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TWO OF THE OLD MASTERS.
By MRS. JAMESON.
WITHIN a short period of about thirty years, that
is, between 1490 and 1520, the greatest painters
whom the world has yet seen were living and working
together. On looking back, we cannot but feel that the
excellence they attained was the result of the efforts and
aspirations of a preceding age; and yet these men were so
great in their vocation, and so individual in their greatness,
that, losing sight of the linked chain of progress, they
seemed at first to have had no precursors, as they have
since had no peers. Though living at the same time, and
most of them in personal relation with each other, the direction
of each mind was different — was peculiar; though
exercising in some sort a reciprocal influence, this influence
never interfered with the most decided originality. These
wonderful artists, who would have been remarkable men in
their time, though they had never touched a pencil, were
Lionardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio,
Giorgione, Titian, in Italy; and in Germany, Albert Durer.
Of these men, we might say, as of Homer and Shakespeare,
that they belong to no particular age or country, but to all
time, and to the universe. That they flourished together
within one brief and brilliant period, and that each carried
out to the highest degree of perfection his own peculiar
aims, was no casualty; nor are we to seek for the causes of
this surpassing excellence merely in the history of the art as
history of human culture. The fermenting activity of the
fifteenth century found its results in the extraordinary development
of human intelligence in the commencement of the
sixteenth century. We often hear in these days of “the
spirit of the age”; but in that wonderful age three mighty
spirits were stirring society to its depths: — the spirit of
bold investigation into truths of all kinds, which led to the
Reformation; the spirit of daring adventure, which led men
in search of new worlds beyond the eastern and the western
oceans; and the spirit of art, through which men soared even
to the “seventh heaven of invention.”
LIONARDO DA VINCI.
Lionardo da Vinci seems to present in his own person a
résumé of all the characteristics of the age in which he lived.
He was the miracle of that age of miracles. Ardent and
versatile as youth; patient and persevering as age; a most
profound and original thinker; the greatest mathematician
and most ingenious mechanic of his time; architect, chemist,
engineer, musician, poet, painter! — we are not only astounded
by the variety of his natural gifts and acquired knowledge,
but by the practical direction of his amazing powers.
The extracts which have been published from MSS. now
existing in his own handwriting show him to have anticipated,
by the force of his own intellect, some of the greatest
discoveries made since his time. These fragments, says Mr.
Hallam, “are, according to our common estimate of the age
in which he lived, more like revelations of physical truths
vouchsafed to a single mind, than the superstructure of its
reasoning upon any established basis. The discoveries which
made Galileo, Kepler, Castelli, and other names illustrious
— the system of Copernicus — the very theories of recent
geologists, are anticipated by Da Vinci within the compass
or on the most conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us
with something like the awe of preternatural knowledge.
In an age of so much dogmatism, he first laid down the
grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation
must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of
nature. If any doubt could be harbored, not as to the right
of Lionardo da Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth
century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his
originality in so many discoveries which probably no one
man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it
must be by an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts
of physical science had already attained a height which
mere books do not record.”
It seems at first sight almost incomprehensible that, thus
endowed as a philosopher, mechanic, inventor, discoverer,
the fame of Lionardo should now rest on the works he has
left as a painter. We cannot, within these limits, attempt
to explain why and how it is that as the man of science he
has been naturally and necessarily left behind by the onward
march of intellectual progress, while as the poet-painter he
still survives as a presence and a power. We must proceed
at once to give some account of him in the character in
which he exists to us and for us, — that of the great artist.
Lionardo was born at Vinci, near Florence, in the Lower
Val d' Arno, on the borders of the territory of Pistoia.
His father, Piero da Vinci, was an advocate of Florence, —
not rich, but in independent circumstances, and possessed of
estates in land. The singular talents of his son induced
Piero to give him, from an early age, the advantage of the
best instructors. As a child, he distinguished himself by
his proficiency in arithmetic and mathematics. Music he
studied early, as a science as well as an art. He invented
a species of lyre for himself, and sung his own poetical compositions
to his own music, — both being frequently extemporaneous.
its branches; he modelled in clay or wax, or attempted to
draw every object which struck his fancy. His father sent
him to study under Andrea Verrocchio, famous as a sculptor,
chaser in metal, and painter. Andrea, who was an excellent
and correct designer, but a bad and hard colorist,
was soon after engaged to paint a picture of the Baptism of
our Saviour. He employed Lionardo, then a youth, to execute
one of the angles. This he did with so much softness
and richness of color that it far surpassed the rest of the picture;
and Verrocchio from that time threw away his palette,
and confined himself wholly to his works in sculpture and
design; “enraged,” says Vasari, “that a child should thus
excel him.”
