Titian; a collection of fifteen pictures and a portrait of the painter Part 1

t.i.tian; a collection of fifteen pictures and a portrait of the painter.

by Estelle Hurll.

INTRODUCTION

I. ON t.i.tIAN'S CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST.

"There is no greater name in Italian art--therefore no greater in art--than that of t.i.tian." These words of the distinguished art critic, Claude Phillips, express the verdict of more than three centuries. It is agreed that no other painter ever united in himself so many qualities of artistic merit. Other painters may have equalled him in particular respects, but "rounded completeness," quoting another critic's phrase, is "what stamps t.i.tian as a master."[1]

To begin with the qualities which are apparent even in black and white reproduction, we are impressed at once with the vitality which informs all his figures. They are breathing human beings, of real flesh and blood, pulsing with life. They represent all cla.s.ses and conditions, from such royal sitters as Charles V. and Philip II. to the peasants and boatmen who served as models for St. Christopher, St. John, and the Pharisee of the Tribute Money. They portray, too, every age: the tender infancy of the Christ child, the girlhood of the Virgin, the dawning manhood of the Man with the Glove, the maidenhood of Medea, the young motherhood of Mary, the virile middle life of Venetian Senators, the n.o.ble old age of St. Jerome and St. Peter, each is set vividly before us.

The list contains no mystics and ascetics: life, and life abundant, is the keynote of t.i.tian's art. The abnormal finds no place in it. Health and happiness are to him interchangeable terms.

Yet it must not be supposed that t.i.tian's delineation of life stopped short with the physical: he was besides a remarkable interpreter of the inner life. Though not as profound a psychologist as Leonardo or Lotto, he had at all times a just appreciation of character, and, on occasion, rose to a supreme touch in its interpretation. In such studies as the Flora, where he is interested chiefly in working out certain technical problems, he takes small pains to make anything more of his subject than a beautiful animal. The Man with the Glove stands at the other end of the scale. Here we have a personality so individual, and so possessing, as it were, that the portrait takes rank among the world's masterpieces of psychic interpretation.

In his best works t.i.tian's sense of the dramatic holds the golden mean between conventionality and sensationalism. In the group of sacred personages surrounding the Madonna and Child there is sufficient action to const.i.tute a reason for their presence,--to relieve the figures of that artificial and purely spectacular character which they have in the earlier art,--yet the action is restrained and dignified as befits the occasion. The pose of both figures in the Christ of the Tribute Money is in the highest degree dramatic without being in any way theatrical. The tempered dignity of t.i.tian's dramatic power is also admirably seen in the a.s.sumption of the Virgin. The apostles' action is full of pa.s.sion, yet without violence; the buoyant motion of the Virgin is unmarred by any exaggeration.

The same painting ill.u.s.trates t.i.tian's magnificent mastery of composition. Perhaps the Pesaro Madonna alone of all his other works is worthy to be cla.s.sed with it in this respect. It is impossible to conceive of anything better in composition than these two works. Not a line in either could be altered without detriment to the organic unity of the plan.

The crowning excellence of t.i.tian is his color. The chief of the school in which color was the characteristic quality, he represents all the best elements in its color work. If others excelled him in single efforts or in some one respect, none equalled him for sustained grandeur. A recent criticism sums up his color qualities succinctly in these words: "He had at once enough of golden strength, enough of depth, enough of eclat; his color, profound and powerful _per se_, impresses us more than that of the others, because he brought more of other qualities to enforce it."[2]

t.i.tian's works easily fall into a few groups, according to the subject treated. In mythological themes he was in his natural element. Here he could express the sheer joy of living which was common to the Venetian and the Greek. Here physical beauty was its own excuse for being, without recourse to any ulterior significance. Here he could exercise unhindered his marvellous skill in modelling the human form along those perfect lines of grace which give Greek sculpture its distinctive character. It is in his earlier period that his affinity with the Greek spirit is closest, and we see it in perfect fruition in the Medea and Venus.

t.i.tian's treatment of sacred subjects is in the diverse moods of his many-sided artistic nature. The great ceremonial altar pieces, such as the a.s.sumption of the Virgin, and the Pesaro Madonna, are a perfect reflection of the religious spirit of his environment. Religion was with the Venetians a delightful pastime, an occasion for festivals and pageants, a means of increasing the civic glory. These great decorative pictures are full of the pomp and magnificence dear to Venice, full of the joy and pride of life.

