Famous European Artists

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

TITIAN.

"Considered under this point of view, these wonderful men remain to us as representatives of the two great departments of art. All who went before them, and all who follow after them, may be ranged under the banners of one or the other of these great kings and leaders. Under the banners of Raphael appear the majestic thinkers in art, the Florentine and Roman painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and Albert Dürer, in Germany. Ranged on the side of Titian appear the Venetian, the Lombard, the Spanish, and Flemish masters. When a school of art arose which aimed at uniting the characteristics of both, what was the result? A something second-hand and neutral—the school of the Academicians and the mannerists, a crowd of painters who neither felt what they saw, nor saw what they felt; who trusted neither to the God within them, nor the nature around them; and who ended by giving us Form without Soul—Beauty without Life."

Ruskin says, "When Titian or Tintoret look at a human being, they see at a glance the whole of its nature, outside and in; all that it has of form, of color, of passion, or of thought; saintliness and loveliness; fleshly power and spiritual power; grace, or strength, or softness, or whatsoever other quality, those men will see to the full, and so paint that, when narrower people come to look at what they have done, every one may, if he chooses, find his own special pleasure in the work. The sensualist will find sensuality in Titian; the thinker will find thought; the saint, sanctity; the colorist, color; the anatomist, form; and yet the picture will never be a popular one in the full sense, for none of these narrower people will find their special taste so alone consulted as that the qualities which would insure their gratification shall be sifted or separated from others; they are checked by the presence of the other qualities, which insure the gratification of other men.... Only there is a strange undercurrent of everlasting murmur about the name of Titian, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they."

Strong praise indeed!—"the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they;"—strong praise for the tireless worker, of whom Ludovico Dolce wrote, who knew him personally, that "he was most modest; that he never spoke reproachfully of other painters; that, in his discourse, he was ever ready to give honor where honor was due; that he was, moreover, an eloquent speaker, having an excellent wit and a perfect judgment in all things; of a most sweet and gentle nature, affable and most courteous in manner; so that whoever once conversed with him could not choose but love him thenceforth forever." He was remarkably calm and self-poised through life, saying that a painter should never be agitated. And yet he was a man of strong feelings and tender affections.

Titian, the lover of the beautiful, was born at Arsenale, in the Valley of Cadore, in the heart of the Venetian Alps, in the year 1477. His father, Gregorio Vecelli, was a brave soldier, a member of the Council of Cadore, inspector of mines, superintendent of the castle, and, though probably limited in means, was universally esteemed for wisdom and uprightness. Of the mother, Lucia, little is known, save that she bore to Gregorio four children, Caterina, Francesco, Orsa, and Titian.

In this Alpine country, with its waterfalls and its rushing river, Piave, with its mountain wild-flowers, its jagged rocks and nestling cottages, the boy Titian grew to be passionately fond of nature; to idolize beauty of form and face, and to revel in color. The clouds, the sky, the cliffs, the greensward, were a constant delight. In after years he put all these changing scenes upon canvas, becoming the most famous idealist as well as the "greatest landscape-painter of the Venetian school."

The story is told, though it has been denied by some authorities, that before he was ten years of age he had painted, on the walls of his home at Cadore, with the juice of flowers, a Madonna, the Child standing on her knee, while an angel kneels at her feet. The father and relatives were greatly surprised and pleased, and the lad was taken to Venice, seventy miles from Cadore, and placed with an uncle, so that he might study under the best artists.

His first teacher seems to have been Sebastian Zuccato, the leader of the guild of mosaic-workers. He was soon, however, drawn to the studio of Gentile Bellini, an artist seventy years old, noted for his knowledge of perspective and skill in composition. He had travelled much, and had gathered into his home pictures and mosaics of great value: the head of Plato, a statue of Venus by Praxiteles, and other renowned works. What an influence has such a home on a susceptible boy of eleven or twelve years of age! Gentile was a man of tender heart as well as of refined taste. Asked to paint portraits of the sultan and sultana, the aged artist went to Constantinople in 1479 and presented the ruler with a picture of the decapitation of St. John. The sultan criticised the work, and, to show the painter the truth of the criticism, had the head of a slave struck off in his presence, whereupon the artist, sick at heart, returned at once to Venice.

The young Cadorine studied carefully the minute drawings of Gentile Bellini, but, with an originality peculiar to himself, sketched boldly and rapidly. The master was displeased, and the boy sought the studio of his brother, Giovanni Bellini, an artist with more brilliant style, and broader contrasts in light and shade.

Here he met Giorgione as a fellow-pupil, who soon became his warm friend. This man studied the works of Leonardo da Vinci, and became distinguished for boldness of design and richness of color. Titian was his assistant and devoted admirer.