The youth of Lionardo thus passed away in the pursuit of
science and of art. Sometimes he was deeply engaged in
astronomical calculations and investigations; sometimes ardent
in the study of natural history, botany, and anatomy;
sometimes intent on new effects of color, light, shadow, or
expression, in representing objects animate or inanimate.
Versatile, yet persevering, he varied his pursuits, but he
never abandoned any. He was quite a young man when he
conceived and demonstrated the practicability of two magnificent
projects. One was, to lift the whole of the Church of
San Lorenzo, by means of immense levers, some feet higher
than it now stands, and thus supply the deficient elevation;
the other project was, to form the Arno into a navigable
canal, as far as Pisa, which would have added greatly to the
commercial advantages of Florence.
It happened about this time that a peasant on the estate
of Piero da Vinci brought him a circular piece of wood, cut
horizontally from the trunk of a very large old fig-tree,
which had been lately felled, and begged to have something
painted on it as an ornament for his cottage. The man
being an especial favorite, Piero desired his son Lionardo
of fancy which was one of his characteristics, took the
panel into his own room, and resolved to astonish his father
by a most unlooked-for proof of his art. He determined to
compose something which should have an effect similar to
that of the Medusa on the shield of Perseus, and almost
petrify beholders. Aided by his recent studies in natural
history, he collected together from the neighboring swamps
and the river-mud all kinds of hideous reptiles, as adders,
lizards, toads, serpents; insects, as moths, locusts; and other
crawling and flying, obscene and obnoxious things; and out
of these he compounded a sort of monster, or chimera, which
he represented as about to issue from the shield, with eyes
flashing fire, and of an aspect so fearful and abominable that
it seemed to infect the very air around. When finished, he
led his father into the room in which it was placed, and the
terror and horror of Piero proved the success of his attempt.
This production, afterwards known as the Rotello
del Fico, from the material on which it was painted, was sold
by Piero secretly for one hundred ducats, to a merchant,
who carried it to Milan, and sold it to the duke for three
hundred. To the poor peasant thus cheated of his Rotello,
Piero gave a wooden shield, on which was painted a heart
transfixed by a dart; a device better suited to his taste and
comprehension. In the subsequent troubles of Milan, Lionardo's
picture disappeared, and was probably destroyed, as an
object of horror, by those who did not understand its value
as a work of art.
The anomalous monster represented on the Rotello was
wholly different from the Medusa, afterwards painted by
Lionardo, and now existing in the Florence Gallery. It
represents the severed head of Medusa, seen foreshortened,
lying on a fragment of rock. The features are beautiful
and regular; the hair already metamorphosed into serpents,
And their long tangles in each other lock,
And with unending involutions show
Their mailéd radiance.”
can never forget it. The ghastly head seems to expire,
and the serpents to crawl into glittering life, as we look
upon it.
During this first period of his life, which was wholly
passed in Florence and its neighborhood, Lionardo painted
several other pictures, of a very different character, and designed
some beautiful cartoons of sacred and mythological
subjects, which showed that his sense of the beautiful, the
elevated, and the graceful, was not less a part of his mind,
than that eccentricity and almost perversion of fancy which
made him delight in sketching ugly, exaggerated caricatures,
and representing the deformed and the terrible.
Lionardo da Vinci was now about thirty years old, in the
prime of his life and talents. His taste for pleasure and
expense was, however, equal to his genius and indefatigable
industry; and, anxious to secure a certain provision for the
future, as well as a wider field for the exercise of his various
talents, he accepted the invitation of Ludovico Sforza il
Moro, then regent, afterwards Duke of Milan, to reside in
his court, and to execute a colossal equestrian statue of his
ancestor Francesco Sforza. Here begins the second period
of his artistic career, which includes his sojourn at Milan,
that is, from 1483 to 1499.
