ABOUT the middle of the year 1543, somewhere between June 20 and 25, a meeting of Paul III and Charles V was arranged at Busseto between Parma and Cremona with a view to the settlement of the political differences outstanding at that date. In the train of the pope came Titian, who on every occasion when the emperor set foot on Italian soil took the opportunity of paying his addresses to the monarch. On this occasion, too, the emperor had a commission for him; Titian was instructed to paint a portrait of the dead empress. From Aretino’s letters—which, apart from their personal fascination which no reader of them is able to resist, are second to none as a source of information on the life of the great painter—a few further details of the incident are to be gleaned, for some days later Aretino, in the company of Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino and of the Venetian ambassadors, met the emperor near Peschiera in the course of his journey to Germany. It was one of the red letter days in Messer Pietro’s life, and, fulfilled with vain-glory, he was never tired of talking of the marked consideration wherewith, if his chronicle is to be trusted, the emperor received him. On this occasion, when portraiture became the topic of conversation, Charles referred to the portrait of his wife that he had given to Titian at Busseto, and told Aretino to tell his godfather that it was a very good likeness, though the work of a painter of small merit.[88] From Aretino’s letters we glean further particulars. In October 1544 he addresses a letter to the emperor wherein he extols the completed picture in such high-flown phrases as to baffle translation.[89] ‘In defiance of Death, he has called her back to life by the inspiration of his colours, so that God possesses her for the first, Charles for the second time.’ Although his words sound as if he were speaking of a finished picture, Titian, it would appear, did not dispatch the picture to the emperor until about a year later. In October 1545 he informed the monarch that he had handed the two portraits at which he had been working with all the diligence of which he was capable, over to Mendoza to be forwarded.[90] A few months later he was writing again from Rome, whither he had gone at the bidding of the Farnesi, to say that he had delivered his own portrait of the empress, ‘together with the other which had been given to me to copy,’ to Don Diego.[91] And he adds: ‘If I hear that it finds favour I shall feel the greatest satisfaction; but in the contrary event, I should prefer to improve it in such a manner as to content your majesty if our Lord God vouchsafes me to be able to come to bring a picture of Venus by me,’ etc. ¶ A little more than two years later Titian arrived at Augsburg at the summons of the emperor, who on this occasion wished once again to see himself portrayed by his favourite painter, this time as the conqueror of the Protestant princes, uplifted and on horseback. It involved a long sojourn. Towards the end of it, on September 1, 1548, Titian wrote to Granvella to explain his prospects to him, and in this letter enumerates the pictures he had done for the emperor, among them ‘The empress alone and the one of the emperor and empress.’ Here a little difficulty arises. Has Titian then painted a single portrait of the empress on two occasions, one between 1543 and 1545, the other in 1548? Or, on the other hand, is the work referred to in this letter one and the same with the earlier portrait, and did Titian, as a matter of fact, work it up again? It is impossible to speak with any degree of certainty, but as the Spanish inventories always speak of one portrait only we may assume that the latter hypothesis is the more likely to be correct. ¶ While the double portrait has been lost, the picture of the empress has found a place in that incomparable collection of Titian’s works which the Prado gallery in Madrid comprises. It is one of Titian’s most important works; perhaps, indeed, it takes the first place among his portraits of women. Never is his taste more exquisite than here. Its courtly splendour strikes one as a matter of course. In the midst of glorious colour—red and white—the pale, somewhat colourless face stands out framed by its fair reddish hair; the hand clasps a breviary. A window to the right opens on a landscape scene, one of those glimpses of Nature such as Titian had the secret of conjuring up with his brush with such incomparable art. No one looking at the picture would ever be able to suspect how it was painted; that its painter had never seen his model with his own eyes. It was no uncommon thing, by the way, for Titian to paint the portraits of people whom he did not even know by sight. He was proud of his skill of being able to recognize the characteristic traits of a man or woman even from another artist’s work.