Part 6

Titian does not seem to have been very much appreciated by his patrons at the beginning of his career. He inspired no affection. He was acknowledged as the greatest of all the young painters; but the Republic, it would seem, was never very proud of the man who did her so much credit and added so greatly to her fame. Even although the noise of his genius was echoed all over the world,--although the great Emperor himself stooped to pick up his brush, declaring that a Titian might well be served by a Cæsar,--although Charles the Fifth sat to him repeatedly, and maintained that he was the only painter whom he would care to honour,--the Venetians do not seem to have been greatly enamoured of him. Perhaps it was that they missed the soul, the purity and grace and devotion, of the pictures of Bellini and Carpaccio. Certainly, as far as one can judge, he did not have a prepossessing nature. He was shifty in his dealings with his patrons and unfaithful in his promises. He seems to have belonged to a corrupt and luxurious society. Pietro Aretino had a very bad influence on Titian. He taught him to intrigue, to flatter, to betray. Aretino was a base-born adventurer for whom no historian seems to have a good word. He was, however, a man of wit and dazzling cleverness, with a touch of real genius. Aretino corresponded with all the most cultured men of his time, and he had the power of making those whom he chose famous. It was he who introduced Titian to Charles the Fifth.

Titian's pictures were much more saleable in foreign courts than in his own country. Abroad they did not seem to have the lack of soul which the Venetians so greatly deplored. It was the old case of the prophet having no honour in his own country. Certainly in the art of portraiture Titian has never been surpassed. At that period he had the field completely to himself. Nothing could have been more magnificent than Titian's portraits. They help to record the history of the age. It was in Titian's power to confer upon his subjects the splendour that they loved, handing them down to posterity as heroes and learned persons. His men were all noble, worthy to be senators and emperors, no coxcombs or foolish gallants. Titian was more at home in pictures of this kind than in religious subjects. His Madonnas are without significance; his Holy Families give no message of blessing to the world.

In the prime of his life he moved from his workshops to a noble and luxurious palace in San Cassiano, facing the wide lagoon and the islands. All trace of it has disappeared, and homes of the poor cover the garden where the best company of Venice was once entertained. It is said that Titian gave the gayest parties and suppers--that he entertained the most regal guests. Nevertheless, although made a knight and a count, and a favourite at most of the courts in Europe, he was greatly disliked by the Venetian Signoria, who in the midst of his famous supper-parties called upon him to demand that he should execute a certain work for which he had received the money long before. He seems to have been exceedingly grasping--a strange trait in the character of a painter. One sees throughout his correspondence, until the end of his life, a certain desire and demand for money. Undoubtedly he often painted merely for money alone, turning out a sacred picture one day and a Venus the next with equal impartiality. Anything, it was said, could have been got out of Titian for money. The Venetians never loved Titian's works, though foreign princes adored them. He seems to have laboured, until the end of his life, more from love of gain than from necessity. He was buried at the Frari, carried thither in great haste by order of the Signoria,--for it was at the time of the plague, when other victims were taken to the outlying islands and put in the earth unnamed.

Somehow, in reading the life of Titian one is brought right away to the twentieth century. Here is the painter with the attendant journalist, Pietro Aretino, the boomer. Aretino was a journalist, the first. He took Titian in hand and "ran" him for all he was worth. Had it not been for this system of booming, Titian would probably not have been well known during his lifetime. In the Academy of the Fine Arts one can trace by his pictures a splendid historical record of Titian's life, and can see plainly the changes in popular feeling and their effect upon his work. For very many years he lived and painted constantly, and then was killed by the plague!

There is a picture painted by him when he was fourteen years of age--a picture which contains all the qualities, in the germ, of his later work: marvellous architecture, pomp, yet great simplicity and luminous colour. Here also is the last picture he ever painted--at the age of ninety-nine. Think of the interval between the two! It is sombre, pious. There is something pathetic about it. This great painter, whose work showed such fury, audacity, vehemence,--the man who had always the sun on his palette--was now painting mildly, carefully, obviously with the shadow of approaching death upon him.

