The Venetian School of Painting Part 9

CHAPTER XVII

t.i.tIAN

The mountains of Cadore are not always visible from Venice, but there they lie, behind the mists, and in the clear s.h.i.+ning after rain, in the golden eventide of autumn, and on steel-cold winter days they stand out, lapis-lazuli blue or deep purple, or, like Sh.e.l.ley's enchanted peaks, in sharp-cut, beautiful shapes rising above billowy slopes. Cadore is a land of rich chestnut woods, of leaping streams, of gleams and glooms, sudden storms and bursts of suns.h.i.+ne. It is an order of scenery which enters deep into the affections of its sons, and we can form some idea of the hold its mingling of wild poetry and sensuous softness obtained over the mind of t.i.tian from the fact that in after years, while he never exerts himself to paint the city in which he lived and in which all his greatest triumphs were gained, he is uniformly constant to his mountain home, enters into its spirit and interprets its charm with warm and penetrating insight.

The district formed part of the dependencies of the great republic, and relied upon Venice for its safety, its distinction, and in great measure for its employment. The small craftsmen and artists from all the country round looked forward to going down to seek their fortune at her hands.

They tacked the name of their native town to their own name, and were drawn into the magnificent life of the city of the sea, and came back from time to time with stories of her art, her power, and beauty.

The Vecelli had for generations held honourable posts in Cadore. The father and grandfather of the young Tiziano were influential men, and with his brother and sisters he must have been brought up in comfort.

There are even traditions of n.o.ble birth, and it is evident that t.i.tian was always a gentleman, though this did not prevent his being educated as a craftsman, and when he was only ten years old he was sent down to Venice to be apprenticed to a mosaicist.

It was a changing Venice to which t.i.tian came as a boy; changing in its life, its social and political conditions, and its art was faithfully registering its aspirations and tastes. More than at any previous time, it was calculated to impress a youth to whom it had been held up as the embodiment of splendid sovereignty, and the difference between the little hill-town set in the midst of its wild solitudes and the brilliant city of the sea must have been dazzling and bewildering. A new sense of intellectual luxury had awakened in the great commercial centre. The Venetian love of splendour was displaying itself by the encouragement and collection of objects of art, and both ancient and modern works were in increasing request. On Gentile Bellini's and Carpaccio's canvases we see the sort of people the Venetians were, shrewd, quiet, splendour-loving, but business-like, the young men fas.h.i.+onably dressed, fastidious connoisseurs, splendid patrons of art and of religion. Buyers were beginning to find out what a delightful decoration the small picture made, and that it was as much in place in their own halls as over the altar of a chapel. The portrait, too, was gaining in importance, and the idea of making it a pleasure-giving picture, even more than a faithful transcript, was gathering ground. The "Procession of the Relic" was still in Gentile's studio, but the Frari "Madonna and Child" was just installed in its place. Carpaccio was beginning his long series of St. Ursula, and the Bellini and Vivarini were in keen rivals.h.i.+p.

t.i.tian is said to have pa.s.sed from the _bottega_ of Gentile to that of Giovanni Bellini, but nothing in his style reminds us of the former, and even his early work has very little that is really Bellinesque, whereas from the very first he reflects the new spirit which emanated from Giorgione. t.i.tian was a year the elder, and we can divine the sympathy that arose between the two when they came together in Bellini's School.

As soon as their apprentices.h.i.+p was at an end they became partners. Fond of pleasure and gaiety, loving splendour, dress, and amus.e.m.e.nt, they were naturally congenial companions, and were drawn yet more closely together by their love for their art and by the apt.i.tude with which t.i.tian grasped Giorgione's principles.

And if we ask ourselves why we take for granted that of two young men so closely allied in age and circ.u.mstance we accept Giorgione as the leader and the creator of the new style, we may answer that t.i.tian was a more complex character. He was intellectual, and carried his intellect into his art, but this was no new feature. The intellect had had and was having a large share in art. But in that part which was new, and which was launching art upon an untried course, Giorgione is more intense, more one-idea'd than t.i.tian. What he does he does with a fervour and a spontaneity that marks him as one who pours out the language of the heart.

