THE DATE OF TITIAN'S BIRTH

Reply by Dr. Georg Gronau. Translated from the "Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft," vol. xxiv., 6th part

In the January number of the Nineteenth Century appears an article by Herbert Cook under the title, "Did Titian live to be Ninety-Nine Years Old?" The interrogation already suggests that the author comes to a negative conclusion. It is, perhaps, not without interest to set forth the reasons advanced by the English connoisseur and to submit them to adverse criticism.

(Here follows an abstract of the article.)

The reasoning, as will have been seen, is not altogether free from doubt. It has been usual hitherto in historical investigations to call in question the assertions of a man about his own life only when thoroughly weighty reasons justified such a course. Is the evidence of a Dolce and of a Vasari so free from all objection that it outweighs Titian's personal statement? Before answering this question it should be pointed out that we possess two further statements of contemporary writers on the subject of Titian's age, statements which have escaped the notice of Mr. Cook. One is to be found in a letter from the Spanish Consul in Venice, Thomas de Cornoga, to Philip II., dated 8th December 1567 (published in the very important work by Zarco del Valle[[165]]). After informing the king of Titian's usual requests on the subject of his pension, and so on, he continues: "y con los 85 annos de su edad servira à V.M. hasta la muerte."

Somewhere, then, in the very year in which Titian, according to Vasari, was "above seventy-six years of age," he seems to have been eighty-five, according to the report of another and quite independent witness, and if so, he would have been born about 1482.

We have then three definite statements:

Vasari (1566 or 1567)says"over 76"
The Consul (1567)" "85"
Titian himself (1571)""95"

This new information, instead of helping us, only serves to make still greater confusion.

The other piece of evidence not mentioned by Mr. Cook was written only a few years after Titian's death. Borghini says in his Riposo, 1584: "Mori ultimamente di vecchiezza (!not, then, of the plague?), essendo d'età d'anni 98 o 99, l'anno 1576." ... This is the first time that the traditional statement as to the master's age appears in literature. In this state of things it is worth while to look closer into the evidence of Dolce and Vasari to see if they are not after all the most trustworthy witnesses.

It is always held to be a mistake to take rather vague statements quite literally, as Mr. Cook has done, and to build thereon further conclusions. When Dolce says that Titian painted with Giorgione at the Fondaco, "non avendo egli allora appena venti anni," he is only trying to make out that his hero, here as everywhere, was a most unusual person (the whole dialogue is a glorification of the master). For the same reason he makes the following remark, which we can absolutely prove to be false:—the Assumption (he says) "fu la prima opera pubblica, che a olio facesse." Now at least one work of Titian's was, then, already to be seen in a public place—viz. the "St. Mark Enthroned, with Four Saints," in Santo Spirito, afterwards removed to the sacristy of the Salute. In other points, too, Dolce can be convicted of small errors and misrepresentations, partly on literary grounds, partly due to his desire to enhance the praise of Titian.

Vasari, again, should only be cited as witness when he speaks of works of art which he has actually seen. In such a case, apart from slips, he is always a trustworthy guide. Directly, however, he goes into biographical details or questions of chronology accuracy becomes nearly always a secondary matter. Titian's biography offers an excellent and most instructive example of this. Vasari mentions first the birth and upbringing of the boy, then he speaks of Giorgione and the Fondaco frescoes, and goes on: "dopo la quale opera fece un quadro grande che oggi è nella salla di messer Andrea Loredano.... Dopo in casa di messer Giovanni D'Anna ... fece il suo ritratto ...; ed un quadro di Ecce Homo, ..." and he goes on, "L'anno poi 1507...." If it had not been that one of these pictures, once in the possession of Giovanni D'Anna, had been preserved (now in the Vienna Gallery), and that it bears in a conspicuous place the date 1543, it would be recorded in all biographies of Titian that he painted in 1507 an "Ecce Homo" for this Giovanni D'Anna.

If one goes further into Vasari's account we read that Titian published his "Triumph of Faith" in 1508. "Dopo condottosi Tiziano a Vicenza, dipinse a fresco sotto la loggetta ... il giudizio di Salamone. Appresso tomato a Venezia, dipinse la facciata de' Grimani; e in Padoa nella chiesa di Sant' Antonio alcune storie ... de fatti di quel santo: e in quella di Santo Spirito fece ... un San Marco a sedere in mezzo a certi Santi." We now know on documentary evidence that the Vicenza fresco (which was destroyed later) dated from 1521, and similarly that the frescoes at Padua were painted in 1511, whilst the date of the S. Mark picture may be fixed with probability at 1504.

