Fig. 292. Titian. Education of Cupid.—Borghese, Rome.
In one of the latest poesies, the Education of Cupid, Figure [292], at the Borghese, Rome, the new method may be studied. The forms are built up of little and apparently indeterminate touches of russets and grays that glow from within. The form builds itself out vibratingly. It is no longer as palpable to the hand as that of the early Titians, but it is more palpable to the eye and to the mind. Tone has driven out color; atmospheric envelopment has replaced minute description; the artist merely creates gradations of light which afford the illusion of bulk. It is what we call today, rather loosely, impressionism, or, more accurately, luminism. In the character of these goddesses we have no longer wistfulness, that ineffable adolescent quality of Titian’s early poesies, but women fully conscious of their power to give or take away.
His later pictures, The Crowning with Thorns at Munich (1570) and the Pietà (1576) in the Venice Academy, are nobly tragic in mood. Titian faces the last great event not as a humanist, but as a humble believer sorrowing in the suffering of his Lord. Carried off by the plague in 1576, Titian had lived nearly a century, for over seventy years had been a famous painter. In that long course there is no sign of failure of power. His dominant mood changes according to his age from the ardent pastoralism of his early maturity, through the dramatic energy of his middle age, and the impersonal splendor of his first old age. And when he had passed the scriptural term, he developed new depths of feeling, and created to contain them a pulsating realm of light and dark in twilight. He had begun with the cool preciseness of Giovanni Bellini and closed with a passionate mystery of expression which foretells Rembrandt. So far as Venice was concerned, he not merely led its Renaissance, but was its Renaissance, both in rise and decay. And it is noteworthy that while Raphael and Michelangelo end in ostentation of power and decline of feeling, Titian ends in deeper capacities whether for passion or sympathy, works away from the daylight realities of humanism towards new depths in natural appearance and new depths in his own soul.
Around such a man a throng of able painters naturally grew up. The poorest imitated him, the better took hints from his marvellous practice and went their own way. Among these was Giambattista Moroni of Bergamo, born in 1520 and trained under Moretto of Brescia. Mediocre as a religious painter, he was a portraitist of acutest vision for character. A provincial, he cared little for the idealizations of the time. In such a portrait as the Tailor, at London, or the amazing old Abbess in the Metropolitan Museum, or the Husband and Wife, at Cleveland, or The Widower, at Dublin, Figure [293], he gives us the very look of people, even to their uneasiness as they submit to the ordeal of being portrayed, and withal their intelligence, diligence, and patience. Titian, when overdriven with portrait commissions, habitually referred his clients to Moroni, as an abler artist in the specialty. And indeed Moroni, while lacking Titian’s style, looked harder at his sitters than Titian ever did. He died in 1572, four years before his generous friend.
Fig. 293. G-B. Moroni. The Widower.—Dublin.
The Bassanos, the father Jacopo and his sons Leandro and Francesco, were too popular to be omitted. Their style is pretty eclectic with something of late Titian and Tintoretto in it. They treat the old religious themes, are good portraitists, and carry out on their own initiative a bucolic sort of painting, with abundant horses, cattle and dogs. So homely a tradition has its place in breaking down the decorum of the grand style. The excellent average of the family in their craft may be judged from Leandro’s Pietà, at Cleveland.
Sometimes over the velvety calm of Venice and the lagoon will roll up a thunder storm. The radiant color becomes more sombrely rich under the tossing clouds. Their steely edges break into the lightning flash; domes and towers for a moment stagger under the lashing of the rain squall. The storm passes, the leaden clouds show saffron backs against the blue, the evening is here with double serenity and purity. Such is Jacopo Tintoretto amid the reflective tranquility, and confident splendors of Venetian painting—a wind of the spirit, a shattering, yet consoling, apparition. Tenderness, tragedy, romance, are his realm. Where his contemporaries dealt in superb averages, he deals in transcendent exceptions. Thus he has ever been a baffling figure to the critics. For the febrile Ruskin, he is among the greatest of painters; for the coolly analytical Kenyon Cox, he is little better than a reckless sensationalist. Every one, friend or foe of his art, must admit its Shakespearean richness and variety. He lacks Titian’s Olympian poise, but is more universal.