Yet in another mood t.i.tian paints the life of the Holy Family as a pastoral idyl. A sunny landscape, a happy young mother, a laughing baby boy, bring the sacred subject very near to common human sympathies.

Some of t.i.tian's professedly sacred pictures are in the vein of pure _genre_, painted in a period when this department of art had not yet attained independent existence. We see such works in the St. Christopher and the St. John. These direct studies of the people throw an interesting light upon the painter of ideal beauty: they show an otherwise unsuspected vigor.

The Christ of the Tribute Money stands alone in t.i.tian's sacred art. The technical qualities are thoroughly characteristic of his hand, but a new note is struck in spiritual feeling. Virile, without coa.r.s.eness; gentle, without weakness, the chief figure is perhaps the most intellectual ideal of Christ which has been conceived in art.

t.i.tian's landscapes, though holding an accessory place only in his art, are counted by the critical art historian with those of Giorgione, as the practical beginning of this branch of art. He knew how to express "the quintessence of nature's most significant beauties without a too slavish adherence to any special set of natural facts."[3] His imagination interpreted many of nature's moods, from the pastoral calm environing Medea and Venus to the stormy grandeur of the forest in which St. Peter Martyr met his fate.

It is undoubtedly as a portrait-painter that t.i.tian's many great qualities meet in their utmost perfection. His feeling for textures, the delicacy with which he painted the hair and the hands; his skill in modelling; his instinct for pose; the infinite variety of his resources, made an incomparable equipment in the secondary matters of portrait painting. To these he added, as we have seen, the two highest essentials of the art, the power of giving life to his sitter, and the gift of insight into character.

Nature made him a court painter; he loved to impart to his sitter that air of n.o.ble distinction whose secret he so well understood. Yet he was too large a man to let this or any other natural preference hamper him.

Something of himself, it is true, he frequently put into his figures, yet he was at times capable of thoroughly objective work. He stands perhaps somewhere between the extreme subjectivity of Van Dyck and the splendid realism of Velasquez. The n.o.ble company of his sitters, emperors, kings, doges, popes, cardinals and bishops, n.o.blemen, poets and beautiful women, still make their presence felt in the world. Theirs was a deathless fame on whom the painter conferred the gift of his art.

t.i.tian's temperament was keenly sensitive to the influences of his environment, and in his extraordinary length of days, Venice pa.s.sed through various changes, political, social, artistic and religious, which left their mark upon his work. One cannot make a random selection from his pictures and p.r.o.nounce upon the qualities of his art. The work of his youth, his maturity, his old age, has each a character of its own. It is this rounding out of his art life through successive stages of growth and even of decay that gives the entire body of his works the character of a living organism.

II. ON BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

The original source of biographical material relating to t.i.tian is in Vasari's "Lives of the Painters," the best edition of which is the Foster translation, annotated with critical and explanatory comments by E. H. and E. W. Blashfield and A. A. Hopkins. The most complete modern biography is that by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in two large volumes (published in 1877), but as this is now out of print, it can be consulted only in the large libraries. Some of the conclusions of these writers have been challenged by later critics, Morelli and others, and should not be accepted without weighing the new arguments. The volume on "t.i.tian: A Study of his Life and Work," by Claude Phillips, Keeper of the Wallace Collection, London, is in line with the modern methods of criticism, and is written in a delightful vein of appreciation. The two parts of the book, The Earlier Work and The Later Work, correspond to the two monographs for "The Portfolio," in which the work was first published.

In the general histories of Italian art, valuable chapters on t.i.tian are contained in Kugler's "Handbook of the Italian Schools" (to be read in the latest edition by A. H. Layard) and Mrs. Jameson's "Early Italian Painters" (to be read in the latest revision by Estelle M. Hurll). A monograph on t.i.tian is issued in the German Series of Art Monographs, edited by H. Knackfuss.

