Fig. 260. Titian. Bacchus and Ariadne.—London.
Chapter VIII
VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE
Titian before 1545—Some contemporaries, Sebastiano del Piombo, Palma Vecchio—The advent of Modern Sensitiveness in Lorenzo Lotto—Moretto of Brescia—Correggio—Titian’s last Manner, its subjectivism and impressionism—The Portraitist Moroni—Tintoretto and the new dramatic emotionalism—Paolo Veronese, his spectacular mastery and impressionism, his characteristic works—Eighteenth Century Venetians: Tiepolo, Canaletto and Guardi—Longhi.
The glory of Venetian painting is to an unusual degree that of a single individual, Titian[[78]] of Cadore. He lived nearly a hundred years, from 1477 to 1576, and we can trace his painting for more than seventy years of serene and unbroken progress. He had great contemporaries—Sebastiano del Piombo, Palma Vecchio, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Lorenzo Lotto, Moroni, Moretto of Brescia—but so various and comprehensive is his achievement that their work seems merely so many extensions of the paths first explored by him. In his noble and measured sensuousness, he seems nearer the Greeks than any other Italian painter.
If he is something less than admirable as a character, it is because of an unpleasantly calculating side. He schemed ruthlessly for preferment and lucrative sinecures, had the repute of envying young artists of talent, flattered to the limit his Hapsburg patrons, bargained and begged concerning prices, let himself be puffed egregiously by his blackguard friend, Pietro Aretino, first and most formidable of yellow journalists. Yet this element of craft in the man was eminently Venetian. They schemed for splendor and pleasure, and measured even their indulgences. Thus we should not expect lyrical raptures or extremes of any sort in Titian. His art is one of judgment and moderation. Indeed that calculating spirit which makes him unamiable as a man was a source of strength to him as an artist. One of his pupils, Palma Giovine, has described his manner of working. First he laid in his pictures heavily in neutral tones. Then he turned them to the wall for months to dry. Then he would pass from one to the other, scrutinizing each “as if it were his worst enemy.” He would add color, amend drawing and composition, thus systematically carrying many pictures forward at a time, and subjecting each to repeated criticism and correction. He never painted a figure at one go, saying that “he who improvises his song never achieves learned verses or well turned.” Precisely the greatness of Titian lay in his capacity to put ardor into these prolonged critical processes. Thus if certain raptures are denied him, he is never below himself, but always as noble in sentiment as he is resplendent in color.
Tiziano Vecellio was born at Cadore, in the Dolomites, in 1477.[[79]] Its shadowy oaks and blue alps live in his backgrounds. At eleven he was put with a mosaic worker, Zuccati, at Venice. He may have worked for a time with Gentile Bellini, but attained his real development in the studio of Giovanni Bellini, under the stimulus of his fellow pupil, Giorgione. This intimate and poetical phase of Titian’s genius lasts from before 1505 to 1516 and the Assumption.
His second period is that of fullest color and vitality. It runs from 1517 to say 1536, Titian’s fortieth to fifty-ninth year, and the characteristic works are the monumental altar-pieces at Venice and the Mythologies painted for the Este family at Ferrara.
The third period extends from about 1537 to 1548. It is marked by deeper resonances of color that is tending towards tone, and by a more objective and static ideal. Energy is no longer squandered, and intimate poetry is not sought. Typical works are those mythologies and portraits done for the Duke of Urbino, and the early Hapsburg portraits.
