Titian

by Sheila Hale

  Pursuing and managing benefices for Pomponio was to become something of an obsession with Titian. It may have been true, as he would write to Pomponio many years later, that he had tried, by the sweat of his own brow, to obtain church benefices that would make his son rich and powerful. Pomponio’s personal happiness, however, was never a consideration. Each of Titian’s three legitimate children was required to fill a role that would enhance the wealth and status of the entire family: Orazio was destined to remain by his father’s side as an amanuensis; and Lavinia, the daughter of his second wife, was to be provided with a dowry, also earned by the sweat of her father’s brow, that would secure marriage to a member of the minor nobility. Alas, poor Pomponio, the first son of a famous father, was to be the one who would suffer most.

  The first opportunity for a church living arose in the June after Cecilia’s death when an Augustinian friar at the monastery of Medole, which was under the jurisdiction of the Duke of Mantua, was thrown into prison and deprived of his benefice for trying to dupe Federico with false prophecies. Titian wasted no time in chasing the benefice for Pomponio, at first through Isabella d’Este who happened to be in Venice at the time visiting the glass factories and to whom he wrote at the end of the month reminding her of her promise to speak to Federico about the benefice – and of the little picture he was painting for her to carry with her on her travels, which, although of course he didn’t put it that way, would be his side of the bargain. From the tone of the letter we can speculate that Titian’s portrait of the very stout Isabella in red, which we know only from a copy by Rubens, was also painted during this visit.9 But he underestimated the time, complexity and expense involved in obtaining the necessary papal bull, which involved bribing numerous officials in the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Curia, who had themselves had to buy their jobs, before the title could be registered by the Apostolic Chamber.

  Although work, money and Pomponio’s benefice were seldom entirely absent from Titian’s mind, he was slowed down by grief following Cecilia’s death, by the problems of reorganizing domestic arrangements that had never previously burdened him, and by his awareness that Federico Gonzaga was wholly preoccupied by his scheme to marry the heir to the Marquisate of Montferrat. This was going well. Maria’s mother, Anne, having been assured that the Duke of Mantua would make a definitive break with the notorious Isabella Boschetti, had given her approval to a renewal of the marriage contract with Maria. Maria’s death on 15 September was a mere hiccup in the proceedings because immediately afterwards Anne offered Federico the hand of Maria’s younger sister Margherita, who was now heir to the marquisate. On 20 September Clement VII re-accredited Federico’s original contract with Maria, which passed seamlessly to Margherita.

  Everything now depended on obtaining the sanction of the emperor, and that would be altogether more difficult, if not impossible. On his Italian visit earlier in the year Charles, who was now extremely busy dealing with the Protestant problem in Germany, had seen quite enough of Federico’s capricious behaviour. He would not even allow the subject of the Gonzaga–Paleologo marriage to be discussed in his presence. Federico, however, had two trump cards up his sleeve. One was the gifted and persistent diplomat Count Nicola Maffei, a Gonzaga relative who as a nobleman would have direct access to the emperor. The other was Titian’s portrait of Cornelia, which arrived at long last in Mantua on 18 September. Everybody, including Isabella d’Este, agreed that it looked exactly like its subject. And so on 8 October Maffei left Mantua for Charles’s court at Augsburg, preceded by a convoy of mules laden with gifts for the emperor and his courtiers, the most important of which was Titian’s precious portrait.

  Federico had instructed the bearer who delivered the portrait to Cobos on 10 October to advise him that Titian had painted it without ever having seen Cornelia. This was a boast rather than an admission, and just as Titian had promised Federico that he would modify the portrait if necessary, so Federico, who was certain that it was a perfect if idealized likeness, pretended that he would send Titian to Novellara to paint Cornelia from the life if Cobos was not entirely satisfied. Federico’s faith in Titian’s genius was wholly justified by the reaction of Cobos, who was all the more impressed that the portrait had been painted in Cornelia’s absence. Maffei took matters from there. He had thought to carry with him a letter from Cornelia, and at each meeting with Cobos brought up her name, the very mention of which soon melted the commendatore’s resistance to his arguments in favour of Federico’s marriage to Margherita Paleologo. On 26 October the emperor more or less gave in, leaving the final decision to the ecclesiastical tribunal in Rome, which would have to approve the annulment of Federico’s marriage to Giulia d’Aragona.

  If he had not been sure that his portrait of Cornelia Malaspina would be a resounding artistic and diplomatic success Titian might not have risked behaving as he did in the coming months over the matter of the benefice of Medole for Pomponio. Soon after delivering the portrait he let it be known through Benedetto Agnello that he was suffering from a melancholia that would be speedily relieved by good news about the benefice. No doubt he really was still grieving for Cecilia, but then Titian was not Aretino’s friend for nothing. In the years of working for Alfonso d’Este he had learned that merely withholding his presence could have a powerful effect on patrons. When Federico invited him to Mantua in early October Agnello reported that Titian was feeling much better and would come soon but was not in a position to write at the present time. But Titian didn’t move until November, by which time his portrait of Cornelia had done its work. On the 15th Federico provided him with a letter to take in person to the vicar of Medole in which he demanded that the benefice should be forthcoming. He also resumed discussions about the purchase of the fields in the Trevigiano, which Federico instructed Agnello to pursue in Venice.

