The education he first received from Sebastiano Zuccati, a native of the Valteline, though supposed to have been of Trevigi,[[47]] and next from Gian Bellini, had the effect of rendering him a minute observer of every object falling under the senses. To such a degree of excellence did he carry it, that when, later in life, he wished to compete with Albert Durer, and produced, at Ferrara, the Christ to whom the Pharisee is seen offering the piece of money,[[48]] he executed it with so much exactness as to surpass even the minuteness which characterises that artist. Indeed, in several of those figures, the hairs might be numbered, the skin of the hands, the very pores of the flesh, and the reflection of objects in the pupils; yet with all this, the work failed not of success, for where the pictures of Durer appear to diminish and lose their effect at a distance, this improves in size, and grows, as it were, upon the spectator. But he never repeated any specimen in this style, adopting, as is well known, while yet very young, that free and unshackled manner, first originating with his fellow student, afterwards his rival, Giorgione. A few of the portraits, indeed, painted by Titian, during that short period, are not to be distinguished from those of Giorgione himself. I say during that period, because shortly afterwards he formed a new style, less bold, clear, and fiery, but one peculiarly his, the sweetness of which attracts the spectator more by its artless representation of truth, than by the novelty of its effect. The first specimen he is known to have produced altogether in the Titian manner, is preserved in the Sacristy of San Marziale, representing the archangel Raphael, with Tobias at his side, painted in the thirtieth year of his age. Following at a short interval, if we are to give credit to Ridolfi, he next produced that fine representation of our Lord, for the college of the Carità, one of the grandest pictures, and the richest, perhaps, in point of figures, which we have now to boast; many of them having since perished in different conflagrations.
From these, and a few others, painted in the zenith of his fame, his critics have gathered the general idea of his style; the greatest contest which they have amongst themselves, relating to the design. By Mengs he is denied the title to rank among good designers,[[49]] considering him an artist of ordinary taste, by no means familiar with, however well he might, if he pleased, have succeeded in the study of the antique, possessing so very exact an eye in copying objects from nature. Vasari appears to be of the same opinion, where he introduces Michelangiolo observing, after viewing the Leda of Titian,[[50]] that it was a great pity the Venetian artists were not earlier taught how to design. The judgment formed of him by Tintoret, though placed in competition with him, was less severe, namely, that Titian had produced some things which it was impossible to surpass, but that others might have been more correctly designed. And among these more excellent pieces, he might indisputably have included his San Pietro Martire, in the church of SS. Giovanni and Paolo, a piece, says Algarotti, which the best masters have agreed in pronouncing free from every shade of defect; besides that fine Bacchanal, and a few others, ornamenting a cabinet of the Duke of Ferrara, and declared by Agostino Caracci prodigies of art, and the finest paintings in the world.[[51]] Fresnoy was of opinion that in the figures of his men he was not altogether perfect, and that in his draperies he was somewhat insignificant;[[52]] but that many of his women and boys are exquisite, both in point of design and colouring. This commendation is confirmed by Algarotti, in respect to his female forms, and by Mengs in those of his boys. Indeed it is almost universally admitted that in such kind of figures, no artist was ever comparable to him; and that Poussin and Fiammingo,[[53]] who so greatly excelled in this particular, acquired it only from Titian's pictures. Reynolds[[54]] also affirms that, "although his style may not be altogether as chaste as that of some other schools of Italy, it nevertheless possesses a certain air of senatorial dignity; and that he shone in his portraits as an artist of first rate character;" and he concludes by observing that he may be studied with advantage even by lovers of the sublime.
