“Masterpieces in Colour” Series

Others in Preparation.

PLATE I.—THE DUCHESS OF URBINO. Frontispiece

(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

This portrait of the Duchess of Urbino from the Uffizi must not
be confused with the portrait of the Duchess in the Pitti Palace. The
sitter here is Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, and the portrait
was painted somewhere between the years 1536 and 1538 at a period
when the master’s art had ripened almost to the point of its highest
achievement.

TITIAN

BY S. L. BENSUSAN ❀❀❀

ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

11

I

Titian Vecelli, undeniably the
greatest Venetian painter of the Renaissance,
leaps into the full light of the
movement. To be sure he appears full-grown,
as Venus is said to have done when
she appeared above the foam in the waters
of Cythera, or Pallas Athene when she12
sprang from the brain of Zeus, but happily
he was destined to live to a great age.

We have few and scanty records to tell
of the very early days. So wide was his
circle of patrons in after life, so intimate
his acquaintance with the leading men of
his generation, that it is not difficult to
find out what manner of man he was
without the aid of his pictures, even though
they have a very definite story to tell the
painstaking student.

There are well over one hundred important
works, dealing with the life and art of
Titian, written by enthusiasts in half-a-dozen
languages, for of all the artists of the Renaissance
he makes perhaps the most direct
appeal to the man moyen sensuel.

PLATE II.—LA BELLA

(In the Pitti Palace, Florence)

This wonderful example of Titian’s portrait painting may be seen
in the Pitti Palace to-day, and was probably commissioned by the
Duke of Urbino somewhere about the year 1536. It will be noticed
by students of Titian that the model for this portrait appears in some
of the master’s pictures as Venus.

Fearless and unashamed, he gave the
world pagan pictures, entering into the joy
of their creation with the enthusiasm of a
schoolboy who has found an orchard gate15
unlocked. To be sure the spirit of joy and
of youth passed with the years, even this
most fortunate of painters knew trouble,
domestic and financial, but the beauty remained,
expressing the fullest vigour of
the Renaissance movement, the supreme
achievement of human loveliness, the splendour
of men and women.

Fortune was kind to Titian in many
ways, and not in the least degree by driving
to the sheltering fold of the Venetian Republic
the great men of all lands who were
hurrying to safety before the destroying
advance of Spain. It is right, at the same
time, to remember that the leaders of the
destroying legions were the friends and
patrons of the painter, that the greatest of
them all desired to be buried in the shadow
of the master’s picture “La Gloria,” now in
the Prado. The time called for a supremely
gifted artist to render its great men 16immortal,
or at least to give them what we call
immortality in the days when we forget that
if modern science be correct man has existed
for some 250,000 years and has not yet
reached mental adolescence. Perhaps when
he has developed his brain, and can control
the march of this planet and the duration
of his own life, he will not make half so
attractive a subject for the painters as did
those men and women of the fifteenth and
sixteenth century whose beauty casts a spell
over us to-day.

Titian was born at Pieve among the
mountains of Cadore where the Tyrol and
Italy meet. His statue in bronze looks out
towards Venice to-day from the market-place
of his native town, and the landscape
that the painter knew best, and gave time
out of mind to his pictures, has altered but
little. He was a second son, and would seem
to have been born about the year 1480, but17
there was no registrar of births, marriages,
and deaths in Pieve and, while some authorities
place the date at 1477, the year that
he himself favoured, others advance it as
far as 1482. There has been a great controversy
about this birth date, but it might be
safe to place it rather later still.

Titian was the son of one Gregorio
Vecelli, who seems to have been a soldier
and a man who held high position in the
little town which, in the early days of the
fifteenth century, had cast in its lot with
the Venetian Republic. Nothing is known
of his mother except her name, but his
elder brother named Francesco followed art
until he was middle aged, and there were
two sisters Ursula and Katherine, of whom
the former kept house for the painter for
many years in Venice, after the death of
his wife.

Francesco and Titian Vecelli developed18
at an early age a marked feeling for painting,
and in order that they might have every
chance of developing their gifts to the best
advantage, Gregorio Vecelli took them to
Venice, which lay some seventy miles from
Pieve, and left them with a brother who
had sufficient influence to secure for Titian
admission to the studios of the brothers
Bellini, who then shared with the Vivarini
family the highest position in the art world
of the Republic. Gian Bellini, then a man
past middle age, had in his studio several
pupils who were destined to achieve distinction.
Palma Vecchio, Sebastian del Piombo,
and Giorgione of Castelfranco were among
them, and of these the last named was
certainly the greatest. It is probable that,
had he lived, even Titian Vecelli must have
toiled after him in vain, for he influenced
his fellow-student to an extent that is very
clearly revealed in the early pictures, and19
has even led to confusion between the work
of the two men, a confusion greatly increased
by the fact that Titian completed
some of the pictures that Giorgione left
unfinished. Happily perhaps for Titian,
though unfortunately for the world at large,
Giorgione was destined to fall a victim to
one of the plagues that ravaged Venice
from time to time, and he died soon
after completing his thirtieth year, leaving
Titian undisputed master of Venetian
painting.