[92] ¶We can, however, only realize the work of genius for which this portrait of Isabella stands when we compare it with the picture with which the emperor had furnished him, that portrait by ‘a painter of small merit.’ The picture itself has, it is true, been wholly lost, but a copy of it has recently come to light in Florence, and is reproduced in these pages for the first time. That we are not mistaken in assuming it to be a replica of the original from which Titian worked will be proved by the complete coincidence of all the principal characteristics of the picture in Madrid with the one before us. In the Florentine picture the empress is wearing a black robe with white puffed sleeves, a great deal of jewelry, and is holding a spray of foliage in her hand. The picture is, for the most part, sombre in tone, and the face stands out most effectively in its pallor. It has that diaphanous whiteness noticeable in anæmic people. The dull reddish hair frames it heavily. The background is a grey green; in a niche, over which a dull red curtain is draped, the symbol of the exalted rank of the sitter, the imperial crown, is represented. To judge from its style this picture dates back to a Flemish master, though, with the somewhat scanty inherent evidence available, it is impossible to suggest the name of any particular artist. ¶ The picture originates from Bologna, where it was in the possession of the Pepoli family. That in itself is interesting, for we know that Isabella’s sister, Beatrice, duchess of Savoy, had taken up her quarters in the Pepoli palace during the rejoicings in 1530 in celebration of Charles V’s coronation, and that it was the scene of a brilliant ball which the emperor honoured with his presence. It would be well within the bounds of possibility, therefore, that the portrait of the empress, who had been prevented (she had been confined a short time previously) from coming to Bologna, had passed into possession of the Pepoli as a present at first hand, either from the emperor or from the duchess. A replica, with a few trivial distinctions, of the picture is entered in the inventory of the house of Farnese (about 1680). In this the left hand is resting on the back of the chair.[93]
COPY OF THE PORTRAIT OF THE EMPRESS ISABELLA FROM WHICH TITIAN PAINTED THE PORTRAIT NOW IN THE PRADO GALLERY, MADRID; IN A PRIVATE COLLECTION AT FLORENCE
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LARGER IMAGE
The Florentine picture has undoubtedly a conspicuous iconographic importance as the most authentic portrait of the woman who shared the throne of Charles V. At the same time, its value from the standpoint of the history of art is immeasurably greater, inasmuch as it affords us a most interesting insight into Titian’s methods. This picture should be compared with the painting in Madrid, their points of variance carefully considered with the question why the master omitted this or added that. It is as though in this picture we were watching him at work with our very eyes. Especially noteworthy is the fact that the imperial crown is not repeated. An artist whose work lacks character needs a symbol as an outward and visible sign-post. One, on the contrary, who knows how to express dignity in the bearing of his sitter, can dispense with these commonplaces. Titian was, of course, compelled to adopt the outline of the features, the colouring of the complexion and of the hair. He even adopted the pose in its main outlines. On the other hand he changed the colour of the dress and the pose of the hands; the pose of the Florentine picture is conventional and meaningless. By adding the book of hours he gains a signal detail of characterization, for the empress was very devout. If in the Flemish picture there is a certain note of contrast brought out by the sombre dress and the costly jewels, in Titian’s picture these ornaments blend with the costly draperies, glowing in the richest colours which robe the empress here. More important still is the fact that the antithesis is toned down thereby, and something of life comes into the pale face by reason of the warm red robe, while in the other it has a cold and lifeless tone, intensified by the dead black garment. And here the little glimpse of landscape which Titian introduces in the right-hand half of the picture gains a special significance of its own. It deflects the eye a little, well-nigh without arousing one’s consciousness that it is so doing; it adds a nuance of restfulness and colour that has as subtle and pleasing an effect as that of a Gobelin, although the landscape is convincingly realistic, instinct with