Zanetti assigns him the first rank in design, among all the most distinguished colourists; asserting that he was much devoted to the study of anatomy, and copying from the best antique;[[55]] but supposes that he was not ambitious of affecting an extensive knowledge of the muscles, nor aimed at displaying an ideal beauty in his contours; whether he had not early enough acquired facility in these, or for some other reasons. For the rest, he adds, the Titian manner was uniformly elegant, correct, and dignified in its female forms, and in its boys; elevated, great, and learned for the most part, in those of its men; while in testimony of his naked figures, he adduces the history pieces, painted for the Sacristy of La Salute, whose beauty of design appears to triumph, even in the extremities, while it boasts the rare merit of a striking acquaintance with the science of foreshortening, both appearing blended together. Had the historian been desirous of extending his notice to such works as are to be met with in foreign parts, he might have added much valuable matter upon the subject of his Bacchanals, and his pictures of the Venus; one of which, adorning the royal gallery at Florence, was justly thought to vie with that of the Medici herself, the most exquisite triumph of Grecian art. For skill in his draperies, Zanetti further brings the example of his S. Peter, painted on an altar of the Casa Pesaro, with a very artificially wrought mantle; adding that he occasionally sacrificed the appearance of the drapery, purposely to give relief to some neighbouring object. In this contest of opinion, between true judges of the art, I shall decline interfering with my own, observing only, in justice to so extraordinary a genius, that if happier combinations had led him to become familiar with more profound maxims of design, he would probably have ranked as the very first painter in the world. For he would have been allowed to be the first and most perfect in design, as he is by all allowed to have no equal in point of colouring.
Many critics have pushed their inquiries from the artist, into the peculiar character of his chiaroscuro; and the most copious among these is Signor Zanetti, who devoted years to its examination. I select some of his observations, premising, however, that he left a large portion of them to the more studious, desirous themselves of developing them, in the works of Titian. And, in truth, his pictures are the best masters to direct us in the right method of colouring; but, like the ancient classics, that are equally open, and equally the subjects of commentary to all, they are only of advantage to those who are accustomed to reflect. I have already mentioned the lucid clearness predominating in Venetian paintings, and more especially in those of Titian, whom the rest adopted for their model. I then too pronounced it to be the result of very clear primary grounding, upon which a repetition of colours being laid, it produces the effect of a transparent veil, and renders the tints of a cast no less soft and luscious than lucid. Nor did he adopt any other plan in his strongest shades, veiling them with fresh colour, when dry; renewing, invigorating them, and warming the confines that pass into the middle tints. He availed himself, very judiciously, of the power of shade; forming a method not altogether that of a mere naturalist, but partaking of the ideal. In his naked forms he cautiously avoided masses of strong shades and bold shadows, although they are sometimes to be seen in nature. They certainly add to the relief, but they much diminish the delicacy of the fleshy parts. Titian, for the most part, affected a deep and glowing light; whence, in various gradations of middle tints, he formed the work of the lower parts; and having very resolutely drawn the other parts, with the extremities, stronger, perhaps, than in nature, he gave to objects that peculiar aspect which presents them, as it were, more lively and pleasing than the truth. Thus in his portraits he centers the chief power in the eyes, the nose, and the mouth, leaving the remaining parts in a kind of pleasing uncertainty, extremely favourable to the spirit of the heads, and to the whole effect.
But since the variations of depth and delicacy of shades are insufficient, without the aid of colours, in this branch he likewise found for himself an ideal method, consisting of the use in their respective places, of simple tints, copied exactly from the life, or of artificial ones, intended to produce the illusion required. He was in the habit of employing only few and simple colours; but they were such as afforded the greatest variety and contrast; he knew all their gradations, and the most favourable moments for their application and opposition to each other. There appears no effort, no degree of violence in them, and that striking diversity of colours which seems to strive, one above another, for the mastery, as it were, in his pictures, has all the appearance of nature, though an effect of the most bold and arduous art. A white dress, placed near a naked figure, gives it all the appearance of being mingled with the warmest crimson, while he employed nothing beyond simple terra rossa, with a little lake in the contours, and towards the extremities. Certain objects, in themselves dark and even black, produce a similar effect upon his canvass; and which, besides enlivening the adjacent colour, give force to the figures, wrought, as was before stated, with gradual middle tints. It is said to have been his favourite opinion, transmitted to us by Boschini, p. 341, that whoever aspires to become a painter, must make himself familiar with three colours, and have them ready upon his palette; these are white, red, and black; and that an artist, while attempting the fleshy parts, must not expect to succeed at once, but by repeated application of opposite tints, and kneading of his colours.