Like all great men Titian was an assimilator.
In his early days he started out
under the influence of Bellini. Then he
surrendered, as even his aged master did,
to the strange, rare, and beautiful spirit of
poetry and romance that Giorgione brought
into art. He may have helped to develop
and strengthen it, for he and Giorgione
worked and lived together. Finally when20
outside influences had died down Titian
found himself, and this was the greatest
discovery of his life.

In the last years of Giorgione’s short
career he and Titian, both young men, were
engaged to decorate the great Commercial
House of the Germans, rebuilt upon the site
of the older building that had been destroyed
by fire about the beginning of the year 1505.
The work would appear to have been started
two years later. This united effort, purely
decorative, must have been worthy of its
surroundings at a time when Venice and
beauty were almost synonymous terms; the
greater part is lost to us to-day.

Serious troubles were upon the Republic.
The League of Cambrai, one of the least
scrupulous political arrangements in European
history, had resulted in an attack upon
the Venetian domains that had been entirely
successful, though statecraft was destined to21
recover from the Philistines of Europe a part
at least of what they had taken, and finding
that the Republic was too beset to
give much thought to art or artists Titian
left Venice for Padua. This must have been
very shortly after the completion of his work
with Giorgione. His hand is to be seen in
the very pleasant and learned city of Padua
among the frescoes in the Scuola del Santo,
and he may have been within its walls when
the plague, on one of its periodical visits to
Venice, added his friend and fellow-worker
Giorgione to a heavy list of victims.

PLATE III.—THE ENTOMBMENT

(In the Louvre)

This world-famous canvas hangs in the Salon Carré of the Louvre.
It is considered to be one of the masterpieces among the religious
subjects painted by the great Venetian artist.

On Titian’s return to the headquarters
of the Republic only Palma Vecchio was left
among the great men of his own age, and
it would seem that Titian’s rising fame had
already spread beyond the borders of Venice,
because in 1513, when he petitioned the
Council of Ten for a broker’s patent to work
in the Hall of the German Merchants, he22
stated that he had been invited by the Pope
(Leo X.) to come to Rome, and that he
wished to leave a memorial in Venice. It
is clear from the correspondence that he
had an eye upon a post held by the aged
Gian Bellini. This was the office of painter
in the Hall of the Great Council, a coveted
position for which Carpaccio, one of Bellini’s
less distinguished pupils, is said to have
been among the claimants. Although Titian
was a remarkable and rising man the
Council hesitated to grant his request, partly
because times were bad with the State and
money was scarce. He was compelled to
wait, and it would appear that his application
was opposed both by the friends of Bellini
and the supporters of Bellini’s older pupils;
but as soon as Bellini died, towards the close
of 1516, Titian came to his desire and undertook
to paint the great battle of Cadore in
the Hall of the Great Council. Having25
secured his patent, work increased, his brush
was in request in many quarters, and he
did as so many other painters in the State
employment of Venice had done—he left his
official work for such spare time as more
remunerative employment left him—to the
great scandal of the Councillors whose angry
protests are on record. His early portraits
seem to have been of men; the women, in
whose treatment he was perhaps less happy,
sought him in later life, and his other early
commissions were very largely for altar-pieces.
Titian had powerful friends and
patrons at an early age, for we see that he
had been recommended to the Pope by
Cardinal Bembo before he returned to Venice
from Padua, and his pictures attracted the attention
of that splendid patron of art Alfonso
of Ferrara. This great connoisseur sent for
and entertained him at his castle, and even
offered to take him to Rome when Leo X.26
died, and his successor, after the fashion of
Popes, would be likely to give some liberal
commissions to the greatest artists of his
time. In return for these kindnesses, and
in consideration of a splendid fee, Titian
painted the great picture of Alfonso of
Ferrara of which a copy is to be seen in
Florence. The original went to Madrid
and has been lost. For the same generous
master he painted his “Bacchus and
Ariadne,” his “Venus with the Shell,” and
a Bacchanal, and it is generally agreed that
he painted a part at least of the picture
called “The Bacchanal,” now in the possession
of the Duke of Northumberland.

Several of the works painted in Ferrara
were taken in later days to Madrid, and it
might be said in this place that it is almost
as necessary to go to the Prado to see the
Titians as it is to see the great works of
Velazquez. “The Bacchanal” is there, and27
the “Worship of Venus” is there, and we
find many others of the first importance,
some two dozen, perhaps, whose authority
is beyond dispute. This collection in the
Prado is the more valuable because it represents
Titian not only in the early days,
but when he was at the zenith of his powers.
The pictures range in date over a period of
nearly seventy years, from the “Madonna
with St. Bridget and St. Ulphus” (circa
1505) down to the “Allegory of the Battle
of Lepanto,” which was sent to Spain in
1575, a commission from Philip II. whose
love for allegorical pictures is well known.
Charles V. and his son Philip II. are to be
seen in the Prado through the medium of
Titian’s brush, and, although many of the
works have suffered from restoration, which
is one of the vices associated with the great
Spanish picture galleries, there are several
that show few signs of an alien brush and28
are, for pictures by Titian, in first-class
order.

