If we ask what was the ‘social standing’ of Titian and of some of the most famous Venetians, we shall find that they were simple members of a Guild, and were reckoned with the working men. The Golden Book was the register of the nobles, the Silver Book was reserved for the class of the secretaries, that is, of the burghers or original citizens; but he who exercised an art such as painting, sculpture, or architecture, belonged to the people. Like the commonest housepainter, or the painter of gondolas and house furniture, Titian and Tintoretto were subject to the ‘Mariegola,’ or charter of their Guild, and had to pass through the degrees of apprentice and fellow-craftsman before becoming masters.
The law was that ‘no painter, either Venetian or foreign, should be allowed to sell his paintings unless he was inscribed on the register of painters and had sworn to conform to the rules of that art,’ in other words, to the charter of the Guild. Furthermore, if
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he sold his work anywhere except in his shop, he was liable to a fine of ten lire.
We know that neither Titian nor any of the great artists of his time rebelled against these regulations. They were all their lives ‘brethren’ of their Guild, and every one of them was obliged to obey the chief of the corporation in all matters concerning that fraternity, though he might be a mere painter of doors and windows. It was not until the eighteenth century that the artist painters organised themselves in a separate body called the College of Painters. The examination of Paolo Veronese, which I have translated in speaking of the Holy Office, shows clearly enough what a poor opinion the authorities had of artistic inspiration.
Many writers, amongst whom Monsieur Yriarte is an exception, have told us that literature and the sciences were not cultivated with any success in Venice during the sixteenth century. It is at least true that the few who occupied themselves with those matters displayed qualities not far removed from genius.
It was very common for the great Venetian nobles to play patron to poets, painters, and architects, and almost every name that became famous in the arts and sciences recalls that of some patrician or secretary who protected the artist, the writer, or the student. The Republic was often the refuge of gifted men whom political or personal reasons had exiled from their homes. Roman, Tuscan, and Lombard celebrities spent their lives in Venice and added their glory to hers. Who remembers that Aldus Manutius was a Roman? Or that Gaspara Stampa, who is always counted as one of the best of Venetian poets, was born in Milan? The Venetians, too, showed a wonderful tact in the degree of the hospitality they accorded. One need only compare the reception Petrarch met with in the fourteenth century, which was nothing less than royal, with the good-natured toleration shown to Pietro Aretino two hundred years later. The Republic’s treatment of the two men is the measure of the distance that separates the immortal poet from the brilliant and vicious pamphleteer. If the latter spent some agreeable years in Venice, that was due much more to the protection of a few friends than to any privileges granted him by the government.
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