A marvellous picture by Titian hangs in the Academy of the Fine Arts. It is considered to be one of his finest pictures--the masterpiece of all his masterpieces--the eye of the peacock, as it were. This picture was neglected for many years, hidden away in an obscure portion of a church, and covered with a thick layer of cobwebs and dust. The custodian had almost forgotten the subject of the picture and the name of the painter. One day a certain Count Cicogna happened to visit the church. Being a great connoisseur and lover of art, he noticed this picture, and could not resist moistening his finger and rubbing it over a portion of the canvas. To his amazement, this portion emerged young and fresh, and as highly coloured as when it left the painter's hands--a picture bearing upon it the unmistakable stamp of Titian's genius! The delight of the Count can be imagined. He suggested to the custodian, with great care and tact, that he would present to the church a bran-new glossy picture, very large, of some religious subject; and mentioned in a casual way that they might give him the dilapidated old picture as a slight return. This was the Assunta. It was painted for the church of the Frari. Fra Marco Jerman, the head of the convent, ordered it at his own expense. Many a time when the work was in progress he and all the ignorant brethren visited the painter's studio and criticised his picture, grumbling and shaking their heads, and wondering whether it would be good enough to be accepted, whether it would be sneered at when uncovered before all Venice. They undoubtedly thought that they had done a rash thing in engaging him. Think of the agony of Titian, hindered by these ignorant men, being forced to explain elaborately that the figures were not too large, that they must needs be in proportion to the space! It was not until the envoy of the Emperor had seen the picture and declared it to be a masterpiece, offering a large sum of money for its purchase, that the Frari understood its value, and decided that, as the buying and selling of pictures was not in their profession, they had better keep it.

Tintoretto painted, according to the popular feeling of his period, for the good of mankind. This we certainly owe to the Renaissance--the desire to benefit mankind, and not only men individually. Tintoretto felt this strongly. One sees not only the effect of this new era of thought in his work: one sees also human life at the base of it. Tintoretto worked for the good of mankind, and his work throbs with humanity. There was atmosphere, reality, in it. He was, it is true, a pupil of Titian; but it was Michael Angelo whose works had the greatest attraction for him. He loved Angelo's overwhelming power and gigantic force. Tintoretto's pictures seem to possess much of the glowing colour of Titian; but he paid greater attention to chiaroscuro. He seems to have had the power of lowering the tone of a sky to suit his composition of light and shade. His conception of the human form was colossal. His work showed a wide sweep and power. He turned to religion, not because it was a duty, but because it answered the needs of the human heart--because it helped him to forget the mean and sordid side of life, braced him to his work, and consoled him in his days of despair. The Bible was not to him a cut-and-dried document concerning the Christian religion, but a series of beautiful parables pointing to a finer life. Then, Tintoretto asked himself, Why keep to the old forms and the old ideals? Why should the saints and biblical people be represented as Romans, walking in a Roman background? He himself thought of them as people of his own kind, and painted them as such. Thus, he argued, people became more familiar with the Bible, more readily understood it.

Tintoretto painted portraits not only of Venetians, but also of foreign princes. Although he painted with tremendous rapidity, the demand was greater than the supply. His paintings were popular. They gave pleasure to the eye, and stimulated the emotions. He painted people at their best, in glowing health and full of life. Under his marvellous brush old men became vigorous and full-blooded. His pictures give the same sort of pleasure as one finds in looking upon a casket of jewels--they are just as deathless in their brilliancy. The portrait that the popular taste called forth in Titian's day was just about as unlike the typical modern portrait as you could possibly imagine,--the colourless, cold, unsympathetic portrait of the fish-eyed mayor in his robes.

At the age of fifteen, Jacopo Robusti--tintoretto, the little dyer--was brought by his father, Battista Robusti, to the studio of the great painter Titian. There he stayed for a little while, until one day Titian came across, in his bottega, some drawings that showed promise. On discovering that they were from the hand of Jacopo, he sent the boy away. Young as he was, Tintoretto had all the arrogance of the well-to-do citizen. He would brook no man's No, and would not yield his own pretensions for the greatest genius in Christendom. He did not need money: he was independent: and he started boldly to teach himself. Boiling with rage at the affront Titian had put upon him, he was determined to make a career for himself. He studied the works of Michael Angelo and of Titian, and inscribed upon his studio wall, so that his ambition might always be before his eyes, "Il desegno di Michael Angelo, e' il colorito di Titiano." He studied casts of ancient marbles, and made designs of them by the light of a lamp, in order to gain a strong effect of shadow. Also, he copied the pictures of Titian. Seeking, by every means in his power, to educate himself, he modelled figures of wax and plaster, upon which he hung his drapery. And always, whether painting by night or by day, he arranged his lights so as to have everything in high relief. Tintoretto's inventions for teaching himself were endless. Often he visited the painters' benches in the piazza of St. Mark's, where the poor men of the profession worked at painting chests and furniture of all kinds. In those days there were too many painters. The profession was overdone. Many young men who had real genius worked at the benches. Titian was the great man at the moment, and Palma Vecchio. But Tintoretto did not care. He forced his work down men's throats--gave it to them for nothing if they would not pay for it. He was always ready with his brush, and would paint anything from an organ to an altar-piece. He worked like a giant, with tremendous sweep and power; no subject was too great or too laborious; and always he had a desire to do his best.