The partners.h.i.+p between the two was probably arranged a few years before the end of the century, for we have seen that young painters usually started on their own account at about nineteen or twenty. For some years t.i.tian, like Giorgione, was engrossed by the decorations of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. The groups of figures described by Zanetti in 1771 show us that while Giorgione made some attempt at following cla.s.sic figures, t.i.tian broke entirely with Greek art and only thought of picturesque nature and contemporary costume.

Vasari complains that he never knew what t.i.tian's "Judith" was meant to represent, "unless it was Germania," but Zanetti, who had the benefit of Sebastiano Ricci's taste, declares that from what he saw, both Giorgione and t.i.tian gave proofs of remarkable skill. "While Giorgione showed a fervid and original spirit and opened up a new path, over which he shed a light that was to guide posterity, t.i.tian was of a grander and more equable genius, leaning at first, indeed, upon Giorgione's example, but expanding with such force and rapidity as to place him in advance of his companion, on an eminence to which no later craftsman was able to climb.... He moderated the fire of Giorgione, whose strength lay in fanciful movement and a mysterious artifice in disposing shadows, contrasted darkly with warm lights, blended, strengthened, blurred, so as to produce the semblance of exuberant life." Certain works remain to link the two painters; even now critics are divided as to which of the two to attribute the "Concert" in the Pitti. The figures are Giorgionesque, but the technique establishes it as an early t.i.tian, and it is doubtful whether Giorgione would be capable of the intellectual effort which produced the dreamy, pa.s.sionate expression of the young monk, borne far out of himself by his own melody, and half recalled to life by the touch on his shoulder. t.i.tian, like Giorgione, was a musician, and the fascination of music is felt by many masters of the Italian schools. In one picture the player feels vaguely after the melody, in another we are asked to antic.i.p.ate the song that is just about to begin, or the last chords of that just finished vibrate upon the ear, but nowhere else in all art has any one so seized the melody of an instant and kept its fulness and its pa.s.sion sounding in our ears as this musician does.

Though we cannot say that t.i.tian was the pupil of any one master, the fifteen years, more or less, that he spent with Giorgione left an indelible impression upon him. We have only to look at such a picture as the "Madonna and Child with SS. John Baptist and Antony Abate,"

in the Uffizi, an early work, to recollect that in 1503 Giorgione at Castelfranco had taken the Madonna from her niche in the sanctuary and had enthroned her on high in a bright and sunny landscape with S. Liberale standing sentinel at her feet, like a knight guarding his liege lady.

t.i.tian in this early group casts every convention aside; a beautiful woman and lovely children are placed in surroundings whose charm is devoid of hieratic and religious significance. The same easy unfettered treatment appears in the "Madonna with the Cherries" at Vienna, and the "Madonna with St. Bridget and S. Ulfus" at Madrid, and while it has been surmised that the example of the precise Albert Durer, who paid his first visit to Venice in 1506, was not without its effect in preserving t.i.tian from falling into laxity of treatment and in inciting him to fine finish, it is interesting to find that t.i.tian was, in fact, discarding the use of the carefully traced and transferred cartoon, and was sketching his design freely on panel or canvas with a brush dipped in brown pigment, and altering and modifying it as he went on.

The last years of t.i.tian's first period in Venice must have been anxious ones. The Emperor Maximilian was attacking the Venetian possessions on the mainland, in anger at a refusal to grant his troops a free pa.s.sage on their way to uphold German supremacy in Central Italy. Cadore was the first point of his invasion, and from 1507 t.i.tian's uncle and great-uncle were in the Councils of the State, his father held an important command, and his brother Francesco, who had already made some progress as an artist, threw down his brush and became a soldier. t.i.tian was not one of those who took up arms, but his thoughts must have been full of the attack and defence in his mountain fastnesses, and he must have anxiously awaited news of his father's troops and of the squadrons of Maso of Ferrara, under whose colours Francesco was riding. Francesco made a reputation as a distinguished soldier, and was severely wounded, and when peace was made, t.i.tian, "who loved him tenderly," persuaded him to return to the pursuit of art.

The ratification of the League of Cambray, in which Julius II., Maximilian, and Ferdinand of Naples combined against the power of Venice, was disastrous for a time to the city and to the artists who depended upon her prosperity. Craftsmen of all kinds first fled to her for shelter, then, as profits and orders fell off, they left to look elsewhere for commissions. An outbreak of plague, in which Giorgione perished, went further to make Venice an undesirable home, and at this time Sebastian del Piombo left for Rome, Lotto for the Romagna, and t.i.tian for Padua.

