Titian

by Sheila Hale

  PART III

  1530–1542

  With Titian the expansion of his genius ceases for a while, and his art kept open house with the world, reflecting it not as it was, but as it wished to be.

  CHARLES RICKETTS, TITIAN, 1900

  ONE

  The Portrait of Cornelia

  The commendatore has found the portrait so lifelike that he does not cease to marvel at how it can have been achieved, especially as I have told him that it was painted not only in the absence of the lady Cornelia but by a painter who had never seen her and worked only from descriptions of others.

  A LETTER ABOUT TITIAN’S PORTRAIT OF CORNELIA MALASPINA FROM SIGISMONDO DELLA TORRE TO FEDERICO GONZAGA, 10 OCTOBER 15301

  While Titian was applying the final glazes to the Death of St Peter Martyr in early February 1530 he had at least three other paintings in progress: a portrait of Federico Gonzaga in armour; a painting of naked women bathing; and another of Our Lady with St Catherine and John the Baptist. These pictures were ‘favours’ for Federico Gonzaga in return for his continuing help with acquiring the fields near Treviso at a bargain price. The first of them to be finished, and the only one that has survived, is now known as the Madonna of the Rabbit after the white rabbit the Madonna holds in place on the hem of her blue skirt for the entertainment of her Son. For this enchanting painting Titian looked back with a new, mature perspective to his earliest Giorgionesque pastoral paintings. The sharply focused details of the foreground – the passion flower, the rabbit, the basket of fruit – are like miniature still lifes, while rapidly painted slashes of orange light the sky at sunset; and the pale azure of the distant foothills flows into the shawl around the shoulders of the fashionably dressed St Catherine and winds around the arm with which she supports the Christ child. That Titian was able to give such close attention to a small, quiet, intimate painting for one sophisticated patron when he was working concurrently on the enormous and turbulent St Peter Martyr intended for a public setting is one of the telling reminders we have of his extraordinary ability to hold very different images in his mind, turning from one to the other as the mood took him.

  Behind the Madonna holding the rabbit, Federico Gonzaga is seated dressed as a shepherd tending his flocks in Arcadia. Castiglione had written that aristocrats disguised as shepherds could behave in licentious ways that would normally be considered inappropriate for men of their station, and since Federico was nothing if not licentious his appearance as a shepherd may have been a private joke between the marquis and the painter he had come to regard almost as a friend. He cannot have failed to be delighted by this gem of a painting which was followed by a ‘gift’ to Titian of 300 ducats towards the purchase of the farmland near Treviso – which Titian was by now so anxious to obtain that he had begun negotiating for the fields on his own behalf. Titian thanked his ‘most singular of patrons’ with a letter assuring him that he would finish the painting of the naked women as soon as he had recovered from a painful attack of scabies that made it impossible for him even to move.

  Other patrons, not least the Council of Ten and Federico’s uncle Alfonso d’Este, had learned to put up with similar excuses. Federico, however, rarely had to wait long for his paintings. Ten years younger than Titian, he treated him, if not as a social equal, with sympathy and even a degree of deference and went out of his way to promote his career and financial wellbeing. Their warm relationship never cooled, despite Titian’s sometimes peremptory demands, and in the years before Federico’s death in 1540 Titian painted some thirty pictures for him, more than he produced for any other patron.2

  Benedetto Agnello, who succeeded Giacomo Malatesta as Mantuan ambassador to Venice in June 1530,3 was the ideal conduit between Federico and Titian. A sophisticated and widely experienced high-flyer from one of Mantua’s oldest families, he moved easily in Venetian intellectual and artistic circles. Although he had a hard time keeping Aretino’s malicious slanders against his master in check, he and Titian became close enough to spend time in one another’s houses. In the first year of his appointment Federico corresponded with Agnello about no fewer than eight paintings by Titian, as well as about numerous other services he required of the painter. Although the ambassador never pretended to be a connoisseur of painting, he did suggest at least one subject for a portrait by Titian. All Europe was intensely curious about the appearance of Suleiman the Magnificent, the most powerful of Ottoman sultans, who had brought his forces further into central Europe than any of his predecessors. Erasmus in 1530, in a book4 intended for the instruction of young people, had written that ‘Even if the Turk (heaven forbid!) should rule over us, we would be committing a sin if we were to deny him the respect due to Caesar.’ It was Agnello’s idea that Titian should paint for the duke a version of a previous painting of the sultan that he had taken from a medal, and although both portraits are lost it seems that Titian obliged.5