Students of the Renaissance know that
art was accepted by all the great rulers of
Europe as something lying outside the
boundaries of ambition and strife. It was
one of the rewards of a great conqueror that
he could have his portrait painted by the first
painter of his day, and patriotism was kept
outside the studio, to the great benefit of art
and rulers alike. Venice offended Spain in
many ways, and even offended the Church by
laying a restraining hand upon the Holy Inquisition,
but Popes and Spanish kings were
proud, nevertheless, to be numbered among
the patrons of the greatest artist of their
time, they seemed to know that his brush
would do more than immortalise their
progress—that it would outlive it. The attention
that Titian received from the Court
of Ferrara did much to develop the esteem29
in which Venice held him, and Titian was
requested to paint his famous “Assumption”
for the great Church of Santa Maria de’
Frari. To-day no more than a copy hangs
in the church, the picture having been long
ago transferred to the Accademia. It is
very properly regarded by the authorities
as one of the first very great pictures of
Titian’s life, marking as it does the entrance
of living interests into sacred painting. The
bustle and movement that earlier masters
had not ventured to present are seen here
to the greatest advantage, and although
there must have been many to declare that
its conception was wicked and irreligious
and quite outside the thought of such
acknowledged masters as Beato Angelico
and Gian Bellini, it is likely that such
criticism would have very little effect
upon Titian, because he went on painting
altar-pieces without reverting in any30
instance to the methods of his predecessors.

He painted a “Madonna” for the Church of
St Nicholas, an “Assumption” for Verona’s
Cathedral, an “Entombment of Christ,” now
in Paris, and it could have surprised nobody
when the Doge Andrea Gritti commissioned
the artist to decorate the Church of St.
Nicholas in the Ducal Palace. These frescoes
have disappeared, but a picture by
Titian preserves the patron for us, and
this is something to be grateful for, because
the head is full of interest. Titian
continued to paint ecclesiastical subjects
until pressure from the world beyond forced
him to turn his brush to other purposes,
and then he came under the patronage of
Frederic Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, son
of that Isabella d’Este, who had commissioned
Titian’s old master, Gian Bellini, to
paint a secular picture for her camerino31
and was in the next few years to have her
own portrait painted by Bellini’s young pupil.
In addition to an original picture he copied
a portrait painted when she was young, and
doubtless he was sufficiently a courtier to
paint it in fashion that merited her approval
and consoled her for having grown old.

The instinct for the fine arts had descended
to Isabella’s son, and when Titian
went to work in Mantua he painted pictures
that extended his European fame, because
as the western world was situated in those
days Mantua had a word to say in its affairs,
entertaining foreign potentates and receiving
foreign ambassadors. In those days, too,
ambassadors took note of art movements,
knowing that in so doing they were bound
to please their masters; the political correspondence
of the times includes a very considerable
amount of art gossip. It is certain
that Titian worked in Mantua for the Duke,32
and painted many pictures including the
“Eleven Cæsars,” but unhappily the greater
part of all his labour is lost. Perhaps some
canvases await the discerning critic in half-forgotten
gallery or lumber-rooms; it is not
likely that all have been destroyed.

PLATE IV.—THE HOLY FAMILY

(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

Sometimes known as the Virgin with the Holy Child and Saints.
Here we find Titian dealing with a religious subject with the restraint,
dignity, and sense of beauty that proclaim him a master among
painters. The motherly love of the Virgin, the solicitude of St.
Joseph on the right, and the childish innocence of the two children
are most effectively expressed and contrasted. The picture may be
seen in the Uffizi Gallery.

The next great Italian house with which
Titian seems to have entered into relations
was that of Urbino whose Duke was nephew
of that Pope Julius II. who was known to his
contemporaries as “the Terrible Pontiff” because
of his uncontrollable temper. He was
the Pope who gave Michelangelo the commission
to paint the ceiling in the Sistine
Chapel. This artist was at least as bad-tempered
as the Terrible Pontiff and the
“I’m not a painter” with which he greeted
the Pontiff’s demand that he should paint
when he preferred to practise sculpture has
echoed down the ages. It is worth remembering
that when the work was done,35
and Pope Julius came to see the result, he
suggested that the scaffolding should be
re-erected and the work decorated afresh
with ultramarine and gold-leaf! Although
Pope Julius bought the “Apollo” and the
“Laocoon,” Michelangelo was his adviser,
but his nephew Francesco Maria della
Rovere had sound instinct, and his connection
with Titian lasted as long as he lived.

In the early years of this connection Titian
painted the Duke and Duchess and the famous
“Bella,” which is reproduced in these pages
and is reckoned, in spite of repainting, to be
one of the most notable works from Titian’s
hand in this period of his career. Many
portraits painted for the Court of Urbino are
mentioned by Vasari; we cannot find any
traces of them to-day. As one of them was
of the Turkish Sultan, and it is not on record
that Titian ever went to Turkey, it is reasonable
to suppose that some at least of these36
pictures were copies of portraits that other
men had painted. It was the custom for
foreign potentates to have their portrait
painted by the best man in their own capital
and then to send the portrait to be copied by
some artist of world-wide repute.