Here I shall subjoin some observations by the Cavalier Mengs, who entered so very deeply into the Titian manner. He pronounces him the first, who, subsequent to the revival of painting, knew how to avail himself of the ideal, as it were, of different colours in his draperies. Before his time all colours had been applied indifferently, and artists used them in the same measure for clear and for obscure. Titian was aware, if indeed he did not acquire his knowledge from Giorgione, that red brings objects nearer to the eye, that yellow retains the rays of light, that azure is a shade, and adapted for deep obscure. Nor was he less intimate with the effects of juicy colours, and was thus enabled to bestow the same degree of grace, clearness of tone, and dignity of colour, upon his shades and middle tints, as upon his lights, as well as to mark with great diversity of middle tints, the various complexions, and the various superficies of bodies. No other artist, likewise, was more accurately acquainted with the mutual power or equipoise of the above three colours, upon which the harmony of pictures so much depends; an equipoise, too, so difficult in practice, to which not even Rubens, however excellent a colourist, perfectly attained.
Both Titian's inventions and compositions partake of his usual character; he produced nothing in which nature was not consulted. In the number of his figures he is inclined to be moderate; and in grouping them he displays the finest unshackled art; an art he was fond of exemplifying by comparison with a bunch of grapes, where a number of single ones compose the figure of a whole, agreeably rounded, light through the openings, distinct in shades, in middle tints, and in lights, according as it receives more or less of the solar rays. No contrasts are to be met with in these compositions that betray a studied effect; no violent action that is not called for by the incidents of the story; the actors in general preserve their dignity, and a certain composure, as if each seemed to respect the assembly of which he formed a part. Whoever is attached to the taste of the Greek bassi relievi, in which all is nature and propriety, will invariably prefer the sober composition of Titian to the more fiery one of Paul Veronese and Tintoret, whose merits we shall canvass in another place. Neither was Titian ignorant of those strong contrasts of limbs and action, then in such high vogue with his countrymen; but these he reserved for his bacchanals, his battle pieces, and other subjects, in fine, which called for them.
It is on all hands admitted, that as a portrait painter, he was quite incomparable; and to this species of excellence he was in great part indebted for his fortune, smoothing, as it did, his reception into some of the most splendid courts, such as were that of Rome in the time of Paul III. and those of Vienna and of Madrid, during the reign of Charles V. and his successors. It is the opinion of Vasari that in this branch of his art he was inimitable; being engaged in drawing the portraits of numbers of the most distinguished characters, both for rank and letters, who flourished during the same period. We wish we could add to these the name of Cosmo I., grand duke of Tuscany, who, little to his credit, evinced an objection to have his likeness taken by so celebrated a hand. He was no less successful in depicting the passions of the mind. The death of S. Peter the Martyr, at Venice, with that of a devotee of S. Antony, at the college of the same name in Padua, display scenes than which I know not whether painting can afford us any thing more terrific in the ferocity of those who strike, or more full of compassion in the whole attitude of the falling saint. And thus the grand picture of the Coronation of Thorns, in the Grazie at Milan, abounds with powers of expression that enchant us. He has left us also not a few examples of costume, and of erudition in the antique, every way worthy of imitation, as we may observe in the Coronation above alluded to, where, desirous of marking the precise period of the event, he inserted in the Pretorium a bust of Tiberius; an idea that could not have been better conceived, either by Raffaello or Poussin. In his architecture he sometimes availed himself of other works, in particular those of the Rosa, of Brescia; but his perspectives, like that of his picture of the Presentation, are extremely beautiful. He was equalled by none in his landscape; and he was careful not to employ it, like some artists, as a mere embellishment; several artists esteeming themselves so highly in this particular, that they hardly scruple to present us with cypress trees growing out of the sea. But Titian makes his landscape subservient to history, as in that horrific wood, whose dreary aspect adds so much to the solemnity of S. Peter's death; or to give force to his figures, as we perceive them in those pieces where the landscape is thrown into the distance. His natural manner of representing the various effects of light may be best gathered from his Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, belonging to the Jesuits at Venice, in which he displayed such an astonishing diversity in the splendour of fire, in that of torchlights, and in that of a supernatural light, which appears to fall upon the martyr; a picture unfortunately much defaced by age, but of which there is a near imitation or duplicate in the Escurial. He likewise expressed, with the utmost felicity, the time of the day in which the event is supposed to have taken place, and he frequently selected nightfall, drawing forth all its most beautiful attributes for the canvass.