Tintoretto would not be trifled with or condescended to. He would not have his work under-valued, and would allow no patrician, not even a prince, to play the patron to him. He was determined not to be set aside. He flung his pictures at people's heads, and insisted on undertaking any great piece of work there was to do. Thus, Tintoretto's pictures are to be seen everywhere in Venice--in almost every church, every council-hall, every humble chapel, every parish church, every sacristy. He neglected no opportunity to make his work known. He worked with extraordinary rapidity. Whenever Tintoretto came across a fine fair wall he prevailed upon the master-mason to allow him to paint it. A fifty-foot space he would cover with avidity, asking nothing for his work but the cost of the material, giving his time and labour as a gift.

Portraiture was the outcome of realism, and one of the most important discoveries of the Renaissance. People began to feel that they wanted not only their affluence in possessions, but also their own individual faces and features, handed down to posterity. Thus portraiture began to creep in. At first it appeared in the churches under cover of saints and Madonnas; gradually it became possible to distinguish one from another--it was not always the same face. Painters took models from life as their saints. But portraiture in painting was very slow in reaching perfection. Sculpture had accomplished that long before; now that the latest craze was for portraiture, it was the sculptors who were the most prepared to take it up, and stepped forward to execute commissions. They had plenty of material in the way of old Roman coins and busts. Donatello and Vittore Pisano were the two men who first offered to satisfy the new want. Donatello executed marvellous studies of character, and Pisano medals such as have never been seen before or since. But even these men, fine as their work undoubtedly was, felt that the public could not long remain satisfied merely with the sculptured portrait. They must have colour. Donatello, therefore, began to stain and colour his busts, showing that painting, not sculpture, was to be the portrait art of the Renaissance. Vittore Pisano also gave up his sculpture, and turned his attention to portrait-painting; but he was only an amateur in this direction, and did not meet with much success. No portrait-painter of any merit was produced in that generation. The idea was entirely new. Men had not had sufficient time in which to study the human face. The next generation ushered in Mantegna, who painted a marvellous portrait of Cardinal Sciramo; but he went too far in the other direction. He painted his man as he was--as he saw him, line for line. He painted the soul and heart of him--and the soul and the heart were black. Venice was revolted with such a portrait. It seemed indeed indecent that a man's character should be laid bare in such a way. It was a picture they did not care to hang in the Council Chamber, a picture that was unpleasant to live with. The Cardinal belonged to the State. His honour was their honour, and it must not be defiled. The Venetians came to the conclusion that portraits must be painted not in full-face but in profile. Thus the characteristics of a man, if they be not pleasant, do not come out clearly. This accounts for the number of profile portraits. The age wanted an agreeable portrait. This Giorgione provided. He realised that the treatment must always be bright, joyous, romantic. His followers trod in his footsteps: the master's style was too strong and pronounced to be much deviated from. Giorgione seems to have reached the topmost height of art at that period. Even Titian, for a generation after his death, followed in Giorgione's lines; only, Titian's work was a little more sober, a little less sunny. He had the sense to see that Giorgione had expanded the old rule and done something worth adopting, and for a time he simply followed this joyful outburst. His early years fell at a time when life was glowing, radiant, almost intoxicating in its vigour. But youth and joy cannot last; nor could the Renaissance spirit. Gradually the trouble and the strife from which the whole of Italy was suffering filtered into Venice, and cast a serious aspect over art and social life. Venice, of all the states in Italy, was the last to feel this sobering influence. She had been defeated both in battle and in commerce; and, although she was not totally crushed under the heel of Spain, life was not the endless holiday it promised to be. Men took themselves more seriously, and the quieter pleasures of friendship and affection began to be more sought after. Religion revived in importance. Men clung to it, as they always do in time of trouble, for comfort and support. It was no longer a political sentiment, but a personal one. Art declined as the sunshine and the gaiety that had fed and nourished it ebbed away. When men began to feel that individually they were of no avail, that they were subject to the powers round about and above them, the death-blow of great art fell. Titian was influenced by his environment, and his painting changed completely. He produced pictures that would have been looked upon with scorn in his earlier days. The faces of his men are no longer smooth and free from care. One saw there struggle and suffering, and all that life had done for them. But Titian was not a pessimist at heart. The joy and gaiety in which he had been brought up formed part of his character. Whatever changes may have happened to his country politically, nothing could alter that entirely. And it was no doubt this early training and the atmosphere in which he was brought up that made his pictures the masterpieces they were. You notice the men who came after Titian--how they began to decline. For example, Lorenzo Lotto had been brought up in the heyday of the Renaissance; but the new order of things, the change from national virility to national decadence, enfeebled him. Then, again, the coming in touch with poets and men of letters, victims flying from the fury of Spain, was a new stimulant to art. It did not exactly improve it; but it certainly changed it.