Vasari says that Lionardo was invited to the court of
Milan for the Duke Ludovico's amusement, “as a musician
and performer on the lyre, and as the greatest singer and
improvisatore of his time”; but this is improbable. Lionardo,
in his long letter to that prince, in which he recites
his own qualifications for employment, dwells chiefly on his
skill in engineering and fortification, and sums up his pretensions
the different modes of sculpture in marble, bronze,
and terra-cotta. In painting, also, I may esteem myself
equal to any one, let him be who he may.” Of his musical
talents he makes no mention whatever, though undoubtedly
these, as well as his other social accomplishments, his handsome
person, his winning address, his wit and eloquence,
recommended him to the notice of the prince, by whom he
was greatly beloved, and in whose service he remained for
about seventeen years. It is not necessary, nor would it be
possible here, to give a particular account of all the works
in which Lionardo was engaged for his patron, nor of the
great political events in which he was involved, more by his
position than by his inclination; for instance, the invasion
of Italy by Charles VIII. of France, and the subsequent invasion
of Milan by Louis XII., which ended in the destruction
of the Duke Ludovico. We shall only mention a few
of the pictures he executed. One of these, the portrait of
Lucrezia Crivelli, is now in the Louvre (No. 1091). Another
was the Nativity of our Saviour, in the imperial
collection at Vienna; but the greatest work of all, and by
far the grandest picture which, up to that time, had been
executed in Italy, was the Last Supper, painted on the wall
of the refectory, or dining-room, of the Dominican convent
of the Madonna delle Grazie. It occupied the painter about
two years. Of this magnificent creation of art only the
mouldering remains are now visible. It has been so often
repaired, that almost every vestige of the original painting
is annihilated; but, from the multiplicity of descriptions,
engravings, and copies that exist, no picture is more universally
known and celebrated.
The moment selected by the painter is described in the
twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew, twenty-first and
twenty-second verses: “And as they did eat, he said,
Verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me:
of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?” The knowledge
of character displayed in the heads of the different apostles
is even more wonderful than the skilful arrangement of the
figures and the amazing beauty of the workmanship. The
space occupied by the picture is a wall twenty-eight feet in
length, and the figures are larger than life. The best judgment
we can now form of its merits is from the fine copy
executed by one of Lionardo's best pupils, Marco Uggione,
for the Certosa at Pavia, and now in London, in the collection
of the Royal Academy. Eleven other copies, by
various pupils of Lionardo, painted either during his lifetime
or within a few years after his death, while the picture
was in perfect preservation, exist in different churches and
collections.
Of the grand equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, Lionardo
never finished more than the model in clay, which
was considered a masterpiece. Some years afterwards, (in
1499,) when Milan was invaded by the French, it was used
as a target by the Gascon bowmen, and completely destroyed.
The profound anatomical studies which Lionardo made for
this work still exist.
In the year 1500, the French being in possession of
Milan, his patron Ludovico in captivity, and the affairs of
the state in utter confusion, Lionardo returned to his native
Florence, where he hoped to re-establish his broken fortunes,
and to find employment. Here begins the third
period of his artistic life, from 1500 to 1513, that is, from
his forty-eighth to his sixtieth year. He found the Medici
family in exile, but was received by Pietro Soderini (who
governed the city as “Gonfaloniere perpetuo”) with great
distinction, and a pension was assigned to him as painter in
the service of the republic.
Then began the rivalry between Lionardo and Michael
Angelo, which lasted during the remainder of Lionardo's
years younger) ought to have prevented all unseemly
jealousy. But Michael Angelo was haughty, and impatient
of all superiority, or even equality; Lionardo, sensitive,
capricious, and naturally disinclined to admit the pretensions
of a rival, to whom he could say, and did say, “I was famous
before you were born!” With all their admiration of each
other's genius, their mutual frailties prevented any real
good-will on either side. The two painters competed for
the honor of painting in fresco one side of the great Council-hall
in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. Each prepared
his cartoon; each, emulous of the fame and conscious of the
abilities of his rival, threw all his best powers into his work.
Lionardo chose for his subject the Defeat of the Milanese
general, Niccolò Piccinino, by the Florentine army in 1440.
