Meanwhile Titian himself is passing into a subjective phase. In 1545 he was at Rome. Michelangelo, who offered him unusual courtesies, doubtless showed him the Sistine ceiling and the recently finished Last Judgment. Titian, as he writes himself, studied with humble amazement the “marvellous old stones” that the Roman soil was yielding up to the newly founded museums.
Fig. 289. Charles V. at Mühlberg.—Madrid.
Even before the Roman trip, his style begins to show an old man’s restless vehemence. The titanic ceiling decorations for the Salute, of 1543 and 1544, Abraham and Isaac, Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, display at once an almost sensational energy and a lesser regard for the superficial attractions of color. The rugged designs are hacked out in bold splotches of light and dark. The method begins to be luministic. The partial foreshortening of the figures to adjust them to being seen from below is the decorative compromise which prevails at Venice from Tintoretto to Tiepolo. The new point of view is easiest studied in Christ crowned with Thorns, in the Louvre. Titian passes swiftly through this overtly dramatic stage. The same year, 1548, that saw the Crowning with Thorns, saw also the equestrian portrait of Charles V, Conqueror, Figure [289], after the battle of Mühlberg. What is odd about the picture is the elimination of all military conventions—no battle reek, no stricken foes, no busy staff. Instead just the pale, inflexible, thoughtful face of a slight old man, physically frail but firmly seated on a cantering horse. There is no frank color except the purple scarf and the gold of armor and horse trappings. Everything is expressed in marvellous grays and browns which contain hints of all the colors. There is no linear drawing; edge melts into edge without abrupt contrasts. A twilight mystery, a veiled quality, adds immensely to the expression of melancholy and might. The mere spectacle of life has become relatively uninteresting to Titian. He rather meditates on those creative throes of the mind which underlie action. His conqueror is a thinker.
Fig. 290. Titian. The Rape of Europa.—Mrs. John L. Gardner, Boston.
In Titian’s own portrait, of 1550, at Berlin, the new method is more strongly announced. The form grows out of a silvery gloom by reason of hesitating flickers of light which yet have extraordinary modelling power. In character the work is remarkable. One senses smouldering under the weathered surfaces of this man of seventy-three the most formidable capacities for wrath and for passion.
The nudes and mythologies of these final years, the various Danae’s and the Nymph and Faun at Vienna, the Calisto and Actæon at Bridgewater House, the Venus and Adonis at Madrid, all show a very different temper from the early poesies. There is no suggestion of meditative dalliance, no shy Arcadianism. These are mortals stung and lashed by desire. Love is not sweet on their lips but bitter and fateful. Even Europa, Figure [290], at Fenway Court, the finest of these later poesies, seems to fill the sunlight sky and sea with a spasm of erotic expectancy. Passion becomes cosmic. Strange capacities for tenderness also appear. Compare the Deposition in the Prado, Figure [291], of 1559, with the masterpiece of forty years earlier, Figure [273], at the Louvre. The noble domelike arrangement persists, but within the compositional dome what a change! The body of the Christ is no longer grandly disposed. It crumples as it is turned into the tomb. The thing has the unexpectedness of fact. The canvas is soberly incandescent with half-lit faces which gleam through the deep grays and browns. Each light is a focus of compassion. Titian himself, impersonating St. Joseph of Arimathea, supports the Christ.
Fig. 291. Titian. The Entombment.—Madrid.