In the Uffizi Gallery in Florence there
are portraits of the Duke of Urbino (which
are signed) and his Duchess; they were
kept at Urbino until the early part of the
seventeenth century, and were then brought
to their present resting-place. The picture
of the Duke is a very striking one. He had
made a great reputation in fighting against
the Turks, and the emblems of his high
office are seen in the picture. The Duchess
is painted in repose; like so many of Titian’s
portraits of women this one has a rather
listless expression. When the Duke died
his son Guidobaldo continued relations with
the painter, who painted the Duchess Julia37
just before her death. It seems likely that
she never saw the picture, which is now in
the Pitti at Florence. The portrait of the
husband is lost.

II
MIDDLE AGE

This brief and rather hurried review of
Titian’s life and work has brought us to his
middle age and we find him now almost at
the zenith of his fame, though his powers
have not yet reached their ripest and fullest
expression. Venice, Mantua, and Urbino
have acknowledged his talent, while if Pope
and Sultan have not actually sat to him for
their portraits they have sent him other
men’s work to copy. The great Charles V.,
who seemed bent upon holding all western
and central Europe in the hollow of his hand,
was his friend and patron, and we see what38
manner of man he was from the pictures in
the Prado. The first, painted in the very
early years of their acquaintance, shows
Charles with a great hound by his side. His
right hand rests on his dagger, his left on
the dog’s collar, he wears the chain of the
Golden Fleece, and seems a man born to
command. Belonging, of course, to a much
later date is the other portrait of Charles at
the Battle of Mühlburg, perhaps even less a
monument of Titian’s skill than an enduring
record of the terrible craze for repainting
that beset Spain until recent years, and is
not unknown to-day, though public opinion
has had some effect even in Madrid. It is
not generally known that there is a Spanish
official who has a salaried engagement to
assist the old masters whose work shows
signs of fading, and without wishing to be
hypercritical it is reasonable to remark that
these officials in a laudable anxiety to earn41
their stipend have done irreparable damage
to much work that they were not fit to
approach.

PLATE V.—THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE

(In the Pitti Palace, Florence)

This fine work is in the Pitti Palace, and is a triumph of harmony
in colour and lines. The drawing of the arms of the Infant Christ is
the one point that may be said to justify hostile criticism in a work
of extraordinary beauty. A somewhat similar picture is in the
National Gallery.

In spite of the imminence of the political
scheme that occupied the mind of Charles
V. he was able to spare time to consider the
affairs of art, and his attitude towards Titian
seems to have been that of one friend towards
another rather than that of an emperor towards
a foreign painter. It is interesting
in this connection to remember that his son
Philip II., who succeeded to the throne of
Spain, was a patron of the arts, that Philip
III. was not indifferent to them, that
Philip IV. was the friend as well as the
patron of Velazquez, and that Velazquez
admired Titian above all the other Venetians,
and is said to have copied many of his
pictures.

Charles proceeded to put the crown upon
Titian’s reputation by sending him in 1533 a42
patent of nobility, and making him a Knight
of the Order of the Golden Spur. Among
the stories that receive a sort of sanction
from age is one to the effect that Charles V.
once picked up a brush that Titian had
dropped, and said to his astonished courtiers
that such a man was worthy of having
an emperor to serve him. Stories of this
kind seem to flourish in Spain. Students
of the life of Velazquez will not forget the
legend that Philip IV. painted the cross of
St. Iago upon the painter’s cloak when he
saw the famous picture “Las Meniñas,” in
order to give the most fitting expression
of his admiration. This story contrasts
strangely with the true facts of the case.
Charles went even further than to give the
patent of nobility to Titian, he made a determined
effort to persuade him to live in
Madrid altogether. Very wisely Titian refused
the offers; he was a Venetian at heart,43
and a free man. To be a citizen of Venice
was an honour for which even a Charles V.
could hardly find an effective substitute.

There is no reason to believe that Titian
would have fared any better in the wind-swept,
heat-stricken capital of Spain than
Velazquez fared in the years that brought
Philip IV. to the throne. At the splendid
court of Charles V. Titian would soon have
become a mere official painter, he would
have been compelled to paint to order and
endure the snubs and buffets of the blue-blooded,
but uncultivated courtiers attached
to the royal establishment. Moreover, the
Venetians did not like Spanish methods of
dealing with matters of art and faith; to
Titian their attitude would have appeared
intolerable.

Although he was a painter, Titian had
little of the temperament that is generally
associated with artists. His genius was44
allied to sound commercial instincts, and he
chose for intimates and advisers men whose
practical experience of the world and of
affairs was at least as great as his own, in
some cases even greater. Of these Pietro
Aretino, father of modern journalists, was
one of the most sagacious and quite the
most remarkable. His voluminous letters
tell us a great deal about Titian to whom
he played the part of mentor, and they reveal
the writer as a man of great shrewdness
who moved in the highest circles in many
cities, living largely by his wits, and wielding
a pen that was often sharper than a sword
and was certainly more feared. He found
Titian as valuable to him as he was useful
to Titian, and, when any delicate negotiations
were to the fore Aretino’s large circle
of friends and patrons, his ready tongue and
fluent pen were at the service of the painter.
His portrait painted by Titian was till45
recently in Rome and reveals a man with
massive head, sagacious expression, and a
curious likeness to Dr. Hans Richter the
famous musician. His letters are still read
with interest by those who like to look
back over the course of life in the sixteenth
century.