One of the finest groups represented a combat of cavalry
disputing the possession of a standard. “It was so wonderfully
executed, that the horses themselves seemed animated
by the same fury as their riders; nor is it possible to describe
the variety of attitudes, the splendor of the dresses
and armor of the warriors, nor the incredible skill displayed
in the forms and actions of the horses.”
Michael Angelo chose for his subject the moment before
the same battle, when a party of Florentine soldiers bathing
in the Arno are surprised by the sound of the trumpet calling
them to arms. Of this cartoon we shall have more to
say in treating of his life. The preference was given to
Lionardo da Vinci. But, as Vasari relates, he spent so
much time in trying experiments, and in preparing the wall
to receive oil painting, which he preferred to fresco, that in
the interval some changes in the government intervened,
and the design was abandoned. The two cartoons remained
for several years open to the public, and artists flocked from
every part of Italy to study them. Subsequently they were
cut up into separate parts, dispersed, and lost. It is curious
exists; of Lionardo's, not one. From a fragment which existed
in his time, but which has since disappeared, Rubens
made a fine drawing, which was engraved by Edelinck, and
is known as the Battle of the Standard.
It was a reproach against Lionardo, in his own time, that
he began many things and finished few; that his magnificent
designs and projects, whether it art or mechanics, were seldom
completed. This may be a subject of regret, but it is
unjust to make it a reproach. It was in the nature of the
man. The grasp of his mind was so nearly superhuman,
that he never, in anything he effected, satisfied himself or
realized his own vast conceptions. The most exquisitely
finished of his works, those that in the perfection of the execution
have excited the wonder and despair of succeeding
artists, were put aside by him as unfinished sketches. Most
of the pictures now attributed to him were wholly or in
part painted by his scholars and imitators from his cartoons.
One of the most famous of these was designed for the altar-piece
of the church of the convent called the Nunziata. It
represented the Virgin Mary seated in the lap of her
mother, St. Anna, having in her arms the infant Christ,
while St. John is playing with a lamb at their feet; St.
Anna, looking on with a tender smile, rejoices in her divine
offspring. The figures were drawn with such skill, and the
various expressions proper to each conveyed with such inimitable
truth and grace, that, when exhibited in a chamber of
the convent, the inhabitants of the city flocked to see it, and
for two days the streets were crowded with people, “as if it
had been some solemn festival”; but the picture was never
painted, and the monks of the Nunziata, after waiting long
and in vain for their altar-piece, were obliged to employ
other artists. The cartoon, or a very fine repetition of it,
is now in the possession of the Royal Academy, and it must
not be confounded with the St. Anna in the Louvre, a more
fantastic and apparently an earlier composition.
Lionardo, during his stay at Florence, painted the portrait
of Ginevra Benci, already mentioned, in the memoir of
Ghirlandajo, as the reigning beauty of her time; and also
the portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo, sometimes called
La Joconde. On this last picture he worked at intervals
for four years, but was still unsatisfied. It was purchased
by Francis I. for four thousand golden crowns, and is now
in the Louvre. We find Lionardo also engaged by Cæsar
Borgia to visit and report on the fortifications of his territories,
and in this office he was employed for two years. In
1514 he was invited to Rome by Leo X., but more in his
character of philosopher, mechanic, and alchemist, than as a
painter. Here he found Raphael at the height of his fame,
and then engaged in his greatest works, — the frescos of
the Vatican. Two pictures which Lionardo painted while
at Rome — the Madonna of St. Onofrio, and the Holy Family,
painted for Filiberta of Savoy, the Pope's sister-in-law
(which is now at St. Petersburg) — show that even this
veteran in art felt the irresistible influence of the genius of
his young rival. They were both Raffaellesque in the subject
and treatment.
It appears that Lionardo was ill-satisfied with his sojourn
at Rome. He had long been accustomed to hold the first
rank as an artist wherever he resided; whereas at Rome he
found himself only one among many who, if they acknowledged
his greatness, affected to consider his day as past.