that realism that comprises in its quintessence all the elements of colour and of form, and yet is the abstraction of the characteristics of a definite locality. This, comparatively speaking, small patch (considered as a patch of colour within the picture as a whole) prevents the figure from standing out in too hard relief from the dim-lit background and adds that very essential element of atmosphere to give life to the picture. ¶ It is worth noting that not until a, comparatively speaking, later period did Titian make use of a landscape background. All his earlier portraits show a neutral tone for the background. One finds it for the first time, in so far as the number of Titian’s paintings known to us at present justifies an expression of opinion, in the portrait of the duchess of Urbino of 1537. Thenceforward Titian made very frequent use of this subtle and life-giving device of his art. The portrait of Count Porcia in the Brera gallery in Milan, the little Strozzi in Berlin, the picture of Charles V in Munich are examples of it. Here the element which henceforward is inseparable from courtly portraiture is created. Rubens and Vandyke, above all, follow in the footsteps of the Venetian, whose influence might be traced down to modern times. ¶ Put the Flemish portrait by the side of Titian’s; it is, we see, the self-same picture in its main outlines, and yet with what fundamental distinctions. On the one hand the work of a ‘trifling brush’ (the emperor’s own words, according to Aretino) and on the other the conscious feat of a prince of painters. ¶ Nothing within the scope of artistic consideration can afford so much incitement and pleasure as to force one’s way into the work of the really great. For what they did is not merely a delight to the beholder; it remains an enduring exemplar for the worker. From this sole instance it becomes manifest how a thing insignificant in itself may suffice to force the fruits of genius. Thus an Italian novel gives birth to one of Shakespeare’s dramas, thus the puppet play of Doctor Faust to Goethe’s sublimest work.
A NEWLY DISCOVERED PORTRAIT DRAWING BY DÜRER
❧ WRITTEN BY CAMPBELL DODGSON ❧
THE British museum, thanks to a timely hint from a friend, has recently acquired a portrait drawing of considerable interest and unknown to students of the present generation. It represents a middle-aged woman, plain-featured and of a short, thick-set figure, seated, with clasped hands, drawn in three-quarter face and looking to the left. The sitter is plainly dressed, without a trace of ornament on the materials of her clothing; she wears a ring on the first finger of her left hand, and the artist has sketched very slightly a double or triple chain with pendants hanging from her neck and reaching across her bodice nearly to the waist. ¶ The portrait, which measures 16½ by 12⅜ ins. (42 by 31·5 centimetres), is lightly drawn in black chalk on a green prepared ground. The watermark of the paper is the large high crown surmounted by a cross (Hausmann, No. 4). A border line, which can be traced round three sides of the drawing, near the edge, is clearly a modern addition, being drawn with lead pencil. The portrait itself has entirely escaped retouching, and the whole sheet is in good preservation, except in a few places where the surface has been rubbed or stained; a severe crease across the lower right-hand corner of the paper has caused the prepared surface to crack. ¶ In the left-hand lower corner is the collector’s mark of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Fagan, 507 (1), stamped blind, and in the corresponding corner to the right is the initial C, also stamped blind, which belonged, according to Fagan (No. 72), to Captain William Coningham. The Lawrence stamp, in this form, was affixed to the drawings by Samuel Woodburn after he had purchased them in 1835. Coningham, too, had dealings with Woodburn; it may be conjectured that he purchased the present drawing from that dealer, and that it was included in the collection of drawings by old masters which Coningham sold to Messrs. Colnaghi in 1846. That would account for the absence of any mention of this drawing in the catalogue of the Woodburn sale in June 1860, when the bulk of the Lawrence drawings were finally dispersed. The drawing had been for a long period in private hands prior to its purchase by the trustees of the British museum in July of the present year, and had not appeared in the sale-room. ¶ After so much has been said about externals, it is time to look more closely at the drawing itself, which can only be reproduced, at present, on a greatly reduced scale, though it is hoped that an opportunity may present itself later on of issuing a full-sized reproduction in facsimile.