In June, 1539, Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino now, received three portraits, of the Emperor, the King of France, and the Turkish Sultan, from Titian. Vasari speaks of them, but they have been lost. In 1542-44 he painted a banner for the Brotherhood of Corpus Domini at Urbino—the Resurrection and the Last Supper. The pictures were shortly afterwards framed, and are now in the Urbino Gallery (10). Then in November, 1546, Duchess Giulia Varana of Urbino writes impatiently to Titian, sending at the same time some sleeves he had asked for, and hoping that he will not delay longer to finish "our portraits" (Gronau, op. cit., p. 99). And letters of Aretino in 1545 confirm the fact that Titian was painting portraits of the Duke and Duchess. Then in February, 1547, one of the courtiers of Urbino sent Titian a dress of the Duchess, adding that "a handsomer one would have been sent if he had not wished for one of crimson or pink velvet"; a damask one was sent of the desired colour. The portrait by Titian in the State Apartments of the Pitti Palace, discovered only a few years ago, is said to be of Catherine de' Medici, by Tintoretto. It is, however, certainly Titian's (Gronau, op. cit., p. 100), and is probably the missing portrait of the Duchess Giulia. It is unfinished, and the dress is of rose colour. It is one of his finest portraits.
There were two portraits at least of Guidobaldo by Titian, one of 1538 and one of 1545; one of these is said to have been in Florence in the seventeenth century. Gronau suggests that the "Young Englishman" of the Pitti Gallery (92), the finest portrait even Titian ever painted, may be one of them. But I cannot persuade myself that that figure is other than English. Yet if it be, it might well companion the Bella.
In 1545 Titian, on his way to Rome, travelled by Ferrara and Pesaro, where Guidobaldo, who had accompanied him, entertained him and made him many presents, sending a company of horse with him to Rome. There follows an interval of twenty years, in which their friendship seems not altogether to have been forgotten. Then between 1564 and 1567 Titian painted several pictures for Guidobaldo, among them a "Christ" and a "Madonna"; in 1573 he apparently had another commission. It is impossible to say what these pictures may have been.
[232] The style of Aretino was often rugged, wayward, and unintelligible, like his character. He seems to imagine that, of the three batons placed behind the Duke, one, bearing acorns and oak leaves, alludes to his successful campaigns on his own account, for recovery of his states. Lettere Pittoriche, I., App. No. 29. The force of colour peculiar to this, above all Titian's works, cannot be fully given by the burin, especially not by the mezza macchia style in which it has been engraved for this volume. Our frontispiece, though accurate as a likeness, is accordingly among the least effective illustrations in our work. No other original portrait of the Duke has fallen under my observation; and if the slight youthful figure introduced by Raffaele into the Disputa and School of Athens really was meant for him, no resemblance can be traced in it.
[233] The zebellino on the Duchess's knee was the fashionable bag or reticule of that day, made of an entire sable-skin, the animal's head, richly jewelled, forming its clasp. Giulia della Rovere d'Este commissioned such a one from a jeweller at Bologna in 1555, and paid him forty-six dollars to account.
[*234] Apparently he only went to Pesaro. Cf. note *2, p. 390.
[*235] It seems unlikely that the Flora was ever in Urbino. At any rate, in the seventeenth century it was in the collection of the Spanish ambassador at Amsterdam (cf. Gronau, op. cit., p. 289).
[*236] Pitti Gallery, No. 67. We know nothing of this picture save that it must have been painted about 1530-35, and that Vasari saw it in the Guardaroba of the Palace of Urbino.
[237] Carteggio d'Artisti, vol. III., 540.
[238] We have had frequent occasion to notice the encouragement given at Urbino to the exact sciences, and the consequent success of those arts most depending upon them. Thus the Baroccio family were celebrated for the accuracy of their mathematical instruments and timepieces, while watchmaking attracted great attention from all the della Rovere dukes. Their family portraits very generally exhibit a table-clock of some eccentric form, and their gifts to princes and royal personages were often chronometers made in their state. One of these, sent to Pius V., exhibited the planetary movements and other complex revolutions of the solar system; another, worn by his Holiness in a ring, marked the hours by gently pricking his finger. In 1535, Francesco Maria I. presented to Charles V., at Naples, a ring wherein a watch struck the hours; and many similar notices occur in the correspondence of his grandson, the last Duke. Guidobaldo II. was especially fond of such mechanical curiosities. Having received from one Giovan Giorgio Capobianco of Vicenza, the Praxiteles of tiny chiselling, a ring which held a watch, whereupon were engraved the signs of the zodiac, with a figure that pointed to and struck the hours—he interfered to save the artist's life, when condemned to death for an assassination at Venice. In gratitude for this favour, the latter made for the Duchess a silver chessboard contained in a cherry-stone; nor should we omit to add that he displayed the same ingenuity on a wider field as an architect and engineer. So, too, Filippo Santacroce, of Urbino, and his sons, are celebrated by Count Cicognara for their minute carvings on gems, ivory, and nuts.