  Nevertheless, to judge from the prices Federico was prepared to pay and from his most numerous and detailed instructions to Agnello, he was even more interested in acquiring the finest jewels and jewellery obtainable in Venice than in commissioning paintings by Titian. For a pair of pearl earrings, for example, he offered up to 1,000 scudi, more than three times any of the favours he bestowed on Titian. If the differential bothered Titian there is no sign of it. On the contrary, since Titian was acquainted with the most talented Venetian jewellers, Agnello often turned to him for help and advice. Although 1530 was Federico’s most acquisitive year, the purchasing of luxury commodities for himself and his family went on for the rest of his life. He had good reason to trust his ambassador’s eye for quality and judgement of value, and Agnello took his role as personal shopper for the duke as seriously as any of his diplomatic tasks. He searched the world’s greatest emporium for the best available ginger, Malvasia wine and fruit trees. He advised the duke about purchases of Murano glass and mirrors, books, clocks, tapestries, cloth of camel’s hair and of gold. He alerted him to the arrival on the galleys of imported parrots, ostriches, monkeys, leopards, gazelles, Arabian horses and other more exotic animals. He had Titian paint a portrait for Federico of one ‘very strange’ creature, perhaps an antelope, that he described as a hoofed quadruped, a bit like a stag but the size of a fawn, with the head and eyes of a horse and the snout of an ox, the teeth of a deer, and horned like a chamois, but a little fatter and larger. Agnello also did what he could to promote the arts in Mantua, sending for example some paintbrushes to Giulio Romano.

  What is most remarkable about Agnello’s position in Venice – given the restrictions there on social contacts between foreign diplomats and members of the government – is that he befriended many patricians, including members of the doge’s family, who leaked to him classified information about events abroad; he knew, for example, a great deal about Henry VIII’s marital upheavals. As a closely observant and shrewd outsider he was not altogether impressed by the spectacles and propaganda that served to bolster the Myth of Venice as the perfect state, and noted that doges, despite the legal prescriptions intended to limit their power, actually enjoyed unrivalled authority. He shared with Marin Sanudo, another of his good friends, a sharp ear for the details of intrigues, public spectacles, crimes and disasters. After 1533, when Sanudo finally stopped writing his voluminous diaries, Agnello’s official dispatches and informal letters to Federico, and his correspondence with Federico’s treasurer Gian Giacomo Calandra and his other friends at the Mantuan court, become our richest source for the politics of the Republic – as well as giving us a lively account of Titian’s moods, health, life and work – before the ambassador’s much-lamented death in 1556.

  By the time Agnello had taken up his post in Venice, Federico was embroiled in an increasingly complicated diplomatic problem in the course of which Titian’s skill as a portraitist would play a significant role. Among the unofficial highlights and discussion points of the social whirl around the Bologna summit meeting had been the passionate coup de foudre that pier
ced the heart of the Spanish commendatore Francisco de los Cobos when he laid eyes on the tall, willowy and extremely beautiful Cornelia Malaspina. Cobos, who came from a family of poor municipal small gentry in Andalusia, was now in his early fifties. After an education at the royal Castilian secretarial school, where he did not learn Latin or Greek, he had attracted the admiration of the emperor, who, impressed by his charm, his subtle mind, his unswerving loyalty and his honesty (at least by the standards of the day), made him his finance minister and brought him to Italy as his principal adviser along with the French lawyer Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle. Cobos quickly became Charles’s most trusted secretary, his ‘prudent integrity and powerful courtesy the key’, as Aretino wrote of him six years later, ‘to the emperor’s secret soul’.

