Six Centuries of Painting

by Randall Davies

Sansovino to the comradeship earned for the group the name of the Triumvirate.

So far from Titian being corrupted by the society of Aretine, there is direct evidence in one of the poet's letters to him that he was not. "You must come to our feast to-night," he writes, "but I may as well warn you that you had better leave early, as I know how particular you are about certain things." Nor is there anything in the artist's works of this next period—which we may roughly date from 1530 to 1550, that betrays a more serious devotion to the sensual side of life than can be accounted for by the demands of the high and mighty patrons that Aretine was soon to find for him. As an artist he looked upon woman as a beautiful creature, as a man he most probably never troubled about her, or was troubled by her. There is no proof that any of his pictures are rightly called "Titian's mistress," and we may conclude that he was as good a husband and a father as was Rubens, who revelled in painting woman, or Velasquez, who seems to have frankly disliked it. Like Rowlandson, whom the general public only know as a caricaturist, but who when he once got away from London was the most pure minded and poetical artist, so Titian, when once dissociated from the demands of corrupt patrons, like Philip II., never reveals himself as having fallen under the influence of Aretine—if indeed at all. The Danaë and the Venus and a Musician at the Prado are the only examples it is possible to cite—unless it be the Venus, to which popular opinion would hardly deny its place of honour in the Tribune at the Uffizi.

At the same time the difference in circumstances, the fuller, richer life that he must have led in these years of patronage and prosperity, accounts for a certain "shallowness and complacency" which distinguishes his work during this period as sharply from that which preceded as from that which followed it; and fine as is his accomplishment during these years, especially in portraiture, it includes fewer of those masterpieces which appeal to the heart as much as to the eye.

To 1538 belongs the large and beautiful picture of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple, painted for the Scuola della Carità in Venice, which is now occupied by the Academy, where it still hangs, as is said, in its original place. It is twenty-two feet in length, and contains several portraits, among which are those of his daughter Lavinia (the Virgin, as is supposed), Andrea Franchescini, grand chancellor of Venice, in a scarlet robe; next him, in black, Lazzaro Crasso, a lawyer, and certain monks of the convent following them.

We now find Titian employed by the Duke of Urbino on some of the principal works of this period. Among these were the Uffizi Venus, said to be a portrait of the Duchess herself. The Girl in a Fur Mantle at Vienna, portraits of the Duke and of the Duchess (1537), and the so-called La Bella at the Uffizi. The so-called Duke of Norfolk at the Pitti, supposed to represent the young Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino. Also the Isabella d'Este at Vienna, and somewhat earlier, the Cardinal Ippolito in Hungarian dress, at the Pitti; and the Daughter of Robert Strozzi, at Berlin.

The large Ecce Homo in the Vienna Gallery, dated 1543, measuring 11 ft. 3 in. by 7 ft. 7 in. was for some years in London, and with better fortune might still be in this country if not in our national collection. It was one of the nineteen pictures by Titian in the wonderful collection of Rubens, which the Duke of Buckingham persuaded him to sell to him for a fabulous price. The collection was shipped to England in 1625, when the pictures were taken to York House in the Strand, and the statues and gems to Chelsea. In 1649 a portion of the collection was sold at Brussels, and the Ecce Homo was purchased there by the Archduke Leopold for his gallery at Prague, which now forms part of that at Vienna. The Earl of Arundel offered the Duke of Buckingham £7000 for it—an unheard of price, especially when we remember the greater value of money at that time.

With another masterpiece—fortunately still preserved in the Prado, though not entirely uninjured by fire—we may close the second period. This is the magnificent equestrian portrait of The Emperor Charles V. which was painted at Augsburg in 1548. A few years later the Emperor abdicated in favour of his egregious son, Philip II., of whom Titian painted three portraits in succession. The second of these, now in the Prado, has an especial interest for us, inasmuch as it was painted for the benefit or the enticement of Queen Mary before her marriage to Philip. As might be expected, it is a highly flattering likeness,—in white and gold, in half armour. To quote M. Caro-Delvaille, this king of auto da fés and sunken galleys is here nothing more than a gallant cavalier—neurasthenic but elegant. For England was also painted the Venus and Adonis, in 1554; but unfortunately the original is now in Madrid, and only a copy in our National Gallery. However, the remains of Philip are there too, and not in Westminster Abbey!

A copy of another famous picture painted by Titian for the Emperor Charles V. was also in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham, who probably brought it with him when he returned from his madcap expedition with Prince Charles to Madrid. It is described in his catalogue as "One great Piece of the Emperor Charles, a copy called Titian's Glory, being the principal in Spain, now in the Escurial." This was the great Paradise, or Apotheosis of Charles V. which Charles took with him into Spain at the time of his abdication and placed in the monastery of St. Juste, in Estramadura, to which he retired. After his death it was removed by Philip II. to Madrid.

Of the two versions of The Crowning with Thorns, the earlier one at the Louvre, painted in 1560, is more familiar to, and probably more popular with, the general public than the much later one at Munich painted in 1571. But for the real merits of the two we need not hesitate to accept M. Caro-Delvaille's judgment, since if he had any bias it would be in favour of his own country's treasure. The former he characterises as an incoherent composition, in which useless gesticulation diminishes the dramatic effect, while striving to force it; and adds that all the false romanticism of painting comes from this sort of theatrical pathos. Of the other he writes "It was the picture at the Louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced blows that never hit anything. But here at Munich a mystery so profound broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. The scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. The great artist with a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it, to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. The veil of death descends and spreads over life.... Titian might seem to have painted it as an offering to Rembrandt when he, too, should feel the approach of death."

Another of his latest pictures, the Adam and Eve in Paradise, is in the Prado (No. 429, formerly 456). This was copied, or one might almost say travestied, by Rubens when he was at Madrid in 1629, and his work was hung in the same room with it. As the colouring is of a lower tone than is usual with Titian, and the attitudes of the figures extremely simple and natural, the contrast is all the more marked, and was well expressed by Cumberland, who said that "when we contemplate Titian's picture of Adam and Eve we are convinced they never wore clothes; turn to the copy, and the same persons seem to have laid theirs aside."