At a time when he had passed middle
age, Titian would seem to have exhausted
for the moment the possibilities of Venice.
We have seen that the Fathers of the City
had been a little vexed with his delay in
painting the “Battle of Cadore” in the Hall
of the Grand Council. He had received a
State allowance in order to enable him to
paint it, and twenty years had not sufficed
him for the completion of the commission.
When he was threatened with the loss of
his money and dignities by the indignant
Councillors, whose patience at the end of two
decades was quite stale, he did set to work,46
and satisfied them that the picture was worth
the waiting. But they could hardly have
been inclined to extend much more patronage
to a man who allowed the rulers of
other States to turn his attention from
commissioned work, and never hesitated to
leave it for years at a time when other and
more remunerative orders came to hand.
Moreover the great churches were fairly
well filled, and the smaller ones could hardly
afford to employ the greatest master of the
day. So Pietro Aretino, perhaps casting
about to do his friend a good turn, bethought
him of his influence in Rome, and
addressed certain letters to the leading
lights of Mother Church who were to be
found there. These letters were doubtless
supervised by Titian himself, because they
bear a striking likeness in phraseology to
the petition the painter had addressed to
the Council of Ten in the days when he47
was little known, and Gian Bellini was still
working for the State. Then, it will be remembered,
the painter declared that he had
been asked to go to Rome but preferred
to stay in Venice; now Aretino told the
Romans that Titian had been invited to go
to Madrid but preferred to work in Rome.
So it happened early in the ‘forties that,
through the useful Aretino, Titian entered
into relations with the Farnese family, who
were represented in the Papal Chair by
Pope Paul III. The result was that Titian
was invited to Ferrara, where he met the
Pope and painted his portrait.

The whole correspondence, so far as it
can be seen, would seem to suggest that
Titian and Aretino managed this business
exceedingly well. When the painter found
that his ambition was within measurable
distance of being gratified, and that his
graceless elder son for whom he had entered48
a special plea, was to receive a benefice, he
seems to have remembered that Venice held
many attractions for him, and that he could
not leave it in a hurry. Not until the close
of 1545 did he visit the Eternal City, only
to regret that the greater part of his life
had been passed outside its walls.

As soon as he was established in Rome,
Titian found himself received by princes and
prelates in fashion befitting his age and reputation.
And Giorgio Vasari, the author
of the great work on Italian artists, was
commissioned, by one of the heads of the
house of Farnese, to show the painter the
wonders of the city.

PLATE VI.—FLORA

(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

The famous Flora of Titian’s reproduced here is in the Uffizi
Gallery and was painted somewhere about 1515. In the seventeenth
century it was engraved by one of the greatest engravers of the day,
Sandrart. The picture was publicly exhibited in Florence towards
the stormy close of the eighteenth century, and although people in
those years had small leisure to concern themselves about works of
art, it created a great sensation.

To the Farnese family Titian’s visit was
of the first importance because its Pope
and Cardinal were his first patrons, and he
painted many pictures for them. Paul III.
was no more than ten years older than the
painter and had not long to live. He sat51
to Titian several times; two of the portraits
are to be seen in Naples and there are
others to be seen elsewhere. In addition
to the fine memorials of the Farnese Pope,
Naples holds several of Titian’s masterpieces,
including the splendid “Danäe,” a
“Philip II.,” and a “Mary Magdalen.”
Those who are fortunate enough to obtain
access to the really remarkable collection
of pictures at Naples will not forget readily
the striking portraits of the old Pope.

Titian stayed less than a year in the
Eternal City in spite of the preparations he
had made before undertaking the journey,
and then returned to Venice with many
honours, but without the long desired post
for his son. Perhaps his departure gave
offence to people in high places, perhaps
his stay there had not been altogether as
satisfactory as he had expected it to be, for
despite flattering offers, despite the honour52
of Roman citizenship conferred upon him
before he went home, he refused to return.
He might have gone in the end in consideration
of the preferment granted to
Pomponio Vecelli his scapegrace son, but
Charles V. sent for him, and he went instead
to Augsburg, where the Emperor who had
seen the fulfilment of so many of his hopes
was living in great state, surrounded by as
brilliant a court as the sixteenth century
knew. In Augsburg Titian painted his
most famous portrait of Charles V., the
one showing the Emperor on horseback,
which as has been stated, is to be seen
to-day in the Prado in Madrid.

Titian remained in Augsburg for the
greater part of a year before he returned
to Venice, to find his studio, or work-shop
as it would have been called in those days
besieged by the envoys of the various European
rulers who were all clamouring for53
portraits. From Venice the painter went
to Milan at the invitation of Prince Philip
of Spain (afterwards Philip II.) and at the
close of 1550 he was back in Augsburg where
he painted several portraits of Prince Philip
of which perhaps the best is in the Prado.
By the time he returned to Venice he would
have been in the immediate neighbourhood
of his eightieth year. His brush was never
idle, and if the fruit of his labours could have
been preserved in fire-proof galleries the gain
to the world would have been enormous.
Unfortunately we have to face the unpleasant
truth that considerably more than half his
life work has been lost.