  From the moment they met in Bologna in the house of the countess Isabella Gonzaga de’ Pepoli to whom Cornelia was lady in waiting, Cobos could not get her out of his mind, and the story of his love for her soon became legendary in imperial circles where she was known as la illustre and the name Cornelia was used as an eponym for young women of grace and beauty. In May 1530, when Cobos was on business in Innsbruck, he advised Federico Gonzaga through the imperial ambassador in Mantua that he desired a portrait of the lady Cornelia, to be done by ‘that good painter’, by which he probably meant one of the artists working under Giulio Romano on the frescos in the Palazzo Tè. It is not surprising that he turned to Federico, who had many artists at his disposal, who was related to the Countess of Pepoli and whose own passionate involvement with Isabella Boschetti was likely to arouse his sympathy. Federico for his part needed no persuading. It was in his interests to do everything he could to please Cobos, who had the emperor’s ear and filtered all his incoming correspondence. But Federico had other motives for gratifying the commendatore’s slightest wish. In the first place he hoped to promote through Cobos his brother Ferrante’s extremely complicated marital ambitions, which were focused at that time on Isabella Colonna, a young and rich Roman heiress who was, however, already secretly married.6 Within days of Cobos’s request for the portrait of Cornelia, Federico informed the imperial ambassador that it was ready. It wanted only the varnish, but that would depend on good drying weather. Federico hinted that the delivery of the portrait also depended on the emperor’s permission for Ferrante’s marriage to Isabella Colonna. The plan to barter the portrait of Cornelia in return for Cobos’s intervention with the emperor on his brother’s behalf was, however, unsuccessful.

  But then on 6 June something totally unexpected occurred that caused a U-turn in Federico’s plans for his own marriage. Bonifacio Paleologo, the boy marquis of Montferrat in Piedmont, died in a riding accident. Bonifacio’s heir was his elder sister Maria, the bride Federico had repudiated when the likelihood of her succession had seemed unlikely. Federico now became obsessed by the urgent need to relegitimize this first marriage to the woman who had so unexpectedly become the Marchioness of Montferrat, which if he succeeded would make the Gonzagas rulers of a second principality. Clement VII, who had granted him the annulment, would be easy enough to fix. Charles V, who had drawn up his marriage contract with Giulia d’Aragona, was another matter. It was a situation that would call upon all of Federico’s considerable talents for intrigue.

  One of his first moves was to foment a revolt among his subjects against the old and sterile Giulia d’Aragona in favour of his ‘real’ wife Maria. He also decided that under the radically altered circumstances the portrait of Cornelia, which the anonymous artist had painted from a previous portrait, was not after all a good enough likeness. To make absolutely certain of pleasing Cobos, it was necessary that she be painted from life. Of all the painters at his disposal Titian was the one who could best capture the beauty of the woman who was the ‘heart, soul and greatest treasure in the world’ of the most trusted adviser to the emperor Charles V – who held the ultimate power to grant or dash Federico’s hopes for an extremely advantageous remarriage to his ex-wife. On 8 June Federico instructed Agnello to arrange for Titian’s immediate departure for Bologna. But just to make doubly sure, he had also commissioned a small portrait by Francesco Primaticcio, the Bolognese sculptor and painter who had been one of Giulio Romano’s assistants in the Palazzo Tè and who happened to be in Bologna at the time. Since Federico had failed to notify either artist of his back-up plan, the two men were surprised and not altogether pleased to run into one another at Casa Pepoli. But there was worse news. Cornelia was not there.

  The humid heat of Bologna in high summer was overpowering. Primaticcio packed up his materials and returned to Mantua. The Countess of Pepoli, who was impressed by Titian’s gentlemanly comportment, offered to send a servant to accompany him to Novellara where Cornelia had been taken to convalesce from an illness. But Titian had had enough. On 12 July he addressed to Federico the earliest of the few surviving letters written in his own hand. He had heard that ‘this Cobos woman or Cornelia’ was still weak, and because he, Titian, was ‘overcome by the heat and not feeling very well’ he had not followed her to Novellara. Nevertheless, her friends had given him such a good description of her that he could ‘risk painting her in such a way that no one who knows her will doubt that I have already painted her several times’. He asks the duke to send him the portrait of her ‘by that other painter’ and will let him have his own in about ten days. In a postscript he assures the duke that if the portrait is unsatisfactory he will go to Novellara, ‘but I think that will not be necessary’. Federico agreed to the proposal, and as soon as Titian returned to Venice Agnello paid him 78½ scudi of the 100-scudi fee for the portrait. He also reported to Federico that maestro Tuciano had arrived ‘half ill’.