He was conscious that many of the improvements in the
arts which were now brought into use, and which enabled
the painters of the day to produce such extraordinary effects,
were invented or introduced by himself. If he could no
longer assert that measureless superiority over all others
which he had done in his younger days, it was because he
himself had opened to them new paths to excellence. The
arrival of his old competitor Michael Angelo, and some
slight on the part of Leo X., who was annoyed by his speculative
to him, all added to his irritation and disgust. He left
Rome, and set out for Pavia, where the French king Francis
I. then held his court. He was received by the young
monarch with every mark of respect, loaded with favors,
and a pension of seven hundred gold crowns settled on him
for life. At the famous conference between Francis I. and
Leo X. at Bologna, Lionardo attended his new patron, and
was of essential service to him on that occasion. In the following
year, 1516, he returned with Francis I. to France,
and was attached to the French court as principal painter.
It appears, however, that during his residence in France he
did not paint a single picture. His health had begun to
decline from the time he left Italy; and, feeling his end
approach, he prepared himself for it by religious meditation,
by acts of charity, and by a most conscientious distribution
by will of all his worldly possessions to his relatives and
friends. At length, after protracted suffering, this great
and most extraordinary man died at Cloux, near Amboise,
on the 2d of May, 1519, being then in his sixty-seventh
year. It is to be regretted that we cannot wholly credit
the beautiful story of his dying in the arms of Francis I.,
who, as it is said, had come to visit him on his death-bed. It
would, indeed, have been, as Fuseli expressed it, “an honor
to the king, by which Destiny would have atoned to that
monarch for his future disaster at Pavia,” had the incident
really happened, as it has been so often related by biographers,
celebrated by poets, represented with a just pride by
painters, and willingly believed by all the world; but the
well-authenticated fact that the court was on that day at St.
Germain-en-Laye, whence the royal ordinances are dated,
renders the story, unhappily, very doubtful.
TITIAN.
Tiziano Vecelli was born at Cadore in the Friuli, a
district to the north of Venice, where the ancient family of
the Vecelli had been long settled. There is something very
amusing and characteristic in the first indication of his love
of art; for while it is recorded of other young artists that
they took a piece of charcoal or a piece of slate to trace the
images in their fancy, we are told that the infant Titian,
with an instinctive feeling prophetic of his future excellence
as a colorist, used the expressed juice of certain flowers to
paint a figure of a Madonna. When he was a boy of nine
years old his father, Gregorio, carried him to Venice and
placed him under the tuition of Sebastian Zuccato, a
painter and worker in mosaic. He left this school for
that of the Bellini, where the friendship and fellowship of
Giorgione seems early to have awakened his mind to new
ideas of art and color. Albert Durer, who was at Venice
in 1494, and again in 1507, also influenced him. At this
time, when Titian and Giorgione were youths of eighteen
and nineteen, they lived and worked together. It has been
related that they were employed in painting the frescos of
the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. The preference being given to
Titian's performance, which represented the story of Judith,
caused such a jealousy between the two friends, that they
ceased to reside together; but at this time, and for some
years afterwards, the influence of Giorgione on the mind
and the style of Titian was such that it became difficult to
distinguish their works; and on the death of Giorgione,
Titian was required to complete his unfinished pictures.
This great loss to Venice and the world left him in the
prime of youth without a rival. We find him for a few
years chiefly employed in decorating the palaces of the
Venetian nobles, both in the city and on the mainland.
by his biographers is the Presentation of the Virgin in
the Temple, a large picture, now in the Academy of
Arts at Venice; and the first portrait recorded is that of
Catherine, Queen of Cyprus, of which numerous repetitions
and copies were scattered over all Italy. There is
a fine original in the Dresden Gallery. This unhappy
Catherine Cornaro, the “daughter of St. Mark,” having
been forced to abdicate her crown in favor of the Venetian
state, was at this time living in a sort of honorable captivity
at Venice. She had been a widow for forty years, and he
has represented her in deep mourning, holding a rosary in
her hand, — the face still bearing traces of that beauty for
which she was celebrated.
It appears that Titian was married about 1512, but of his
wife we do not hear anything more. It is said that her
name was Lucia, and we know that she bore him three children,
— two sons, and a daughter called Lavinia. It seems
probable, on a comparison of dates, that she died about the
year 1530.
One of the earliest works on which Titian was engaged
was the decoration of the convent of St. Antony, at Padua,
in which he executed a series of frescos from the life of St.