A fine period of painting does not come in a day, nor does it end in a day; and, although the universal interest in the Venetian school dies with Titian and Tintoretto, it does not die unnoticed. The torch of art flickered up many times in Venice before it was finally extinguished. The men who came immediately after Tintoretto had not the strength to start off on any new lines. They simply fell back on variations of the earlier masters, showing much of the masters' weaknesses, but few of their great qualities. Some even were so inartistic as to attempt to pass off their pictures, on ignorant people, as Titians and Giorgiones. However, before the Republic disappeared there were two or three men who took the first rank among the painters of the period, provincial artists, men whose art was sufficiently like her own to be readily understood, such as Paul Veronese. The provinces were not declining so rapidly as Venice was. They were less troubled by the approaching storm. Men there led simple, healthy lives; Spanish manners were long in reaching the provinces, and, when they did, the people were slow to succumb. Men in the provinces had stamina, simplicity, and courage with which to meet the new order of things. They combined ceremony and splendour with childlike naturalness. Consequently, the works of Paul Veronese delighted the Venetians. The more fashionable and ceremonious private life in the city became, the more were the people charmed with his simple rendering.

Gradually the taste of the Venetians turned towards pictures in humble quarters--in the provincial towns and in the country. In the Middle Ages the country was so upset that it was not safe for people to venture out of the city; but with the advance of civilisation this state of affairs was altered. People began to delight in country life. The aristocracy took villas in the provinces, and the poorer people wanted representations of them in their houses. The painters of the period, Palma and Bonifacio, began to add pastoral backgrounds to their works. But the first great landscape painter was Jacopo Bassano. His treatment of light and atmosphere was masterly, and his colouring was jewel-like and brilliant. It was Bassano who started that great Spanish school which was to culminate in Velasquez. Venice did not produce many great painters in the eighteenth century--only three or four. The city itself remained unchanged: it was just as beautiful, still the most beautiful and luxurious city in the world: it was the people who changed. They became apathetic, placid, and drifting, perfectly contented with one another and with their lots in life, never trying to better themselves in any way. There were no difficulties, no problems to be solved. People were just as gay as they were serious, just as much interested in paintings as they were in politics. This was a vegetable period.

It is strange that such a demoralising time should have seen the rise of a great master; but it certainly saw him in Canaletto. That artist differed from nearly all the Venetian painters in that he had complete mastery of technique. His work is just as fine technically as that of Velasquez or that of Rembrandt. It shows marvellous dexterity and power. He understood his materials better than any other Venetian painter--better even than Giorgione.

Guardi and Tiepolo followed Canaletto. In Tiepolo's work especially you realise the character of these eighteenth-century people. At that time Venice was sliding downhill rapidly. Her people were aping dignity. They dressed extravagantly, not so much for the love of colour and splendour as for swagger. They were degenerating rapidly. Here and there lesser masters appeared; but Venetian art became poorer and poorer, until it reached the condition of the present day, when in Venice there is no art at all. The kind of work which the people appreciate sickens and saddens you--those sunlit photographs glazed with blue to counterfeit moonlight, and tricky, vicious water-colours,--brutal pictures with metallic reflections and cobalt skies,--all wonderfully alike, all with the same orange sail, and all equally untrue.

Year by year painters continue to paint Venice without the public showing signs of weariness. Perhaps the failure of the artists to reproduce the undying charm of that dazzling jewel of cities is both the excuse and the reason for the pertinacity of the tribe. Womanlike, she eludes them; manlike, they pursue. Few have seen the real Venice, the Venice of Ruskin and Turner and Whistler. Venice is not for the cold-blooded spectator, for the amateur or the art dabbler: she is for the enthusiastic colourist and painter, the man who sees, and does not merely look.

Sir Edward Burne-Jones was wont to declare that to paint Venice as she should be painted one must needs live for three thousand years: the first thousand should be devoted to experiments in various media; the second to producing works and destroying them; the third to completing slowly the labour of centuries. He would never have dreamed of spending a painting holiday beyond Italy--that is, unless he had been permitted to live for over five thousand years; and even then, it was his firm opinion, no man could paint St. Mark's, which was unpaintable--mere pigment could not suggest it.

STREETS, SHOPS, AND COURTYARDS