gets thicker and richer, more fused and solid, and his figures are better put together. He imitates t.i.tian's colour, too, but it makes him paint in deeper, fiercer tints, and he soon finds it does not suit him, and returns to his own scheme. His colour is still rather too dazzling, but the distances are translucent and atmospheric. He continues to introduce portraits. In his altarpiece in SS. Giovanni and Paolo the deacons giving alms and receiving pet.i.tions curiously resemble in type and expression the ecclesiastics we see to-day.