  By the end of the month Cobos was still pressing impatiently for the portrait of his mistress. But Titian had put down his brushes, and the busy studio in Ca’ del Duca had gone quiet, watched over in his absence by the faithful Girolamo Dente. The maestro was spending his days and nights in his house behind the Frari watching over his wife Cecilia, who was critically ill. Her health had always been fragile. He had married her during one of her illnesses in order, so he had said at the time, to legitimize their two boys in case of her death. But in five years of marriage it had not occurred to him that she would actually die before him if only because he needed her to raise the children, to run his domestic life, to be there when he came home to the private place that warmed the part of his personality that he never revealed to his grand patrons or even to Aretino. No doubt he had been harsh with her and the boys – we can see the fierceness and possibly also a temper usually held in check in his later self-portraits. He was a man used to getting his own way, but this time he failed. By early August Cecilia was dead. If he thought at all about the portrait of Cornelia it may have been with envy for Cobos whose own beloved was recovering from her illness.

  On 6 August Benedetto Agnello wrote to his friend Gian Giacomo Calandra:

  Our master Ticiano is utterly disconsolate at the death of his wife, who was buried yesterday. He told me that during the troubled time of her illness he was unable to work on the portrait of the lady Cornelia or the painting of the nudes that he is doing for our Most Illustrious Lord, which will be a fine thing and which he expects to finish before the month is out. Meanwhile maestro Ticiano desires to know if our lord is satisfied with the St Sebastian7 he sent him, even though he admits that it is a mere trifle compared with his other gift of the nudes, only one of which he has produced as an entertainment in token of the devotion that he feels for His Excellency.

  For Titian, whose deepest attachments were always to his family, this was the loneliest time he had known since leaving his home in Cadore as a boy. His father Gregorio had recently died,8 and his brother Francesco had to spend more time in Cadore winding up the estate and attending to the Vecellio timber business. He may not have been able to give enough affection to Pomponio and Orazio, who were about eight and six when their mother died. Children of eight, who are old enough to understand that d
eath is a permanent loss and young enough to be aware of their helplessness, often suffer especially from the premature loss of a parent. Cecilia’s death may have been one of the causes of the ineffectual character of her firstborn, whose lifelong unhappiness Titian chose to ignore until, towards the end of his life, it would lead to an irreconcilable split between father and son. If their mother had survived she might have been able to soften the effects of her husband’s overbearing treatment of their sons. But she could never have dissuaded Titian from his iron and, as it would turn out, destructive determination that Pomponio, whether it suited the boy or not, should pursue a career in the Church.

  He had decided on a religious vocation for his elder son at birth because the priesthood offered the most respectable opportunity for a boy of relatively humble origins to rise through the social hierarchy as far as his wits could take him. It only required a classical education and good connections, both of which Titian was in a position to provide, to spare Pomponio from the uncertainties of an artist’s career, to realize his father’s social ambitions for him, and to enrich the family with ecclesiastical benefices, sinecures that were attached to churches or monastic abbeys where the residence of the beneficiary was not necessarily a requirement. The abbeys of Catholic Europe were vastly wealthy thanks to their possession of much of the best agricultural land; and local rulers, in whose keeping many of them were on behalf of the Curia in Rome, had the traditional right to request livings in their domains for favoured clerics. A collection of such benefices could add up to a tidy annual pension for a man of the cloth, who was required to do nothing in return. But obtaining them required a good deal of politicking and palm greasing in the Curia, a bureaucracy that even powerful rulers could not easily penetrate without help from insiders who knew how things worked. Nor was their management a simple matter. Some were encumbered by liens, the right, that is, of a former owner to keep possession until paid off, and once granted these could be exchanged, sold or sublet.