We may believe that t.i.tian never felt perfectly satisfied with fresco-painting as a craft, for when he was given a commission to fresco the halls of the Santo, the confraternity of St. Anthony, patron-saint of Padua, he threw off beautifully composed and spirited drawings, but he left the execution of them chiefly to a.s.sistants, among whom the feeble Domenico Campagnola, a painter whom he probably picked up at Padua, is conspicuous. Even where the landscape is best, as in "S.

Anthony restoring a Youth," the drawing and composition only make us feel how enchanting the scene would have been in oils on one of t.i.tian's melting canvases. In those frescoes which he executed himself while his interest was still fresh, the "Miracle which grants Speech to an Infant"

is the most Giorgionesque. Up to this time he had preserved the straight-cut corsage and the actual dress of his contemporaries, after the practice of Giorgione; he keeps, too, to his companion's plan of design, placing the most important figures upon one plane, close to the frame and behind a low wall or ledge which forms a sort of inner frame and with a distant horizon. In the Paduan frescoes he makes use of this plan, and the straight clouds, the spindly trees, and the youths in gay doublets are all reminiscent of his early comrade, but the group of women to the left in the "Miracle of the Child" shows that t.i.tian is beginning more decidedly to enunciate his own type. The introduction of portraits proves that he was tending to rely largely upon nature, in contradistinction to Giorgione's lyrically improvised figures. He fuses the influence of Giorgione and the influence of Antonello da Messina and the Bellini in a deeper knowledge of life and nature, and he is pa.s.sing beyond Giorgione in grasp and completeness. When he was able to return to Venice, which he did in 1512, a temporary peace having been concluded with Maximilian, he abandoned the uncongenial medium of fresco for good, and devoted himself to that which admitted of the afterthoughts, the enrichments, the gradual attainment of an exquisite surface, and at this time his works are remarkable for their brilliant gloss and finish.

During the next twelve years we may group a number of paintings which, taken in conjunction with those of Giorgione, show the true Venetian School at its most intense, idyllic moment. They are the works of a man in the pride of youth and strength, sane and healthy, an example of the confident, sanguine, joyous temper of his age, capable of embodying its dominant tendencies, of expressing its enjoyment of life, its worldly-mindedness, its love of pleasure, as well as its n.o.ble feeling and its grave and magnificent purpose.

For absolute delight in colour let us turn to a picture like the "Noli me tangere" of the National Gallery. The golden light, the blues and olives of the landscape, the crimson of the Magdalen's raiment, combine in a feast of emotional beauty, emphasising the feeling of the woman, whose soul is breathed out in the word "Master." The colour unites with the light and shadow, is embedded in it; and we can see t.i.tian's delight in the ductile medium which had such power to give material sensation.

In these liquid crimsons, these deep greens and shoaling blues, the velvety fulness and plenitudes of the brush become visible; we can look into their depths and see something quite unlike the smooth, opaque washes of the Florentines.

In such a masterpiece as "Sacred and Profane Love," painted during these years for the Borghese, there are summed up all those artistic aims towards which the Venetian painters had been tending. The picture is still Giorgionesque in mood. It may represent, as Dr. Wickhoff suggests, Venus exhorting Medea to listen to the love-suit of Jason; but the subject is not forced upon us, and we are more occupied with the contrast between the two beautiful personalities, so harmoniously related to each other, yet so opposed in type. The gracious, self-absorbed lady, with her softly dressed hair, her loose glove, her silvery satin dress, is a contrast in look and spirit to the G.o.ddess whose free, simple att.i.tude and outward gaze embody the n.o.bler ideal.

The sinuous and enchanting line of Venus's figure against the crimson cloak has, I think, been the outcome of admiration for Giorgione's "Sleeping Venus," and has the same soft, unhurried curves. t.i.tian's two figures are perfectly s.p.a.ced in a setting which breathes the very aroma of the early Renaissance. A bas-relief on the marble fountain represents nymphs whipping a sleeping Love to life, while a cupid teases the chaste unicorn. A delicious baby Love splashes in the water, fallen rose-leaves strew the mellow marble rim, around and away stretches a sunny country scene, in which people are placidly pursuing a life of ease and pleasure. What a revelation to Venice these pictures were which began with Giorgione's conversaziones! How little occupied the women are with the story. Venus does not argue, or check off reasons on her fingers, like S. Ursula. Medea is listening to her own thoughts, but the whole scene is bathed in the suggestion of the joy and happiness of love. The little censer burning away in the blue and breathless air might be a philtre diffusing sensuous dreams, and when the rays of the evening sun strike the picture, where it now hangs, and bring out each touch of its glowing radiance, it seems to palpitate with the joy of life and to thrill with the magic of summer in the days when the world was young.

With the influence still lingering of Giorgione's "Knight of Malta,"

t.i.tian produced some of his finest portraits in the decade that led to the middle of his life. The "Dr. Parma" at Vienna, the n.o.ble "Man in Black" and "Man with a Glove" of the Louvre, the "Young Englishman" of the Pitti, with his keen blue eyes, the portrait at Temple Newsam, which, with some critics, still pa.s.ses as a Giorgione, are all examples in which he keeps the half-length, invented by Bellini and followed by Giorgione.

After the visit to Padua he shows less preference for costume, and his women are generally clothed in a loose white chemise, rather than the square-cut bodice.

We do not wonder that all the leading personages of Italy wished to be painted by t.i.tian. His are the portraits of a man of intellect. They show the subject at his best; grave, cultivated, stately, as he appeared and wished to appear; not taken off his guard in any way. What can be more sympathetic as a personality than the Ariosto of the National Gallery? We can enter into his mind and make a friend of him, and yet all the time he has himself in hand; he allows us to divine as much as he chooses, and draws a thin veil over all that he does not intend us to discover. The painter himself is impersonal and not over-sensitive; he does not paint in his own fancies about his sitter--probably he had none; he saw what he was meant to see. There was what Mr. Berenson calls "a certain happy insensibility" about him, which prevented him from taking fantastic flights, or from looking too deep below the surface.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _t.i.tian._ ARIOSTO.

_London._ (_Photo, Mansell and Co._)]

CHAPTER XVIII

t.i.tIAN (_continued_)

With the "a.s.sumption," finished in 1518 for the Church of the Frari, t.i.tian rose to the very highest among Renaissance painters. The "Glorious S. Mary" was his theme, and he concentrated all his efforts on the realisation of that one idea. The central figure is, as it were, a collective rather than an individual type. Well proportioned and elastic as it is, it has the abundance of motherhood. Harmonious and serene, it combines dramatic force and profound feeling. Exultant Humanity, in its hour of triumph, rises with her, borne up lightly by that throbbing company of child angels and followed by full recognition and awestruck satisfaction in the adoring gaze of the throng below, yet t.i.tian has contrived to keep some touch of the loving woman hurrying to meet her son. The flood of colour, the golden vault above, the garment of glowing blues and crimsons, have a more than common share in that spirit of confident joy and poured-out life which envelops the whole canvas. In the worthy representation of a great event, the visible a.s.sumption of Humanity to the Throne of G.o.d, t.i.tian puts forth all his powers and steeps us in that temper of sanguine emotion, of belief in life and confidence in the capacity of man, which was so characteristic of the ripe Renaissance. In looking at this splendid canvas, we must call to mind the position for which t.i.tian painted it. Hung in the dusky recesses of the apse, it was tempered by and merged in its stately surroundings. The band of Apostles almost formed a part of the whispering crowd below, and the glorious Mother was beheld soaring upwards to the golden light and the mysterious vistas of the vaulted arches above.

The patronage of courts had by this time altered the tenor of t.i.tian's life. In 1516 Duke Alfonso d'Este had invited him to Ferrara, where he had finished Bellini's "Baccha.n.a.ls." It bears the marks of t.i.tian's hand, and he has introduced a well-known point of view at Cadore into the background. In 1518 Alfonso writes to propose another painting, and t.i.tian's acceptance is contained in a very courtier-like letter, in which we divine a touch of irony. "The more I thought of it," he ends, "the more I became convinced that the greatness of art among the ancients was due to the a.s.sistance they received from great princes, who were content to leave to the painter the credit and renown derived from their own ingenuity in bespeaking pictures." Alfonso's requirements for his new castle were frankly pagan. Mythological scenes were already popular. Mantegna had adorned Isabela d'Este's "Paradiso" with revels of the G.o.ds, Botticelli had given his conception of cla.s.sic myth in the Medici villa, already Bellini had essayed a Baccha.n.a.l, and t.i.tian was to make designs for similar scenes to complete the decorations of the halls of Este. The same exuberant feeling he shows in the "a.s.sumption" finds utterance in the "Garden of Loves" and the "Baccha.n.a.ls," both painted for Alfonso of Ferrara. The children in the former may be compared with the angels in the "a.s.sumption." Their blue wings match the heavenly blue sky, and they are painted with the most delicate finish.

We can imagine the beauty of the great hall at Ferrara when hung with this brilliant series, which was completed in 1523 by the "Bacchus and Ariadne" of the National Gallery. The whole company of baccha.n.a.ls is given up to wanton merrymaking. Above them broods the deep blue sky and great white clouds of a summer day. The deep greens of the foliage throw the creamy-white and burning colour of the draperies and the fair forms of the nymphs into glowing relief, while by a convention the satyrs are of a deep, tawny complexion. On a roll of music is stamped the rollicking device, "_Chi boit et ne reboit, ne sceais que boir soit_."

The purple fruit hangs ripened from the vines, its crimson juice s.h.i.+nes like a jewel in crystal goblets and drips in streams over rosy limbs.

The influence of such pictures as these was absorbed by Rubens, but though they hardly surpa.s.s him in colour, they are more idyllic and less coa.r.s.e. The perfect taste of the Renaissance is never shown more victoriously than here, where indulgence ceases to be repulsive, and the actors are real flesh and blood, yet more Arcadian than revolting. In the "Bacchus and Ariadne," t.i.tian gives triumphant expression to a mood of wild rejoicing, so gay, so good-tempered, so simple, that we must smile in sympathy. The conqueror flinging himself from his golden chariot drawn by panthers, his deep red mantle fluttering on high, is so full of reckless life that our spirit bounds with him. His rioting band, marching with song and laughter, seems to people that golden country-side with fit inhabitants. The careless satyrs and little merry, goat-legged fauns shock us no more than a herd of forest ponies, tossing their manes and das.h.i.+ng along for love of life and movement.[3] Yet almost before this series was put in place t.i.tian was showing the diversity of his genius by the "Deposition," now in the Louvre, which was painted at the instance of the Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua and nephew of Alfonso d'Este.

Here he makes a great step in the use of chiaroscuro. While it is satisfying in balance and sweeping rhythm, and by the way in which every line follows and intensifies the helpless, slackened lines of the dead Body, it escapes Raphael's academic treatment of the same subject. Its splendid colours are not noisy; they merge into a scene of solemn pathos and tragedy. The scene has a simplicity and unity in its pa.s.sion, and what above all gives it its intense power is the way in which the flaming hues are absorbed into the twilight shadows. The dark heads stand out against the dying sunset, the pallor of the dead is half veiled by the falling night. It is a picture which has the emotional beauty of a scene in nature, and makes a profound impression by its depth and mystery. This same solemnity and gravity temper the brilliant colouring of the great altarpiece painted for the Pesaro family in the Frari. Columns rise like great tree-trunks, light and air play through the clouds seen between them. The grouping is a new experiment, but the way in which the Mother and Child, though placed quite at one side of the picture, are focussed as the centre of interest, by the converging lines, diagonal on the one hand and straight on the other, crowns it with success. The scheme of colour brings the two figures into high relief, while St. Francis and the family of the donor are subordinated to rich, deep tints. t.i.tian has abandoned, more completely than ever before, any attempt to invest the Child with supernatural majesty. He is a delightful, spoiled baby, fully aware of his sovereignty over his mother, pretending to take no notice of the kneeling suppliants, but occupying himself in making a tent over his head out of her veil. The "Madonna in Glory with six Saints" of the Vatican is another example of the rich and "smouldering" colour in which t.i.tian was now creating his great altarpieces, kneading his pigments into a quality, a solidity, which gives reality without heaviness, and finis.h.i.+ng with that fine-grained texture which makes his flesh look like marble endowed with life.

[3] It is this quality of unarrested movement, so conspicuous above all in the figure of Bacchus, which attracts us irresistibly in the Huntress, in Lord Brownlow's "Diana and Actaeon." The construction of the form of the G.o.ddess in this beautiful but little-known picture is admirable. Worn as the colour is, appearing almost as a monochrome, the landscape is full of atmospheric suggestion. It is in t.i.tian's latest manner, and its ample lines and free unimpeded motion can be due to no inferior brush.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _t.i.tian._ DIANA AND ACTAEON.

_Earl Brownlow._ (_The Medici Society, Ltd._)]

Venuses, altarpieces, and portraits all tell us how boldly his own style was established. His sacred persons are not different from his pagans and G.o.ddesses. Yet though he has gone far, he still reminds us of Giorgione. He has been constant to the earliest influences which surrounded him, and to that temperament which made him accept those influences so instantaneously--and this constancy and unity give him the untroubled ascendancy over art which is such a feature of his position.

With Leonardo and with t.i.tian, painters had sprung to a recognised status in the great world of the Renaissance. They were no longer the patronised craftsmen. They had become the courted guests, the social equals. t.i.tian, pa.s.sing from the courts of Ferrara to those of Mantua and Urbino, attended by a band of a.s.sistants, was a magnificent personage, whose presence was looked upon as a favour, and who undertook a commission as one who conferred a coveted boon. Among those who cl.u.s.tered closest round the popular favourite, no one did more to enhance his position than Aretino, the brilliant unscrupulous debauchee, wit, bully, blackmailer, but a man who, with all his faults, had evidently his own power of fascination, and, the friend of princes, must have been himself the prince of good company. Aretino, as far as he could be said to be attached to any one, was consistent in his attachment to t.i.tian from the time they first met at the court of the Gonzaga. He played the part of a chorus, calling attention to the great painter's merits, jogging the memory of his employers as to payments, and never ceasing to flatter, amuse, and please him. t.i.tian, for his part, shows himself equally devoted to Aretino's interests, and has left various characteristic portraits of him, handsome and showy in his prime, sensual and depraved as age overtook him.

In the spring of 1528 the confraternity of St. Peter Martyr invited artists to send in sketches for an altarpiece to their patron-saint, in SS. Giovanni and Paolo, to replace an old one by Jacobello del Fiore.

Palma Vecchio and Pordenone also competed, but t.i.tian carried off the prize. The picture was delivered in 1530, and during the autumn of 1529 Sebastian del Piombo had returned to Venice from Rome, and Michelangelo had sought refuge there from Florence and had stayed for some months. A quarrel with the monks over the price had delayed the picture, so that it may quite probably have only been begun after intercourse with the Roman visitors had given a fresh turn to t.i.tian's ideas; for though he never ceases to be himself, it certainly seems as if the genius of Michelangelo had had some effect. From what we know of the altarpiece, which perished by fire in 1867, but of which a good copy by Cigoli remains, t.i.tian embarked suddenly upon forms of Herculean strength in violent action, but there his likeness to the Florentine ended; the figures were, indeed, drawn with a deep, though not altogether successful, attention to anatomy and foreshortening, but the picture obtained its effect and derived its impressiveness from the setting in which the figures were placed--the great trees, bending and straining, the hurrying clouds, as if nature were in portentous harmony with the sinister deed, and overhead the enchanting gleam of light which shot downward and irradiated the face of the martyr and the two lovely winged boys, bathed in a flood of blue aether, who held aloft the palm of victory. Many copies of it remain, and we only regret that one which Rubens executed is not preserved among them.

When we look at the delicious "Madonna del Coniglio" in the Louvre and our own "Marriage of S. Catherine," the first of which certainly, and the second probably, was painted about this time, we cannot doubt that the charm of the idea of motherhood had particularly arrested the painter. About 1525 his first son, Pomponio, was born, and was followed by another son and a daughter. In the S. Catherine he paints that pa.s.sion of mother-love with an intensity and reality that can only be drawn from life, and on the wheel at her feet he has inscribed his name, Ticia.n.u.s, F. His feeling for landscape is increasing, and the landscape in these pictures equals the figures in importance and has engrossed the painter quite as much. Every year t.i.tian paid a visit to Cadore, and in the rich woodlands, the distant villages, the great white villa on the hill-side, and, above all, in the far-off blue mountains and the glooms and gleams of storm and suns.h.i.+ne, the sudden dart of rays through the summer clouds, which he has painted here, we see how constant was his study of his native country, and how profoundly he felt its poetry and its charm. He had married Cecilia, the daughter of a barber belonging to Perarolo, a little town near Cadore. In 1530 she died, and he mourned her deeply. He went on working and planning for his children's future, and his sister came from Cadore to take charge of the motherless household; but his friends' letters speak of his being ill from melancholy, and he could not go on living in the old house at San Samuele, which had been his home for sixteen years. He took a new house on the north side of the city, in the parish of San Canciano. The Casa Grande, as it was called, was a building of importance, which the painter first hired and finally bought, letting off such apartments as he did not need. The first floor had a terrace, and was entered by a flight of steps from the garden, which overlooked the lagoons, and had a view of the Cadore mountains. It has been swept away by the building of the Fondamenta Nuove, but the doc.u.ments of the leases are preserved, and the exact site is well established. Here his children grew up, and he worked for them unceasingly. Pomponio, his eldest son, was idle and extravagant, a constant source of trouble, and Aretino writes him reproachful letters, which he treats with much impertinence. Orazio took to his father's profession, and was his constant companion, and often drew his cartoons; and his beautiful daughter, Lavinia, was his greatest joy and pride. In this house t.i.tian showed constant hospitality, and there are records of the princely fas.h.i.+on in which he entertained his friends and distinguished foreign visitors. Priscianese, a well-known Humanist and _savant_ of the day, describes a Baccha.n.a.lian feast on the 1st of August, in a pleasant garden belonging to Messer Tiziano Vecellio. Aretino, Sansovino, and Jacopo Nardi were present. Till the sun set they stayed indoors, admiring the artist's pictures. "As soon as it went down, the tables were spread, looking on the lagoons, which soon swarmed with gondolas full of beautiful women, and resounded with music of voices and instruments, which till midnight, accompanied our delightful supper. t.i.tian gave the most delicate viands and precious wines, and the supper ended gaily."

In the year 1532 t.i.tian for the first time sought other than Italian patronage. Charles V., who was then at the height of his power, with all Italy at his feet, pa.s.sed through Mantua, and among all the treasures that he saw was most struck by t.i.tian's portrait of Federigo Gonzaga.

After much writing to and fro, it was arranged that t.i.tian should meet the Emperor at Bologna, where he had just been crowned. He made his first sketch of him, from which he afterwards produced a finished full length. It was the first of many portraits, and Vasari declares that from that time forth Charles would never sit to any other master. He received a knighthood, and many commissions from members of the Emperor's court. It was for one of his n.o.bles, da Valos, Marquis of Vasto, that he painted the allegorical piece in the Louvre, in which Mary of Arragon, the lovely wife of da Valos, is parting with her husband, who is bound on one of the desperate expeditions against the terrible Turks. Da Valos is dressed in armour, and the couple are encircled by Hymen, Victory, and the G.o.d of Love. The composition was repeated more than once, but never with quite the same success. We again suspect the influence of Michelangelo in the altarpiece painted before t.i.tian next left Venice, of St. John the Almsgiver, for the Church of that name, of which the Doge was patron. The figures are life-size, the types stern and rugged, daringly foreshortened, and the colours, though gorgeous, are softened and broken by broad effects of light and shade.

It is painted in a solemn mood, a contrast to that in which about this time he produced a series of beautiful female portraits, nude or semi-nude, chiefly, it would appear, at the instance of the Duke of Urbino. The Duke at this time was the General-in-Chief of the Venetian forces, a position which took him often to Venice, and t.i.tian's relations with him lasted till the painter's death. At least twenty-five of his works must have adorned the castles of Urbino and Pesaro. Among these were the Venus of the Uffizi, "La Bella di Tiziano," in her gorgeous scheme of blue and amethyst, the "Girl in a Fur Cloak," besides portraits of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess. It would be impossible to enumerate here the numbers of portraits which t.i.tian was now supplying. The reputation he had acquired, not only in Italy, but in Spain, France, and Germany, was greater than had ever been attained by any painter, while his social position was established among the highest in every court.

"He had rivals in Venice," says Vasari, "but none that he did not crush by his excellence and knowledge of the world in converse with gentlemen." There is not a writer of the day who does not acclaim his genius. t.i.tian was undoubtedly very fond of money, and had ama.s.sed a good fortune. He was constantly asking for favours, and had pensions and allowances from royal patrons. Lavinia, when she married, brought her husband a dowry of 1400 ducats. He had painted the portraits of the Doges with tolerable regularity, but all through his life complaints were heard of his neglect of the work of the Hall of Grand Council.

Occupied as he was with the work of his foreign patrons, he had systematically neglected the conditions enjoined by his possession of a Broker's patent, and the Signoria suddenly called on him to refund the salary amounting to over 100 ducats a year, for the twenty years during which he had drawn it without performing his promise, while they prepared to instal Pordenone, who had lately appeared as his bitter rival, in his stead. Though t.i.tian must have been making large sums of money at this time, his expenses were heavy, and he could not calmly face the obligation to repay such a sum as 2000 ducats at the same time that he lost the annual salary, nor was it pleasant to be ousted by a second-rate rival. His easy remedy was, however, in his own hands; he set to work and soon completed a great canvas of the "Battle of Cadore,"

which, though it is only known to us from a contemporary print and a drawing by Rubens, evidently deserved Vasari's verdict of being the finest battlepiece ever placed in the hall. The movement and stir he contrives to give with a small number of figures is astonis.h.i.+ng. The fortress burns upon the hill-side, a regiment advancing with lances and pennons produces the illusion that it is the vanguard of a great army, the desperate conflict by the narrow bridge realises all the terrors of war. It was an atonement for his long period of neglect, but it was not till 1439 [TN: Pordenone died in 1539] that, Pordenone having suddenly died, the Signoria relented and reinstated t.i.tian in his Broker's patent. One of his later paintings for the State still keeps its place, "The Triumph of Faith," in which Doge Grimani, a splendid, steel-clad form with flowing mantle, kneels before the angelic apparition of Faith, who holds a cross, which angels and cherubs help her to support.

Beneath the clouds are seen the Venetian fleet, the Ducal Palace, and the Campanile. It is an allegory of Grimani's life; his defeat and captivity are symbolised by the cross and chalice, and the magnificent figure of St. Mark with the lion is introduced to show that the Doge believes himself to owe his freedom to the saint's intercession. The prophet and standard-bearer at the sides were added by Marco Vecellio.

Though the battlepiece perished in the fire of 1577, another masterpiece of this time marks a climax in t.i.tian's brilliantly coloured and highly finished style. The "Presentation of the Virgin" was painted for the refectory of the Confraternity of the Carita, which was housed in the building now used as the Academy, so that the picture remains in the place for which it was executed. It is one of the most vivid and life-like of all his works. The composition is the traditional one; the fifteen steps of the "Gospel of Mary," the High Priest of the old dispensation welcoming the childish representative of the new. Below is a great crowd, but it is this little figure which first attracts the eye. The contrast between the ma.s.s of architecture and the free and glowing country beyond is not without meaning, and a broken Roman torso, lying neglected on the ground, symbolises the downfall of the Pagan Empire. The flight of steps, with the figure sitting below them, is an idea borrowed from Carpaccio, and perhaps taken by him from the sketch-book of Jacopo Bellini. The men on the left are portraits of members and patrons of the confraternity. Most t.i.tianesque are the beautiful women in rich dresses at the foot of the steps. In this stately composition we see what is often noticeable in t.i.tian's scenes; he brings in the bystanders after the manner of a Greek chorus. They all, with one accord, express the same sentiment. There is a certain acceptation of the obvious in t.i.tian, a vein of simplicity flows through his nature. He has not the sensitive and subtle search after the motives of humanity which we find in Tintoretto or Lotto. He has great intellectual power, but not great imagination. It is a temper which helps to keep the unity, the monumental quality of his scenes undisturbed and adds to their effect. In the "Ecce h.o.m.o" Christ is shown to the populace by Pilate, who with dubious compliment is a portrait of Aretino, and the contrast of the lonely, broken-down man with the crowd which, with all its lower instincts let loose, thunders back the cry of "Crucify Him," is the more dramatic because of the unanimous spirit which possesses the raging mult.i.tude. Other artists would have given more incidental byplay, and drawn off our attention from the main issue.