From the whole of this it may be inferred that Titian is not to be included in that class of Venetian artists, whose rapidity of hand overpowered their judgment, rendering them somewhat careless and inaccurate; though, at the same time, we must speak of his celerity with some degree of reservation. A freedom of pencil must doubtless be granted to him, and he thus applied it without failing in point of design, to his paintings in fresco, as they are to be seen in Padua, and which, in some measure, compensate us for the loss of those in the Venetian capital. In that city we have nothing of the same kind in preservation, if we except, perhaps, his S. Christopher, adorning the ducal palace; a majestic figure, both in its character and its expression. We are not, however, to look for the same degree of freedom in his pictures in oil. Indeed he was by no means ambitious of displaying it; but rather encountered much painful labour to arrive at a perfect knowledge of his subjects. With this view, after throwing off a rough draught of his intended works, with a certain freedom and resolution, he was in the habit of laying them for some time aside, and again returned to them with an eye prepared to detect every the least defect. The noble Casa Barbarigo, among a fine selection of his most highly finished pictures, preserves, also, a few of these first sketches. It is well known that he underwent extreme labour in the completion of his works, and, at the same time, was very solicitous to conceal the pains he bestowed upon them. Yet in some of his pieces such spirited and resolute strokes are to be met with as seem to imprint upon every object the true character of nature, attain at once the points that have been long laboriously aimed at, and perfectly delight professors. To this practice he adhered in the zenith of his fame; nor was it until near the close of his existence, falling a victim to the plague when within a year of completing a century, that both his hand and eye failing him, his style became less elegant, being compelled to paint with repeated efforts of the brush, and with difficulty mingling his tints. Vasari, who saw him once more in 1566, even then was no longer able to recognize Titian in Titian, and it must have been much more difficult in the few following years. Yet, as is customary with old age, he was not at all aware of his failings, and continued to receive commissions until the final year of his life.
There remains at S. Salvatore, one of these pictures of the Annunciation, which attracts the spectator only from the name of its master. Yet when he was told by some that it was not, or at least appeared not to have been executed by his hand, he was so much irritated, that in a fit of senile indignation, he affixed to it the following words, "Tizianus fecit fecit." Still the most experienced judges are agreed that much may be learned even from his latest works; in the same manner, as the poets pronounce judgment on the Odyssey, the product of old age, but still by Homer. Several of these last specimens, distributed throughout private collections, are nevertheless doubtful, as well as a few copies made by his pupils, but retouched by his hand; and in particular some Madonnas and Magdalens, which I have seen in various places, displaying little or no variety. Upon this point we ought not to omit the account given by Ridolfi, of his having purposely left his studio open for the free access of his disciples, in order that they might secretly take copies of such pictures as he had placed there. That afterwards when he found such copies became vendible, he gladly took possession of them, and retouching them with little trouble, they were passed as his originals. The reporter of this incident added a marginal note to his account, as follows: Vedi che accortezza! behold what a degree of forecast! And to this I might rejoin with another of my own: "Note, that the worth of Titian ought not to be estimated, as is too often the case, by this multiplication of originals."