A history of Italian painting

by Frank Jewett Mather

Fig. 271. Titian. The Assumption.—S. M. dei Frari.

Fig. 272. Titian. Pesaro Madonna.—Frari.

An over-spiritual observer might ask, Why are the Apostles so jubilant at losing their beloved Mistress? Only a little earlier, Giovanni Bellini, who painted the theme for San Pietro Martire at Murano, invested his witnesses with pathos, silence, wonder and awe. In comparison Titian is obvious, and barely reverent. He thinks of nothing but that this is Mary’s moment of highest glory, so of course her friends cheer boisterously as they wave her off heavenwards. Titian’s mind does not work in half tones of sensibility, yet he is honestly religious in his own way. The Lord’s people are good enough for him, and he likes them not in the hush of devotion but in the expansive moments of action. The attitude is operatic. Choruses have no business with overtones, all voices shall be robusto. What infallible taste he shows along these simple lines! There is no smallness, no mere floridness of utterance, no hint of over-emphasis. Such art is the despair of the modern artist. He cannot feel so simply. The great enduring commonplaces are denied to his more complicated genius.

Perhaps Titian is even more himself in the Madonna of the Pesaro Family, Figure [272], which was in hand from 1519 to 1526. For animation he sets the throne of Mary to the right, and carries splendid columns back in depth. He gives to every gesture of saint or donor a balancing relation to the gracious curve of the body of the Queen of Heaven. He renews the Giorgionesque mystery in the portraits of children, adds picturesque accessories of armor, velvet, and silken banner. The picture is as rich as it is logical and monumental, as varied in character as it is unified in mood. It is only by chance that it stands almost over Titian’s tomb, and yet it would have been hard to find a picture that better represents both his more intimate and his more objective perfections. Even such masterpieces as the Madonna with six Saints in the Vatican (1523), and the lost Slaying of Saint Peter Martyr (before 1530), which enjoyed three centuries of praise, seem a little set and over-reasonable in comparison.

Alphonso d’Este’s Alabaster Chamber at Ferrara represented the high point of mythological poesy for the Full Renaissance, as Castello with its Signorelli and Botticellis marked a similar culmination for the Early Renaissance. It is lamentable that we see these essential expressions of two great moments torn from their context and relegated to the promiscuity of museums. Yet the scattered poesies from the Alabaster Chamber remain a delight, at London, Madrid, and Philadelphia, and give us the truest impression of the pagan greatness of Titian in his maturity. For this series old Giovanni Bellini, in 1514, painted a sylvan Feast of the Gods, Figure [242]. Titian, succeeding to the work, freely repainted the landscape, to harmonize it with his own poesies. Two years later Titian set up The Worship of Venus, now in the Prado. Before the white image of the goddess the shadowy lawn swarms with winged loves. They frolic, dally, pluck apples shaken down by their mates from the trees above. The strong little bodies glow delicately like the inside of a great shell. A rhythm of joyous life runs through the picture. In due course Rubens, Boucher and Fragonard will fill earth and air with tumbling Cupids like these, but will hardly recapture the spontaneous ecstasy of this scene. It is baffling to learn that its origins are academic—from the imaginary gallery of the Alexandrian philosopher, Philostratus. Again a two year interval, for Titian ever declined to be hurried, and, in 1520, the Bacchanal, or Bacchus among the Andrians, was ready. About the lolling figures of two clothed nymphs, the sleek brown bodies of nude sylvans bend in grand gestures as they pour the wine. At the left Bacchus in professional aloofness goes about the serious business of emptying a flagon. At the right is flung the relaxed body of a nymph overcome by sleep and wine. Her splendid nudity shines forth in competition with a soaring afternoon cloud, while behind her a lightly draped shepherd dances with his lass. The orgy is swept by the clean breeze and dappled with sunlight—purifying elements. We have not intoxication in the gross sense, but the Greek notion of an elemental Bacchic inspiration.

The decoration was triumphantly completed in 1523 with the Bacchus and Ariadne, Figure [260], now in the National Gallery. The noisy train of the god of wine sweeps into the picture oblivious of the heroine. As the leopards swing the car along the strand, the God flings himself rapturously towards the form of startled Ariadne, who with a grand, hesitating gesture turns her head and body away while her legs and feet still bear her towards her wooer. The thing sparkles with wine-red and azure, tingles electrically with passion, gives forth a clamor which is also a harmony. Its exuberance is well contained in noble compositional forms. The passionate yet disciplined soul of Titian approaching fifty is fully expressed in this marvellous work.

Fig. 273. Titian. The Entombment.—Louvre.

Passing to the religious pictures once more, the Entombment, Figure [273], now in the Louvre, which was painted for the Gonzagas about 1525, is again a masterpiece of unaffected feeling and of finest disposition of masses. The central group looms against the sky with the grandeur of a great dome. Whoever has seen strong men caring for the dead or stricken will realize the reserve and nobility of acts which are expressions of sympathies too deep for words. I saw things like that at the Messina earthquake. Equally fine and restrained is the protective attitude of the Magdalen towards a Mary stark and mute with grief. Magnificent is the contrast of the grand nude forms of the dead Christ, with the rich stuffs in which the attendants are clothed. I imagine when Titian conceived this simple elegy with such power and pathos he may have had scornful reference to Raphael’s distorted and sensational version of the same theme, Figure [186]. And perhaps the æsthetic lesson of the picture is that choice feeling is far more difficult of attainment than fine painting.