III
THE LAST DECADES

Titian’s last work for Charles V. was the
famous “Gloria.” This was painted at a54
time when Charles had decided to end his
days in the shadow of the Church, and is to
be seen to-day in the Prado, a composition
of amazing strength and wonderful inspiration.
The Father and the Son are seen enthroned,
with the Virgin Mary at the feet of
Christ, and the Patriarchs grouped in the
background. Charles himself in his shroud
is pleading for forgiveness, an angel by his
side encourages him and supports his appeal.
The lighting of the picture is masterly, and
so impressed the Emperor that he took it
with him into retirement, and directed that
it should be placed above his tomb.

Philip II. has no enviable reputation in
this country, but his position as patron of the
arts stands far above criticism. Though he
was a sober ascetic upon whom the authority
of the Church weighed very heavily,
he did not ask Titian to devote himself
entirely to religious pictures. In matters55
of art he saw his way to making a considerable
concession to the spirit of the
Renaissance, and when he took over the
burden of empire he commissioned several
mythological subjects from the old painter.
Among them were the “Venus and Adonis”
now in the Prado, the “Diana surprised by
Actaeon” in Bridge-water House, and the
“Jupiter and Antiope” in the Louvre. The
allegorical pictures, the latest work of the
painter’s life, were commissioned later.

Strangely enough the years had done
little or nothing to dim the lustre of the
painter’s work, his colour was still supremely
beautiful, his feeling for landscape more intense
than it had ever been, while his
capacity for striking and novel composition
remained a thing to wonder at. Of course
Philip was not content with secular subjects,
and Titian was required to paint a certain
number of pictures for the Escorial, but he56
is best represented by his mythological
subjects. Perhaps they made a more direct
appeal to him because by their side the
religious pictures were a little old-fashioned,
and he does not seem to have faced allegorical
subjects with enthusiasm.

It is interesting to turn to Vasari and
read some of the things he has to say
about the painter at this period of his life,
for although the old chronicler is not the
most accurate of writers, he is at least a
very interesting one and he knew Titian
intimately. He says of the famous “Gloria”
picture to which reference has been made—”The
composition of this work was in
accordance with the orders of his Majesty,
who was then giving evidence of his intention
to retire, as he afterwards did, from
mundane affairs, to the end that he might
die in the manner of a true Christian, fearing
God and labouring for his own salvation.”57
It is not difficult to imagine the emotion
that this picture must have roused among
those who were privileged to see it, when
it came fresh from the painter’s studio, to
impress an age that had not forgotten to
be devout.

Again Vasari says, “In the year 1566
when I, the writer of the present history, was
in Venice, I went to visit Titian as one who
was his friend, and found him, although then
very old, still with the pencils in his hand
painting busily.” The old gossip goes on to
say that Paris Bordone, who “had studied
grammar and become an excellent musician,”
had set himself to imitate Titian,
who did not love him on that account, and
had sought to keep him from getting commissions.
Bordone persevered and went to
Augsburg, where he painted pictures, now
lost, for some of the great German merchants.
This little glimpse of rivalry suggests to us58
that Titian was jealous of his reputation,
although Vasari tells us elsewhere that he
was kind and considerate to his contemporaries,
and free from uneasiness, because
he had gained a fair amount of wealth,
his labours having always been well paid.
Vasari hints, too, that he kept his brush in
hand too long; he must have written this
when he remembered that, for all his many
excellences, Titian was a Venetian. “Titian
has always been healthy and happy,” he
writes; “he has been favoured beyond the
lot of most men, and has received from
Heaven only favours and blessings. In his
house he has always been visited by whatever
princes, literati, or men of distinction
have gone to Venice, for in addition to his
excellence in art he has always distinguished
himself by courtesy, goodness, and
rectitude.” Perhaps his remark that Titian’s
reputation would have stood higher if he61
had finished work earlier may be no
more than a veiled comment upon the
indiscriminate misuse of the labours of
pupils.

PLATE VII.—SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE

(In the Borghese Palace, Rome)

This most beautiful work of Titian’s is one belonging to his early
days. It was probably commissioned in 1512 by the Chancellor of
Venice, and we find that it was in the possession of Cardinal Scipione
Borghese at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It may be
seen to-day in the Borghese Palace of Rome.

In the latter years of his sojourn in
Venice the artist lived in a house towards
Murano, between the Church of San Giovanni
de Paolo and the Church of the Jesuits.
He entertained very largely, giving supper
parties from which no seasonable delicacy
was lacking, and gathering round him distinguished
men and women who were far less
celebrated for their morals than for their attractions.
His gossip Aretino was generally
of the party, and it is to him that we owe
so much of our intimate knowledge of the
painter’s home life and troubles. Aretino’s
death in 1556 must have been a great blow
to Titian.