Antony. He was next summoned to Ferrara by the Duke
Alphonso I., and was employed in his service for at least
two years. He painted for this prince the beautiful picture
of Bacchus and Ariadne, which is now in the National Gallery,
and which represents on a small scale an epitome of
all the beauties which characterize Titian, in the rich, picturesque,
animated composition, in the ardor of Bacchus, who
flings himself from his car to pursue Ariadne; the dancing
bacchanals, the frantic grace of the bacchante, and the little
joyous satyr in front, trailing the head of the sacrifice. He
painted for the same prince two other festive subjects: one
in which a nymph and two men are dancing, while another
and cupids are sporting round a statue of Venus.
There are here upwards of sixty figures in every variety
of attitude, some fluttering in the air, some climbing the
fruit-trees, some shooting arrows, or embracing each other.
This picture is known as the Sacrifice to the Goddess of
Fertility. While it remained in Italy, it was a study for
the first painters, — for Poussin, the Carracci, Albano, and
Fiamingo the sculptor, so famous for his models of children.
At Ferrara, Titian also painted the portrait of the first wife
of Alphonso, the famous and infamous Lucrezia Borgia;
and here also he formed a friendship with the poet Ariosto,
whose portrait he painted.
At this time he was invited to Rome by Leo X., for
whom Raphael, then in the zenith of his powers, was executing
some of his finest works. It is curious to speculate
what influence these two distinguished men might have
exercised on each other had they met; but it was not so
decreed. Titian was strongly attached to his home and his
friends at Venice; and to his birthplace, the little town of
Cadore, he paid an annual summer visit. His long absence
at Ferrara had wearied him of courts and princes; and,
instead of going to Rome to swell the luxurious state of Leo
X., he returned to Venice and remained there stationary for
the next few years, enriching its palaces and churches with
his magnificent works. These were so numerous that it
would be in vain to attempt to give an account even of those
considered as the finest among them. Two, however, must be
pointed out as pre-eminent in beauty and celebrity. First,
the Assumption of the Virgin, painted for the Church of
Santa Maria de' Frari, and now in the Academy of the
Fine Arts at Venice, and well known from the magnificent
engraving of Schiavone — the Virgin is soaring to heaven
amid groups of angels, while the apostles gaze upwards;
and, secondly, the Death of St. Peter Martyr when attacked
the prostrate victim and the ferocity of the murderer, the
attendant flying “in the agonies of cowardice,” with the trees
waving their distracted boughs amid the violence of the tempest,
have rendered this picture famous as a piece of scenic
poetry as well as of dramatic expression.
The next event of Titian's life was his journey to Bologna
in 1530. In that year the Emperor Charles V. and Pope
Clement VII. met at Bologna, each surrounded by a brilliant
retinue of the most distinguished soldiers, statesmen,
and scholars, of Germany and Italy. Through the influence
of his friend Aretino, Titian was recommended to the Cardinal
Ippolito de' Medici, the Pope's nephew, through whose
patronage he was introduced to the two potentates who sat
to him. One of the portraits of Clement VII., painted at
this time, is now in the Bridgewater Gallery. Charles V.
was so satisfied with his portrait, that he became the zealous
friend and patron of the painter. It is not precisely known
which of several portraits of the Emperor painted by Titian
was the one executed at Bologna on this memorable occasion,
but it is supposed to be that which represents him on
horseback charging with his lance, now in the Royal Gallery
at Madrid, and of which Mr. Rogers possesses the original
study. The two portraits of Ippolito de' Medici in the Pitti
Palace and the Louvre were also painted at this period.
After a sojourn of some months at Bologna, Titian returned
to Venice loaded with honors and rewards. There
was no potentate, prince, or poet, or reigning beauty, who
did not covet the honor of being immortalized by his pencil.
He had, up to this time, managed his worldly affairs with
great economy; but now he purchased for himself a house
opposite to Murano, and lived splendidly, combining with
the most indefatigable industry the liveliest enjoyment of
existence; his favorite companions were the architect Sansovino
and the witty profligate Pietro Aretino. Titian has
nothing can be said in his excuse, except that the proudest
princes in Europe condescended to flatter and caress this
unprincipled literary ruffian, who was pleased to designate
himself as the “friend of Titian, and the scourge of princes.”
