Part 12

It is interesting to learn how Titian produced such effects by his brush. Says Palma Giovine, "Titian prepared his pictures with a solid stratum of pigment, which served as a bed or fundament, upon which to return frequently. Some of these preparations were made with resolute strokes of a brush heavily laden with color, the half-tints struck in with pure red earth, the lights with white, modelled into relief by touches of the same brush dipped into red, black, and yellow. In this way he would give the promise of a figure in four strokes. After laying this foundation, he would turn the picture to the wall, and leave it there perhaps for months, turning it round again after a time, to look at it carefully, and scan the parts as he would the face of his greatest enemy.

"If at this time any portion of it should appear to him to have been defective, he would set to work to correct it, applying remedies as a surgeon might apply them, cutting off excrescences here, super-abundant flesh there, redressing an arm, adjusting or setting a limb, regardless of the pain which it might cause. In this way he would reduce the whole to a certain symmetry, put it aside, and return again a third or more times, till the first quintessence had been covered over with its padding of flesh. It was contrary to his habit to finish at one painting, and he used to say that a poet who improvises cannot hope to form pure verses. But of 'condiments,' in the shape of last retouches, he was particularly fond. Now and then he would model the light into half-tint with a rub of his finger, or with a touch of his thumb he would dab a spot of dark pigment into some corner to strengthen it; or throw in a reddish stroke--a tear of blood, so to speak--to break the parts superficially. In fact, when finishing, he painted much more with his fingers than with his brush." Titian used to say, "White, red, and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs, but one must know how to use them." Titian painted rapidly. One of his best friends said that "he could execute a portrait as quickly as another could scratch an ornament on a chest."

In 1537 the Council of Ten, angered at Titian's delays in frescoing the ducal palace, gave a portion of the work to the noted artist Pordenone, took away his brokership, and decreed that he should refund his revenues from that source for the past twenty years. In dismay, Titian left his orders from emperors and princes, and went to work in the great halls. Two years later his broker's patent was restored, and, Pordenone having died in 1538, the patronage of the Republic came again into his hands.

Titian now painted the "Angel and Tobit," of San Marciliano at Venice, and the "Presentation in the Temple," now at the Venice Academy, the latter "the finest and most complete creation of Venetian art since the 'Peter Martyr,' and the 'Madonna di Casa Pesaro.'"

This picture is one of the largest of the master's works, being twenty-five feet long. "Mary, in a dress of celestial blue, ascends the steps of the temple in a halo of radiance. She pauses on the first landing-place, and gathers her skirts to ascend to the second. The flight is in profile before us. At the top of it the high-priest, in Jewish garments, yellow tunic, blue undercoat and sleeves, and white robe, looks down at the girl with serene and kindly gravity, a priest in cardinal's robes at his side, a menial in black behind him, and a young acolyte in red and yellow holding the book of prayer. At the bottom there are people looking up, some of them leaning on the edge of the step, others about to ascend."

Titian painted several portraits of himself, one now at Berlin, another at Madrid, still another in Florence, and others. They show a bold, high forehead, finely cut nose, penetrating eyes, and much dignity of bearing.

Duke Alfonso of Ferrara and Duke Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua, his noble patrons, had both died; but Pope Paul III. now became an ardent admirer of Titian's work, invited him to Rome, where he spent several months lodged in the Belvedere Palace, and sat to him for a portrait. It is said, after the picture of Paul was finished and set to dry on the terrace of the palace, that the passing crowd doffed their hats, thinking that it was the living pope.

While in Rome, Titian painted many portraits in the pontiff's family, and a "Danaë receiving the Golden Rain," now in the museum of Naples, for Ottavio Farnese, grandson of Paul III., who was married to Margaret, daughter of Emperor Charles V. Danaë was the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos. An oracle had predicted that her son would one day kill Acrisius; therefore, to prevent the fulfilment of the prophecy, Danaë was shut up in a brazen tower. But Jupiter transformed himself into a shower of gold, and descended through the roof of her tower. She became the mother of Perseus, and she and her son were put into a chest and cast into the sea. Jupiter rescued them, and Perseus finally killed his grandfather.