Vasari tells us that the painter’s income
was considerable. Charles V. paid a thousand62
gold crowns for every portrait of himself
and, when he conferred the patent of
nobility upon the painter, he accompanied it
with an annual gift of two hundred crowns.
Philip II., son of the great Emperor, added
another two hundred annually, the German
merchants gave him three hundred, so that
he had seven hundred crowns a year without
taking into account the commissions
that came to him on every side, and, as he
was painting for the richest and most
generous people of his generation, his annual
income must have been very considerable.
And yet Titian’s own correspondence,
of which a part has been preserved,
shows that the State grants were not
always paid regularly. It is of course far
more easy for an arbitrary ruler to make
gifts to his favourites than it is for the
State Treasury to respond to the demands
that must needs follow each grant, and63
Spanish finances have always been difficult
to administer.

As he grew older and his hand lost part
at least of its cunning, Titian depended more
and more upon pupils, but in this he was
only following the custom of his time. It is
said that a clever German artist, who worked
in his studio, was responsible for the greater
part of several of the later pictures. The
Council of Ten though they had taken from
him the office of Painter of Doges and had
given it to Tintoretto, offered him a commission
in the late ‘sixties; even if they had
a grievance against him they could not afford
to nourish it. Then again if Titian was not
always prompt in doing the work for which
he was paid, even if he employed pupils to a
greater extent than seemed necessary to
those who had to pay for the finished canvas,
it must have been hard to quarrel with him,
for his personality would seem to have been64
most engaging. He was an excellent musician
as well as a good host, Paolo Veronese has
included him in the famous “Marriage in
Cana” (Louvre) playing a double bass.
Moreover Titian was a courtier whose
correspondence, although it dealt so largely
with matter of finance, lacks none of the
stilted graces of the time, and these may
have helped to conciliate angry patrons. He
seems to have been an affectionate father,
and if he had any besetting sin it was love
of money, his anxiety in this respect being
increased by the fact that he was not always
able to collect the accounts due to him.
Yet he saved enough to buy land round his
birthplace and it is reported that he went
to Cadore whenever he had the opportunity.
Clearly an appreciative sense of the perennial
peace of the Dolomites never left him.

By his wife, to whom he was not married
until two sons had been born, Titian had65
four children of whom two grew up. Pomponio,
to whom we have referred, was the
eldest; and he came to a bad end, being
a dissipated man. Orazio, who was the
second son, became a painter. One daughter
died young, and there was another, Lavinia,
portraits of whom may be seen at Dresden
and Berlin. His great friends were Pietro
Aretino, poet and gossip, who laid half
Europe under contribution, and was almost
as unscrupulous as he was clever, and the
sculptor Sansovino.

Whatever Titian’s faults were as a man,
they may fairly be forgotten in his merits
as an artist, and it is not the least of
these merits that he worked from the time
when he was a boy to the hour when his
brush seemed falling from his hands, unsparing
in his devotion to his task. He
has left a legacy to the civilised world that
compels a measure of admiration equal to66
that which is paid to Velazquez. Titian
was the supreme master of colour, but, unfortunately,
few of his pictures have escaped
the restorer’s hand, and a great many have
been damaged in their journeys from city
to city in an age when the art of picture
packing was still unknown. Exposure to all
sorts of weather, long periods of neglect,
careless restoration, and reckless repainting
would have been enough to destroy the reputation
of most painters, but Titian’s work
has not suffered to the extent that might
have been expected. Enough remains of the
master to make us not a little envious of
the happy patrons of the arts who knew
his work in all its glory.

It is hard to say when Titian’s life would
have come to an end in the ordinary course
of events, but it is not unreasonable to
suppose that he would have lived to be a
centenarian had he retired from Venice when67
he was ninety and gone to live in Pieve, the
well-beloved city that gave him birth. But
he would not leave his workshop, and in
1575 the plague paid another visit to Venice.
It will be remembered that soon after the
League of Cambrai when Titian was in
Padua, a visitation had devastated Venice
and carried off Giorgione among thousands
of lesser men. The Venetians were never
free from fear of the plague’s return. In 1575
the hand of the plague lay heavy upon the
City of Lagoons, where sanitation was unknown,
and isolation and disinfection were
not practised properly. Historians tell us
that some 40,000 people perished, the greatest
panic prevailed, and while the plague was
at its height Titian died. If his own insinuation
of the year of his birth be correct
he must have been in his ninety-ninth year,
but even if we accept the date given by
those who believe that he was born as late68
as 1482, he would have been within seven
years of his centenary. The epidemic is
recorded in the famous Church of the
Redentore on the Giudecca, dedicated to
Christ by the Doge Mocenigo, whose portrait
painted by Tintoretto may be seen
in the Accademia to-day.

PLATE VIII.—THE HOLY FAMILY

(In the National Gallery, London)

This superb painting is one of the gems of our National Gallery,
and represents Titian at his best as a great colourist. It is painted
in oil on canvas.

In spite of the distress prevailing in the
city some effort was made to give the great
painter a State funeral, but under the conditions
existing, it was impossible to carry
out the programme, and he was buried with
comparatively little ceremony in the great
Church of the Frari which, in addition to
having one of the finest works of his hand,
is further enriched by the famous altar-piece
by his old master Gian Bellini. They
say that his residence was entered shortly
after his death by some of the riff-raff of
Venice, to whom the plague had given a
welcome measure of licence, and was 71despoiled
of many of its treasures. Doubtless
the painter’s house held much that was
worth the small risk involved in an hour
when the authorities were hardly able to
cope with duties to the sick and the disposal
of the dead.