Interesting suggestions upon the study of t.i.tian's art will be found in the following references: In Mrs. Oliphant's "Makers of Venice;" in Berenson's "Venetian Painters of the Renaissance;" in Symonds's volume on Fine Arts in the series "Renaissance in Italy." Burckhardt's "Cicerone" has some valuable pages on t.i.tian, but the book is out of print. A List of t.i.tian's work is given in Berenson's "Venetian Painters."

III. HISTORICAL DIRECTORY OF THE PICTURES OF THIS COLLECTION.

_Portrait frontispiece._ Probably the portrait mentioned by Vasari as painted in 1502. In the Prado Gallery, Madrid. Size: 2 ft. 10 in. by 2 ft. 1-1/2 in.

1. _The Physician Parma._ It appears that there is no direct testimony to prove the authorship of this picture, the attribution to t.i.tian having been made by an early director of the gallery, following certain evidence from Rudolfi. Herr Wickhoff claims the picture for Domenico Campagnola, and the recent biographer of Giorgione (Herbert Cook) includes it among the works of that painter. The attribution to t.i.tian is, however, not disputed by the two severest of modern critics, Morelli and Berenson. In the Vienna Gallery. Size: 3 ft. 6 in. by 2 ft. 7 in.

2. _The Presentation of the Virgin (Detail)._ Painted for the brotherhood of S. Maria della Carita, and now in the Venice Academy.

Date a.s.signed by Berenson 1540. Size of entire picture: 11 ft. 5 in. by 25 ft. 6-1/2 in.

3. _The Empress Isabella._ Probably one of the two pictures referred to in a letter of 1544 from t.i.tian to Charles V. In the Prado Gallery, Madrid. Size: 3 ft. 10 in. by 3 ft. 2-1/2 in.

4. _Madonna and Child with Saints._ An early work in the Vienna Gallery, similar to a picture in the Louvre, to which it is considered superior by Crowe and Cavalcaselle. Called an "atelier repet.i.tion" by Claude Phillips. Size: 3 ft. 5 in. by 4 ft. 3 in.

5. _Philip II._ Painted 1550, and now in the Prado Gallery, Madrid.

Size: 6 ft. 4 in. by 3 ft. 7-3/4 in.

6. _St. Christopher._ Painted in fresco on the wall of the Doge's Palace, Venice, in honor of the arrival of the French army at San Cristoforo (near Milan), 1523. Ordered by the doge Andrea Gritti, who was a partisan of the French.

7. _Lavinia._ Painted about 1550, and now in the Berlin Gallery. Size: 3 ft. 3-1/2 in. by 2 ft. 7-1/2 in.

8. _Christ of the Tribute Money._ According to Vasari, painted for Duke Alfonso of Ferrara in 1514 for door of a press. a.s.signed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to the year 1518, the date accepted by Morelli. In the Dresden Gallery. Size: 2 ft. 5-1/2 in. by 1 ft. 10 in.

9. _The Bella._ Painted about 1535. In the Pitti Gallery, Florence.

Size: 3 ft. 3-1/2 in. by 2 ft. 6 in.

10. _Medea and Venus._ Date unknown, but fixed approximately by Morelli between 1510 and 1512. In the Borghese Gallery, Rome. Size: 3 ft. 5 in.

by 8 ft. 8 in.

11. _The Man with the Glove._ a.s.signed to t.i.tian's middle period. In the Louvre, Paris. Size: 3 ft. 3-1/3 in. by 2 ft. 11 in.

12. _The a.s.sumption of the Virgin (Detail)._ Ordered 1516 for high altar of S. Maria Gloriosa de' Frari, Venice. Shown to public, March 20, 1518.

Now in the Venice Academy. Size: 22 ft. 9 in. by 11 ft. 10-1/2 in.

13. _Flora._ Painted after 1523. In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Size: 3 ft. 8-1/2 in. by 3 ft. 1-1/2 in.

14. _The Pesaro Madonna._ Finished in 1526 after being seven years in process. Still in original place in the Church of the Frari, Venice.

15. _St. John the Baptist._ Painted in 1556. In the Venice Academy.

Size: 6 ft. 5 in. by 4 ft. 5 in.

IV. OUTLINE TABLE OF THE PRINc.i.p.aL EVENTS IN t.i.tIAN'S LIFE.[4]

1477. t.i.tian born at Cadore in the Friuli, north of Venice.

Circa 1488. Removal to Venice.