Titian was now sixty-eight years of age,--growing old, but never slacking in energy or industry. He had painted for the Church of San Spirito "Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac," "The Murder of Abel," "David's Victory over Goliath," "The Descent of the Holy Spirit," "The Four Christian Fathers," and "The Four Evangelists." "His figures are not cast in the supernatural mould of those of Michael Angelo at the Sistine, they are not shaped in his sculptural way, or foreshortened in his preternatural manner. They have not the elegance of Raphael, nor the conventional grace of Correggio; but they are built up, as it were, of flesh and blood, and illumined with a magic effect of light and shade and color which differs from all else that was realized elsewhere by selection, outline, and chiaroscuro. They form pictures peculiar to Titian, and pregnant with his, and only his, grand and natural originality." The "Ecce Homo," twelve feet by eight, in the gallery of Vienna, was painted for Giovanni d' Anna, a wealthy merchant. When Henry III. passed through Venice in 1574, he saw this picture, and offered eight hundred ducats for it. When Sir Henry Wotton was English envoy at Venice in 1620, he bought the painting for the Duke of Buckingham, who refused thirty-five thousand dollars offered for it by the Earl of Arundel.

In 1546, on the return of the artist from Rome to his home, Casa Grande, in Venice, he painted the portraits of his lovely daughter Lavinia, now in the Dresden Museum, and in the Berlin gallery. "From the first to the last this beautiful piece (in Dresden) is the work of the master, and there is not an inch of it in which his hand is not to be traced. His is the brilliant flesh, brought up to a rosy carnation by wondrous kneading of copious pigment; his the contours formed by texture, and not defined by outline; his again the mixture of sharp and blurred touches, the delicate modelling in dazzling light, the soft glazing, cherry lip, and sparkling eye. Such a charming vision as this was well fitted to twine itself round a father's heart.

"Lavinia's hair is yellow, and strewed with pearls, showing a pretty wave, and irrepressible curls in stray locks on the forehead. Ear-rings, a necklace of pearls, glitter with gray reflections on a skin incomparably fair. The gauze on the shoulders is light as air, and contrasts with the stiff richness of a white damask silk dress and skirt, the folds of which heave and sink in shallow projections and depressions, touched in tender scales of yellow or ashen white. The left hand, with its bracelet of pearls, hangs gracefully as it tucks up the train of the gown, whilst the right is raised no higher than the waist, to wave the stiff, plaited leaf of a palmetto fan."...

Lavinia, at Berlin, "is dressed in yellowish flowered silk, with slashed sleeves, a chiselled girdle round her waist, and a white veil hanging from her shoulders. Seen in profile, she raises with both hands, to the level of her forehead, a silver dish piled with fruit and flowers. Her head is thrown back, and turned so as to allow three-quarters of it to be seen, as she looks from the corners of her eyes at the spectator. Auburn hair is carefully brushed off the temples, and confined by a jewelled diadem, and the neck is set off with a string of pearls."

The Titian home had joys and sorrows in it like other homes. Pomponio, the eldest child, though a priest, was dissolute and a spendthrift, constantly incurring debts which his devoted father paid to mitigate the disgrace. Orazio, a noble son, had become an artist, his father's assistant and confidant. He had married and brought his young wife to Casa Grande. Lavinia, a beauty, the only daughter, was about to be married to Cornelio Sarcinella of Serravalle, receiving from her father a dowry of fourteen hundred ducats, a regal sum for a painter.

In January of 1548, Titian, now past seventy, was summoned to Augsburg, where Charles V. had convened the Diet of the Empire. He painted the portrait of Charles on the field of Muhlberg "in burnished armor-inlaid with gold, his arms and legs in chain mail, his hands gauntleted, a morion with a red plume, but without a visor, on his head. The red scarf with gold stripes--cognizance of the House of Burgundy--hung across his shoulders, and he brandished with his right hand a sharp and pointed spear. The chestnut steed, half hid in striped housings, had a head-piece of steel topped by a red feather similar to that of its master."

Titian also painted, while at Augsburg, King Ferdinand, the brother of Charles, Queen Mary of Hungary, "Prometheus," "Sisyphus," "Ixion," and "Tantalus" at her request, besides many other pictures. Charles so honored Titian that once when the artist dropped his brush the emperor picked it up and handed it to him, saying that "Titian was worthy of being served by Cæsar."

On a second visit to Augsburg Titian painted a portrait of Philip II. of Spain, the son of Charles. This was sent to Queen Mary of England, when Philip was her suitor, and quite won her heart, presumably more than the man himself when he afterwards became her husband. When Titian parted from his patron, Charles gave him a Spanish pension of five hundred scudi. He returned to Venice "rich as a prince instead of poor as a painter."

Philip II. was as much a patron of art as his father, and was constantly soliciting paintings from Titian. It is best, probably, that most of us are worked to our utmost capacity, for work rarely kills people; worry frequently destroys both body and brain.

For Philip he painted a "St. Margaret," now in the museum at Madrid; a "Danaë," where an old woman sits beside the couch and gathers Jupiter's golden shower in her apron; a "Perseus and Andromeda," the princess bound to a rock, and Perseus saving her; and a "Venus and Adonis," now at Madrid. For the enfeebled Emperor Charles he painted "The Grieving Virgin," now in the Madrid Museum, which represents the mother lamenting over the sufferings of the Saviour, and the "Trinity," now at Madrid, showing the Virgin interceding before the Father and Son for the imperial family,--a picture upon which the emperor used to gaze with intense feeling when he had retired to die in the Convent of Yuste. Thither he carried nine of Titian's paintings for his consolation. He died in 1558, with his eyes resting lovingly upon a picture of the emperor painted by Titian, and upon "The Trinity." "Christ appearing to the Magdalen" was sent to Queen Mary of Hungary.

Titian was now seventy-nine years of age, honored and loved by many countries. While his life had been one of almost unceasing labor, he had found time to receive at Casa Grande, poets and artists, dukes and kings, at his delightful garden-parties. Henry III. of France came to see him, and received as a gift any pictures in the studio of which he asked the price. When Cardinal Granvelle and Pacheco came to dine at Casa Grande, Titian flung a purse to his steward, and bade him prepare a feast, since "all the world was dining with him."

Titian attached to himself a few most devoted friends: Aretino, a writer, who had many faults, but must have had some virtues to have been loved by Titian for thirty years; Sansovino, an architect; Speroni, a philosopher, and a few others who met frequently for cultured conversation and good-fellowship at Casa Grande. It is said by historians that at some of these garden parties the still beautiful Violante was to be seen among the distinguished guests. Had she been married to another, all these years? or was the old affection renewed in these latter days?

In 1556 Aretino died, and Titian deeply lamented the man who had been an almost inseparable companion; three years later his beloved brother, Francesco, died at Cadore, and two years after this his beautiful daughter Lavinia, leaving six little children.

Still the man past eighty painted on: "The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," now in the Jesuits' Church at Venice, and "Christ Crowned with Thorns," now in the Louvre, where, "with undeniable originality, he almost attained to a grandeur of composition and bold creativeness equal to those of Buonarotti, whilst he added to his creations that which was essentially his own--the magic play of tints and lights and shadows which mark the true Venetian craftsman."

At eighty-two he painted for Philip II. "Diana and Calisto," "Diana and Actæon," and "The Entombment of Christ." The Dianas are now in the Bridgewater collection at London, for which they were purchased for twelve thousand five hundred dollars.

"Titian," says Crowe, "was never more thoroughly master of the secrets of the human framework than now that he was aged. Never did he less require the model. What his mind suggested issued from his hand as Minerva issued from the brain of Jove. His power was the outcome of years of experience, which made every stroke of his brush both sure and telling.... But the field of the earlier time, take it all in all, is sweeter and of better savor than that of the later period. Rich, exuberant, and bright the works of the master always were; but there is something mysterious and unfathomable in the brightness and sweetness of his prime which far exceeds in charm the cleverness of his old age."

With loving care he painted Irene of Spilimberg, who died at twenty, and whose fame in classic learning, in music, painting, and poetry, was celebrated in sonnets and prose at her death. She was a pupil of Titian, a fit representative of an age which produced among learned men such women as Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara. Irene is painted "almost at full length and large as life, in a portico, from which a view is seen of a landscape, with a shepherd tending his flock, and a unicorn to indicate the lady's maiden condition. Her head is turned to the left, showing auburn hair tied with a string of pearls. Round her throat is a necklace of the same. Her waist is bound with a chain girdle, and over her bodice of red stuff a jacket of red damask silk is embroidered with gold, and fringed at the neck with a high standing muslin collar. A band hanging from the shoulders and passing beneath one arm is held in the right hand, whilst the left is made to grasp a laurel crown, and 'Si fata tulissent' is engraved on the plinth of a pillar."

The "Epiphany," now in Madrid, was sent to Philip II., in 1560; a "Magdalen," now in the Hermitage, in 1561; "Christ in the Garden," "Europa and the Bull," and "Jupiter and Antiope," in 1562. Titian wrote to Philip, "I had determined to take a rest for those years of my old age which it may please the majesty of God to grant me; still ... I shall devote all that is left of my life to doing reverence to your Catholic Majesty with new pictures."

"Europa," says Sweetser, "is a lovely and scantily clad maiden sitting on the back of a flower-garlanded white bull, who is swimming proudly through the green sea, throwing a line of foaming surge before his breast. In the air are flying Cupids, and the nymphs on the distant shore bewail the loss of their companion."

"Jupiter and Antiope," now in the Louvre, formerly called the "Venus of Pardo," is very celebrated. "Though injured by fire, travels, cleaning, and restoring," says Crowe, "the masterpiece still exhibits Titian in possession of all the energy of his youth, and leads us back involuntarily to the days when he composed the Bacchanals. The same beauties of arrangement, form, light, and shade, and some of the earlier charms of color, are here united to a new scale of effectiveness due to experience and a magic readiness of hand. Fifty years of practice were required to bring Titian to this mastery. Distribution, movement, outline, modelling, atmosphere and distance, are all perfect."

The following year, 1563, Titian sent to Philip "The Last Supper," with thirteen life-sized figures, upon which he had worked for six years. When it was carried to the Escurial, in spite of the protests of the painter Navarrete, the monks cut off a large piece of the upper part of the canvas, to make it the size of the wall of the refectory!

In 1565 he painted "The Transfiguration," in the San Salvadore at Venice, the "Annunciation" for the same church; "St. James of Compostella," in the Church of San Leo, and the "Cupid and Venus" of the Borghese Palace, the Queen of Love and two Graces teaching Cupid his vocation.

"Venus is seated in front of a gorgeous red-brown drapery; her head is crowned with a diadem, and her luxuriant hair falls in heavy locks on her neck. Her arms are bare, but her tunic is bound with a sash, which meets in a cross at her bosom and winds away under the arms, whilst a flap of a blue mantle crosses the knees. With both hands she is binding the eyes of Eros leaning on her lap, whilst she turns to listen to the whispering of another Eros resting on her shoulder. A girl with naked throat and arm carries Cupid's quiver, whilst a second holds his bow. Behind the group a sky overcast with pearly clouds lowers over a landscape of hills.... Light plays upon every part," says Crowe, "creating, as it falls, a due projection of shadow, producing all the delicacies of broken tone and a clear silvery surface full of sparkle, recalling those masterpieces of Paolo Veronese, in which the gradations are all in the cinerine as opposed to the golden key."

In 1566, the aged artist, now verging on ninety, heretofore exempt from taxation, was obliged to give a list of his property. He owned several houses, pieces of land, sawmills, and the like, and has been blamed because he did not state the full value of his possessions.

Vasari, who visited him at this time, writes,--"Titian has enjoyed health and happiness unequalled, and has never received from heaven anything but favor and felicity. His house has been visited by all the princes, men of letters, and gentlemen who ever come to Venice. Besides being excellent in art, he is pleasant company, of fine deportment and agreeable manners.... Titian, having decorated Venice, and, indeed, Italy and other parts of the world, with admirable pictures, deserves to be loved and studied by artists, as one who has done and is still doing works deserving of praise, which will last as long as the memory of illustrious men."

When he was ninety-one he sent to Philip II. a "Venus," the "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," a large "Tarquin and Lucretia," and "Philip Presenting his Son to an Angel," now in the Madrid Museum. He also painted for himself "Christ Crowned with Thorns," a powerful work, now in Munich, which Rubens, Rembrandt, and Van Dyck carefully studied as a model. Tintoretto hung it later in his atelier, to show what a painting ought to be.

His "Adam and Eve," now at Madrid, which Rubens greatly admired and copied, was painted at this time.

In 1576, when Titian was ninety-nine, he began his last picture, the "Christ of Pity," for the Franciscans of the Frari, with whom he had bargained for a grave in their chapel. The Saviour rests in death on the lap of the Virgin.

"We may suppose," says Donald G. Mitchell, "that a vision of Lavinia--long gone out of his household--of Cecilia, still longer gone--of Violante, a memory of his young days--may have flitted on his mind as he traced the last womanly face he was to paint."

"On marble plinths at the sides of the niche are statues of Moses and the Hellespontic Sibyl, and on a scutcheon at the Sibyl's feet we see the arms of Titian, a set square sable on a field argent, beneath the double eagle on a field or. A small tablet leaning against the scutcheon contains the defaced portraits of Titian and his son Orazio, kneeling before a diminutive group of the 'Christ of Pity.'... It is truly surprising," says Crowe, "that a man so far advanced in years should have had the power to put together a composition so perfect in line, so elevated in thought, or so tragic in expression.... We see the traces of a brush manipulated by one whose hand never grew weary, and never learned to tremble.... In the group of the Virgin and Christ--a group full of the deepest and truest feeling--there lies a grandeur comparable in one sense with that which strikes us in the 'Pietà' of Michael Angelo. For the sublime conventionalism by which Buonarotti carries us into a preternatural atmosphere, Titian substitutes a depth of passion almost equally sublime, and the more real as it is enhanced by color."

Titian did not live to complete this work, which was done by his pupil, Palma Giovine, who placed conspicuously upon it this touching inscription: "That which Titian left unfinished, Palma reverently completed, and dedicated the work to God."

Age did not spoil the skill of the master. Aretino said, on looking at a portrait of a daughter of the rich Strozzio, "If I were a painter, I should die of despair.... But certain it is that Titian's pencil has waited on Titian's old age to perform its miracles."

Tullia said, "I hold Titian to be not a painter--his creations not art, but his works to be miracles, and I think that his pigments must be composed of that wonderful herb which made Glaucus a god when he partook of it; since his portraits make upon me the impression of something divine, and, as heaven is the paradise of the soul, so God has transfused into Titian's colors the paradise of our bodies."

In the summer of this year, 1576, Venice was stricken by a plague which destroyed fifty thousand people out of one hundred and ninety thousand; more than a quarter of the whole population. There was a general panic, the sick were left to die unattended, and a law was passed that no victims of the scourge should be buried in the churches.

As the plague swept on it carried off Orazio, the son of Titian, and then the idol of Venice, Titian himself. He died suddenly August 27, 1576. The law of burial was quickly set aside by the supreme authorities, and, despite the fear of contagion, the canons of St. Mark bore his body in solemn procession to his grave in the Church of the Frari. In 1852, nearly three centuries later, the Emperor of Austria erected a magnificent mausoleum over his tomb. It is a vast canopy covering a statue of Titian, seated, with one hand resting on the Book of Art, while the other lifts the veil of Nature. Surrounding him are figures representing painting, wood-carving, sculpture, and architecture, while on the wall behind him are bas-reliefs of three of his greatest works, the "Assumption," the "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," and the "Martyrdom of St. Peter." Two angels bear the simple inscription,--

"Titiano Ferdinandus I. MDCCCLII."

Wonderful old man! self-made, a poet by nature, a marvel of industry, working to the very last on his beloved paintings, rich, tender to his family, true in his friendships. "The greatest master of color whom the world has known."

MURILLO.