In considering the life of Titian we see
that much good-fortune went to its making.
He was born at the best period of the
Renaissance, he was the inheritor of the
freedom for which other painters had striven.
He painted a world that was as new to
artists as were the far-off realms to the
Spanish adventurers who were discovering
new countries and new trade routes, and
paving the way for the ultimate decline of
Venice. At the outset of his career Titian’s
work was full of the joy of life, it was the
expression of an age that seemed to have
come of age, of a city that had turned to
canvas and marble rather than to books72
for a reflection of the new life. While the
painter progressed, overcoming the various
difficulties of expression that confronted
him, making daring and successful experiments
in composition, handling colour as
it had never been handled before, this feeling
of enthusiasm that belonged to the age
was expressed in all his work. Then again
he had the great advantage of claiming for
sitters the most distinguished men of his
time, the statesmen and rulers who were
making history at the expense of the map
of Europe, the men who held spiritual or
temporal power, and the women they delighted
to honour. Naturally enough these
conditions gave added scope to the painter’s
talent; and his subjects were worthy of
his brush. He could seek out what was
best and most characteristic in his sitters,
and express through the medium of his art
not only the likeness but the personality73
underlying it. Had his work been more
fortunate, had it been preserved in anything
like its entirety, we should be able
to read the history of his times in a clearer
light, for though the written word can tell
us much, the cleverly wrought picture has
still more to say, and we can rely upon
canvas, if Titian painted it, to refute or to
confirm the verdict of the historian.

Happily, too, Titian’s art grew with his
age. Practice and experience ripened it,
and some of his finest pictures were painted
when he was past the span of life that the
Psalmist has allotted to man. He covered
every field, no form of painting seems to
have come amiss to him. Altar-pieces, portraits,
historical pictures, mythological and
allegorical subjects, one and all claimed his
attention from time to time, and though we
are all entitled to express our preference,
there will be few to say that he failed in74
any style of work. Perhaps he was least
successful in allegorical subjects, and in
the portraits of women, but, if this be so,
his failure is merely relative, he attained
such heights in mythological subjects and
men’s portraits, that the other work is not
so good by comparison. If he gave us no
picture devoted entirely to landscape it is
worth remarking that the appeal of nature
was an ever growing one. The impression
given him by the mountains round Cadore
was never lost. From the time when he
completed Gian Bellini’s last picture down
to the time when the plague came to Venice
and found him with an unfinished picture on
his easel, the attraction of the countryside
he knew so well was always with him, and
he lost no opportunity of expressing it.
Gian Bellini had opened the walls that shut
in the Madonna and the Saints of the earlier
masters, he had given the world glimpses75
of exquisite landscape through which the
romance woven round his figures seemed
to spread. Titian opened the gates still
further, giving a larger, wider, and more
splendid view, convincing his contemporaries
and successors that landscape could
never more be overlooked.

He would seem to have made few studies,
a sketch by Titian is one of the rarest things
in art, he did not see in line but in colour.
With Titian as with Velazquez after him
it is hard to separate colour from line, and
in colour he was the acknowledged master
of his own time and the guide of the ages
after him. Some of his great contemporaries,
not Venetians of course, declared
that Titian was a poor draughtsman, but
it is well to remember that among the
Venetians, art was an affair of painting,
among the Florentines it embraced sculpture
and architecture; the mere handling76
of paint, however splendid the results, would
not suffice Florentine ambitions. It might
even be said that much Florentine painting
is little more than tinted drawing. We
go to Titian for colour even to-day, when
time and exposure and repainting have
taken so much from the wealth that he
gave to his pictures, and we can see that
as he grew to ripe age he sought to obtain
his colour effects by less obvious means than
those that served him at the outset. It is
hard for any but an artist to realise the
secret of the cause that produced the later
results, but, if it be left for the artist to explain
it is easy for the layman to appreciate.
With Titian, Venetian painting reached the
zenith of its achievement, after him through
Tintoretto and Veronese, the descent is slow
but sure, and we are left wondering whether
any fresh revival of the world’s enthusiasm,
any new discovery of the world’s youth is77
destined to bring into art the spirit of enthusiasm
that gave a Titian to the world.
There are few signs in our own time, but
then we do not live in an age of great
crises religious or political, or, if we do,
we are too near to the changes to recognise
them.

Perhaps there are some who find amusement
in the suggestion that Titian’s action
emancipating art from the thraldom of the
Church was a great and glorious one, not
unattended by danger and difficulties. To
these sceptics one can but reply by quoting
the decree of the Council of Nicaea dated
A.D. 787 and never repealed. Here we find
the attitude of Authority towards art set out
in plainest fashion. “It is not the invention
of the painter which creates a picture,” says
this remarkable decree, “but the inviolable
law and tradition of the Church. It
is not the painter but the Holy Fathers78
who have to invent and dictate. To them
manifestly belongs the composition, to the
painter only the execution.”

A few great artists in later times had
made their protest, definite or indefinite,
against the attitude of the Church, but
Titian rescued art as Perseus rescued
Andromeda.

The plates are printed by Bemrose & Sons, Ltd., Derby and London
The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh