while it was in one sense a step in advance even of Giorgione, Titian, Palma, and Paris Bordone – constituting as it does a further development of painting from the purely decorative standpoint – must appear just a little superficial, a little self-conscious, by the side of the nobler, graver, and more profound, if in some ways more limited methods of Titian. With him, as with Giorgione, and indeed with Tintoretto, colour was above all an instrument of expression. The main effort was to realise the subject presented with splendid and penetrating truth, and colour in accordance with the true Venetian principle was used not only as the decorative vesture, but as the very body and soul of painting, as it is in nature.
To put forward Paolo Veronese as purely the dazzling virtuoso would be to show a singular ignorance of the true scope of his art. He could rise as high in dramatic passion and pathos as the greatest of them all on occasions; but these are precisely the times at which he most resolutely subordinated his colour to his subject and made the most poetic use of chiaroscuro. This can be seen in the great altarpiece The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian in the church of that name (San Sebastiano in Venice), Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata on a ceiling compartment of the Academy of Arts at Vienna, and the wonderful Crucifixion in the Louvre. Yet in this last piece the colour is not only in a singular degree interpretative of the subject, but at the same time technically astonishing, with certain subtleties of unusual juxtaposition and modulation, delightful to the craftsman, which are hardly seen again until the late nineteenth century. So that here we have the great Veneto-Veronese master escaping altogether from our theory, and showing himself at one and the same time profoundly moving, intensely significant, and admirably decorative in colour. Still, what was with him the splendid exception was with Titian, and those who have been grouped with Titian, the guiding rule of art. Though Titian remains the greatest Venetian colourist, he never condescended to vaunt all he knew, nor to select even the most legitimate of his subjects as a groundwork for bravura. He is the greatest painter of the sixteenth century simply because, being the greatest colourist of the higher order and in legitimate mastery of the brush second to none, he made the worthiest use of his unrivalled accomplishment. This was not merely to inspire applause due to his supreme pictorial skill and the victory over self-set difficulties, but above all to give the fullest and most legitimate expression to the subjects which he presented, and through them to himself.
Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), Man with a Glove, c. 1520.
Oil on canvas, 100 × 89 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
The Earlier Work of Titian
Tiziano Vecelli was born in the last quarter of the fifteenth century at Pieve di Cadore, a district of the southern Tyrol then belonging to the Republic of Venice. He was the son of Gregorio di Conte Vecelli and his wife Lucia. His father came from an ancient family of the name of Guecello (or Vecellio), established in the valley of Cadore. An ancestor, Ser Guecello di Tommasro da Pozzale, had been elected Podesta of Cadore as far back as 1321.[3] The name Tiziano would appear to have been a traditional one in the family. Among others we find a contemporary Tiziano Vecelli, who was a lawyer of note concerned in the administration of Cadore, keeping up a kind of obsequious friendship with his famous cousin in Venice. The Tizianello who in 1622 dedicated an anonymous Life of Titian known as Tizianello’s Anonimo to the Countess of Arundel, and who died in Venice in 1650, was Titian’s cousin thrice removed.
Gregorio Vecelli was a valiant soldier, distinguished for his bravery in the field and his wisdom in the council of Cadore, but not, it may be assumed, possessed of wealth or, in a poor mountain district like Cadore, endowed with the means of obtaining it. At the age of nine, according to Dolce in the Dialogo della Pittura, or of ten, according to Tizianello’s Anonimo, Titian was taken from Cadore to Venice to begin his painting studies. Whether he had previously received some slight tuition in the rudiments of the art, or had only shown a natural inclination to become a painter, cannot be ascertained with any precision. What is much more vital in our study of the master’s life-work is to ascertain how far the scenery of his native Cadore left a permanent impression on his landscape art, and in what way his descent from a family of hardy mountaineers and soldiers of a certain birth and breeding contributed to shape his individuality in its development to maturity. It has been almost universally assumed that Titian throughout his career made use of the mountain scenery of Cadore in the backgrounds of his pictures. However, except for the great Battle of Cadore itself (now known only in Fontana’s print, in a reduced version of part of the composition to be found at the Galleria degli Uffizi, and in a drawing of Rubens at the Albertina), this is only true in a modified sense. Undoubtedly, both in the backgrounds to altarpieces, Holy Families, and Sacred Conversations, and in the landscape drawings of the type so freely copied and adapted by Domenico Campagnola, we find the jagged, naked peaks of the Dolomites aspiring to the heavens. The majority of the time, however, the middle distance and foreground to these is not the scenery of the higher Alps, with its abrupt contrasts, monotonous vesture of fir or pine forests clothing the mountain sides, and its relatively harsh and cold colouring. It is the richer vegetation of the lower slopes of the Friulan Mountains, or beautiful hills bordering upon the overflowing richness of the Venetian plain. Here the painter found greater variety, greater softness in the play of light, and richness more suitable to the character of Venetian art. He had the amplest opportunities for studying these tracts of country, as well as the more grandiose scenery of his native Cadore itself in the course of his many journeys from Venice to Pieve and back, as well as in his shorter expeditions on the Venetian mainland. The extent to which Titian’s Alpine origin, and his early upbringing among impoverished mountaineers, may account for his excessive eagerness to reap all the material advantages of his artistic pre-eminence, for his unresting energy when any post was to be obtained or any payment to be got in, must be a matter for individual appreciation. Josiah Gilbert – quoted by Crowe and Cavalcaselle[4] – pertinently asks, “Might this mountain man have been something of a ‘canny Scot’ or a shrewd Swiss?” In the earning of money, Titian was certainly all this, but in the spending he was large and liberal, inclined to splendour and profusion, particularly in the second half of his career. Vasari relates that Titian was lodging in Venice with his uncle, an “honourable citizen”, who, seeing his great inclination for painting, placed him under Giovanni Bellini, in whose style he soon became an expert. Dolce, in his Dialogo della Pittura, gives Sebastiano Zuccato, best known as a mosaic worker, as his first master. He then makes him pass into the studio of Gentile Bellini, and thence into that of the caposcuola (founder) Giovanni Bellini. Dolce then asserted that Titian took the last and by far the most important step of his early career by becoming the pupil and partner, or assistant, of Giorgione, but this has never been confirmed. Morelli[5] would prefer to leave Giovanni Bellini out of Titian’s artistic descent altogether. However, certain traces of Gentile’s influence may be observed in the art of the Cadorine painter, especially in the earlier portraiture, but particularly in the methods of technical execution generally. On the other hand, no existing earlier works suggest the view that he was part of the inner circle of Giovanni Bellini’s pupils – one of the discipuli (disciples), as some of these were fond of describing themselves. No young artist painting in Venice in the last years of the fifteenth century could, however, entirely withdraw himself from the influence of the veteran master, whether he actually belonged to his following or not. Giovanni Bellini exercised upon the contemporary art of Venice and the Veneto an influence as strong as that of Leonardo on that of Milan and the adjacent regions during his Milanese period. The latter not only stamped his art on the works of his own special school, but fascinated in the long run the painters of the specifically Milanese group which sprang from Foppa and Borgognone; such men as Ambrogio de’ Predis, Bernardino de’ Conti and the somewhat later Bernardino Luini. Even Alvise Vivarini, the vigorous head of the opposite school in its latest quattrocento development, bowed to the fashion for the Bellinesque conceptions of a certain class when he painted the Madonnas of the Redentore and San Giovanni in Bragora in Venice, and the similar one now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Bernard Berenson was the first to trace
For these and other particulars of the childhood of Titian, see Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s elaborate
Crowe and Cavalcaselle,