One of the finest of Titian's portraits is that of Aretino, in
the Munich Gallery.
Thus in the practice of his art, in the society of his
friends, and in the enjoyment of the pleasures of life, did
Titian pass several years. The only painter of his time
who was deemed worthy of competing with him was Licinio
Regillo, better known as Pordenone. Between Titian and
Pordenone there existed not merely rivalry, but a personal
hatred, so bitter that Pordenone affected to think his life in
danger, and when at Venice painted with his shield and
poniard lying beside him. As long as Pordenone lived,
Titian had a spur to exertion, to emulation. All the other
good painters of the time, Palma, Bonifazio, Tintoretto,
were his pupils or his creatures; Pordenone would never
owe anything to him; and the picture called the St. Justina,
at Vienna, shows that he could equal Titian on his own
ground.
After the death of Pordenone at Ferrara, in 1539, Titian
was left without a rival. Everywhere in Italy art was on
the decline: Lionardo, Raphael, Correggio, had all passed
away. Titian himself, at the age of sixty, was no longer
young, but he still retained all the vigor and the freshness
of youth; neither eye nor hand, nor creative energy of mind
had failed him yet. He was again invited to Ferrara, and
painted there the portrait of the old Pope Paul III. He
then visited Urbino, where he painted for the Duke the famous
Venus which hangs in the Tribune of the Florence Gallery,
and many other pictures. He again, by order of Charles
V., repaired to Bologna, and painted the Emperor, standing,
and by his side a favorite Irish wolf-dog. This picture was
death was sold into Spain, and is now at Madrid.
Pope Paul III. invited him to Rome, whither he repaired
in 1548. There he painted that wonderful picture of the
old Pope with his two nephews, the Duke Ottavio and Cardinal
Farnese, which is now at Vienna. The head of the
Pope is a miracle of character and expression. A keen-visaged,
thin little man, with meagre fingers like birds' claws,
and an eager cunning look, riveting the gazer like the eye of
a snake, — nature itself! — and the Pope had either so little
or so much vanity as to be perfectly satisfied. He rewarded
the painter munificently; he even offered to make his son
Pomponio Bishop of Ceneda, which Titian had the good
sense to refuse. While at Rome he painted several pictures
for the Farnese family, among them the Venus and
Adonis, of which a repetition is in the National Gallery,
and a Danaë which excited the admiration of Michael Angelo.
At this time Titian was seventy-two.
He next, by command of Charles V., repaired to Augsburg,
where the Emperor held his court: eighteen years
had elapsed since he first sat to Titian, and he was now
broken by the cares of government, — far older at fifty than
the painter at seventy-two. It was at Augsburg that the
incident occurred which has been so often related: Titian
dropped his pencil, and Charles, taking it up and presenting
it, replied to the artist's excuses that “Titian was worthy of
being served by Cæsar.” This pretty anecdote is not without
its parallel in modern times. When Sir Thomas Lawrence
was painting at Aix-la-Chapelle, as he stooped to place
a picture on his easel, the Emperor of Russia anticipated him,
and, taking it up, adjusted it himself; but we do not hear
that he made any speech on the occasion. When at Augsburg,
Titian was ennobled and created a count of the empire,
with a pension of two hundred gold ducats, and his son
Pomponio was appointed canon of the cathedral of Milan.
in great favor with his successor Philip II., for whom
he painted several pictures. It is not true, however, that
Titian visited Spain. The assertion that he did so rests on
the sole authority of Palomino, a Spanish writer on art, and,
though wholly unsupported by evidence, has been copied
from one book into another. Later researches have proved
that Titian returned from Augsburg to Venice; and an
uninterrupted series of letters and documents, with dates of
time and place, remain to show that, with the exception of
this visit to Augsburg and another to Vienna, he resided
constantly in Italy, and principally at Venice, from 1530 to
his death. Notwithstanding the compliments and patronage
and nominal rewards he received from the Spanish court,
Titian was worse off under Philip II. than he had been
under Charles V.: his pension was constantly in arrears;
the payments for his pictures evaded by the officials; and
we find the great painter constantly presenting petitions
and complaints in moving terms, which always obtained gracious
but illusive answers. Philip II., who commanded the
riches of the Indies, was for many years a debtor to Titian
for at least two thousand gold crowns; and his accounts
were not settled at the time of his death. For Queen
Mary of England, who wished to patronize one favored by
her husband, Titian painted several pictures, some of which
were in the possession of Charles I.; others had been carried
to Spain after the death of Mary, and are now in the
Royal Gallery at Madrid.