These examples prove how inexact Vasari is here once more. But it may be objected, supposing that he is inaccurate in statements which refer back, can he not be in the right in a case where he comes back, so to speak, straight from visiting Titian and writes down his observation about the master's actual age? To be sure; but when we find that so many other similar notices of Vasari are wrong, even those that refer to people whom he personally knew, we lose faith altogether. In turning over the leaves of the sixth volume of the Sansoni edition of Vasari, in which only his contemporaries, some of them closely connected, too, with him, are spoken of, we find the following incorrect statements:—

P. 99. Tribolo was 65 years old (in reality only 50).
P. 209. Bugiardini died at 75 (really 79).
P. 288. Pontormo at 65 (he died actually in his 63rd year).
P. 564. Giovanni da Udine at 70 (really 77).

A still more glaring instance is to be found when Vasari not only makes misstatements about his own life but is actually out by several years in giving his own age. One and the same event—viz. his journey with Cardinal Passerini to Florence—is given in his own autobiography to the year 1524, in the "Life of Salviati," to the year 1523, and in the "Life of Michael Angelo" to 1525. When he speaks of himself in the same passage in the "Life of Salviati" as the "putto, che allora non aveva più di nove anni," he is making a mistake of at least three years in his own age. And not less delightful is it to read in the "Life of Giovanni da Udine": "Giorgio Vasari, giovinetto di diciotto anni, quando serviva il duca Alessandro de' Medici suo primo signore l'anno 1535." We are obviously not dealing with Messer Giorgio's strongest point, for, as a matter of fact, he was at that time twenty-four years of age! The same false statement of age is found again in his own biography (vii. p. 656, with the variation, "poco piú di diciotto anni").

But I think these instances suffice to prove how little one dare build on such assertions of Vasari. Who dare say if Titian was really only seventy-six in 1566 when the Aretine visited him?

And now a few remarks on the other points raised by Mr. Cook. As a fact, it is an astonishing thing that we have no documentary evidence about Titian before 1511; but does he not share this fate with very many of his great countrymen, with Bellini, Giorgione, Sebastiano, and others? An unfriendly chance has left us entirely in the dark as to the early years of nearly all the great Venetian painters. That Dürer makes no mention of Titian's name in his letters gives no cause for surprise, for even the most celebrated of the younger artists, Giorgione, is not alluded to, and of all those with Bellini, whose fame outshone even then that of all others, only Barbari is mentioned. That Titian's name does not occur in the documents about the Fondaco frescoes may be due to the fact that Giorgione alone was commissioned to undertake the frescoes for the magistrates, and that the latter painter in his turn brought his associate Titian into the work.

Mr. Cook says that Titian still signed himself in 1511 "Dipintore" instead of "Maestro." I am not aware whether in this respect definite regulations or customs were usual in Venice.[[166]] At any rate, the painter is still described in official documents as late as 1518 as "ser Tizian depentor" (Lorenzi, "Monumenti," No. 366), when, even according to Mr. Cook's theory, he must have been thirty years old; and he is actually so called in 1528 (ibid. No. 403), after appearing in several intermediate documents as "maestro" (Nos. 373, 377). If this argument, however, proves unsound, the last point—viz. that the well-known petition to the senate in 1513 reads more like that of a man of twenty-four than one of thirty-seven—must be left to the hypothesis of individual conjecture.

Must we really close these very long inquiries by confessing they are beyond our ken? It almost seems so. For, with regard to the testimony afforded by family documents, Dr. Jacobi (whose labours were utilised by Crowe and Cavalcaselle) so conscientiously examined all that is left, that a discovery in this direction is not to be looked for. Is the statement of Tizianello that Titian's year of birth was 1477 to be rejected without further question when we remember that, as a relative of the painter, he could have had in 1622 access to documents possibly since lost?

Under these circumstances the only thing left to do is to question the works of Titian. Of these, two can be dated, not indeed with certainty, but with some degree of probability: the dedicatory painting of the Bishop of Pesaro with the portrait of Alexander VI. of 1502-03, and the picture of St. Mark, already mentioned, of the year 1504. Both are, to judge by the style, clearly early works, and both can be connected with definite historical events of the years just mentioned. That these paintings, however, could be the work of a fourteen- to fifteen-year-old artist Mr. Cook will also admit to be impossible.

Much, far too much, in the story of Venetian painting must, for want of definite information, be left to conjecture; and however unsatisfactory it is, we must make the confession that we know as little about the date of the birth of the greatest of the Venetians as we know of Giorgione's, Sebastiano's, Palma's, and the rest. But supposing all of a sudden information turned up giving us the exact date of Titian's birth, would the picture of the development of Venetian painting be any the different for it? In no wise. The relation to one another of the individual artists of the younger generation is so clearly to be read in each man's work, that no external particulars, however interesting they might be on other grounds, could make the smallest difference. Titian's relations with Giorgione especially could not be otherwise represented than has been long determined, and that whether Titian was born in 1476, 1477, 1480, or even two or three years later.[[167]] GEORG GRONAU.