Besides the pictures painted by command for royal and
noble patrons, Titian, who was unceasingly occupied, had
always a great number of pictures in his house which he
presented to his friends, or to the officers and attendants of
the court, as a means of procuring their favor. There is
extant a letter of Aretino, in which he describes the scene
which took place when the Emperor summoned his favorite
says, “the most flattering testimony to his excellence to
behold, as soon as it was known that the divine painter was
sent for, the crowds of people running to obtain, if possible,
the productions of his art; and how they endeavored to
purchase the pictures, great and small, and everything that
was in the house, at any price; for everybody seems assured
that his august majesty will so treat his Apelles that he
will no longer condescend to exercise his pencil except to
oblige him.”
Years passed on, and seemed to have no power to quench
the ardor of this wonderful old man. He was eighty-one
when he painted the Martyrdom of St. Laurence, one of
his largest and grandest compositions. The Magdalen, the
half-length figure with uplifted streaming eyes, which he
sent to Philip II., was executed even later; and it was not
till he was approaching his ninetieth year that he showed
in his works symptoms of enfeebled powers; and then it
seemed as if sorrow rather than time had reached him and
conquered him at last. The death of many friends, the
companions of his convivial hours, left him “alone in his
glory.” He found in his beloved art the only refuge from
grief. His son Pomponio was still the same worthless
profligate in age that he had been in youth. His son Orazio
attended upon him with truly filial duty and affection, and
under his father's tuition had become an accomplished artist;
but as they always worked together, and on the same canvas,
his works are not to be distinguished from his father's.
Titian was likewise surrounded by painters who, without
being precisely his scholars, had assembled from every part
of Europe to profit by his instructions. The early morning
and the evening hour found him at his easel; or lingering
in his little garden (where he had feasted with Aretino and
Sansovino, and Bembo and Ariosto, and “the most gracious
Virginia,” and “the most beautiful Violante”), and gazing
and bright career fast hastening to its close; — not that such
anticipations clouded his cheerful spirit, — buoyant to the
last! In 1574, when he was in his ninety-seventh year,
Henry III. of France landed at Venice on his way from
Poland, and was magnificently entertained by the Republic.
On this occasion the King visited Titian at his own house,
attended by a numerous suite of princes and nobles. Titian
entertained them with splendid hospitality; and when the
King asked the price of some pictures which pleased him,
he presented them as a gift to his Majesty, and every one
praised his easy and noble manners and his generous
bearing.
Two years more passed away, and the hand did not yet
tremble nor was the eye dim. When the plague broke
out in Venice, the nature of the distemper was at first mistaken,
and the most common precautions neglected; the
contagion spread, and Titian and his son were among those
who perished. Every one had fled, and before life was
extinct some ruffians entered his chamber and carried off,
before his eyes, his money, jewels, and some of his pictures.
His death took place on the 9th of September, 1575. A
law had been made during the plague that none should be
buried in the churches, but that all the dead bodies should
be carried beyond the precincts of the city; an exception,
however, even in that hour of terror and anguish, was made
in favor of Titian. His remains were borne with honor to
the tomb, and deposited in the Church of Santa Maria de'
Frari, for which he had painted his famous Assumption.
There he lies beneath a plain black marble slab, on which
is simply inscribed,
“TIZIANO VECELLIO.”
In the year 1794 the citizens of Venice resolved to erect
a noble and befitting monument to his memory. Canova
the extinction of the Republic, prevented the execution of
this project. Canova's magnificent model was appropriated
to another purpose, and now forms the cenotaph of the
Archduchess Christina, in the Church of the Augustines
at Vienna.
This was the life and death of the famous Titian. He
was pre-eminently the painter of nature; but to him nature
was clothed in a perpetual garb of beauty, or rather to him
nature and beauty were one. In historical compositions
and sacred subjects he has been rivalled and surpassed,
but as a portrait painter never; and his portraits of celebrated
persons have at once the truth and the dignity of
history.
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