  Although neither the benefice nor the farmland was ready by the end of the year, it was not long before the matters that had revolved around Titian’s portrait of Cornelia were resolved. Already, in August, Ferrante Gonzaga had been persuaded by Federico and their mother Isabella d’Este to give up hope of obtaining the emperor’s permission to marry Isabella Colonna and turn his intentions instead to Isabella of Capua, who as the only daughter of the Duke of Termoli was at least as good a match. The emperor gave his immediate consent, making Ferrante at twenty-three richer for the time being in territorial possessions, as well as in imperial recognition, than his elder brother. Ferrante and Isabella of Capua were married the following April.

  Federico Gonzaga celebrated his marriage to the twenty-three-year-old Margherita Paleologo at Casale in Montferrat on 3 October 1531. The continuation of the main branch of the Gonzaga dynasty was ensured by the birth of Francesco, who would become the second Duke of Mantua and was followed by four more healthy children. Titian was called upon to portray the baby Francesco, but the picture has disappeared without trace. Cobos placed the Countess of Novellara under the special protection of the emperor and continued his affair with Cornelia at her house there until 1533, when he returned to Spain. Before leaving he sought Federico’s help in contracting Cornelia’s marriage to Giovanni Piero de’ Vecchi, a landowner in the territory of Reggio. He made sure that the Duke of Ferrara extended his favours to the couple. Nor did he forget Cornelia’s sister, for whom he found a place as maid in waiting to the Duchess Margherita Paleologo Gonzaga. In Spain, where Charles V put him in charge of the government during his frequent absences, Cobos became immensely wealthy with an income of 60,000 ducats, which enabled him to live like an aristocrat. He built himself palaces, amassed a collection of tapestries, paintings and jewels, and married his daughter to a duke and his son to the daughter of a marquis. Although we can safely assume that Cobos kept Titian’s portrait of his ‘dear little Cornelia’ for the rest of his life, which ended in 1547, it had disappeared by the end of the century.10

  TWO

  The House in Biri Grande

  She had the greatest delight in the way the
breezes played with her tresses, which were not covered with a veil or restrained by netting … One gust attacked her right eye with a curl, making it close in a way that was lasciviously graceful. Another made a curl encircle her throat like a necklace. Another made her hair snake in and out of her bosom.

  A DESCRIPTION OF MARY MAGDALEN BEFORE HER CONVERSION PIETRO ARETINO, IN THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST, 1535

  Mary Magdalen, the gentle and beautiful prostitute who was chosen by Christ to witness His resurrection, has always been the most popular of all the saints. Unlike the martyrs who are identified by the instruments of terrible tortures, her attribute is the jar of unguent with which she anointed the feet of Christ, and her suffering seems more comprehensible because it was brought about by her own decision to repent of her sins. Women identify with her sexual feelings before her conversion, men respond to her beauty, while her self-inflicted penance satisfies the requirements of the strictest Catholic moralists. The cult of Mary Magdalen’s exemplary personal conversion and intercession between Christ and His other disciples reached a peak in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when images of ‘the favourite saint of the Counter-Reformation’1 weeping in her grotto were used by the Catholic Church as a propaganda tool against Protestant heresies that questioned the scriptural basis of the intercession of saints and denied the necessity of penance on the grounds that the rite of baptism washed away the stain of original sin.

  Mary Magdalen was especially important in Venice where in the 1530s the leaders of Church reform emphasized the necessity of inner personal conversion. For Catholic humanists she also embodied the Neoplatonic ideal, as popularized by Pietro Bembo, of carnal love as a first step in the spiritual ascent to the chaste and perfect love of God, and was in that guise the Christian counterpart of the morally flexible Venus, the patron goddess of Venice, whose nudity could be interpreted as signifying purity and honesty as well as lust. The Magdalen was also an object of popular veneration who protected, as well as reformed prostitutes in a city renowned for its large population of whores and courtesans, women in childbirth, mothers whose milk dried up, even sailors in danger.

  Titian was already working on a Mary Magdalen for an unknown patron in March 1531 when he received a letter from Federico Gonzaga thanking him for a painting of St Jerome2 and requesting one of Mary Magdalen to be ‘as tearful as you can make her’ and as beautiful, ‘which will not be difficult for you’. The commission had to be treated as a matter of urgency because, so Federico claimed, it was for Alfonso d’Avalos, Marquis of Pescara and of Vasto, who, as captain general of the imperial infantry in Italy, was one of the most important and trusted men in Charles V’s Italian entourage. The painting was in truth destined not for the imperial captain but for his relative by marriage Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, the poet and pious widow who a few years later befriended Michelangelo and persuaded him to join the movement for Catholic reform. Colonna, whose poems show an interest in Mary Magdalen as disciple and apostle, had sent Federico some highly scented roses with a request for a painting of the Magdalen by an ‘excellent’ but unspecified artist. Federico replied that he had given the commission to Titian, ‘who is perhaps the most excellent practitioner of the art of painting that can be found in our time, and who is entirely mine and is seeking with great determination to make the most beautiful weeper possible and to let me have it quickly …’.

  Federico had presumably told Titian that the painting was for Alfonso d’Avalos rather than Vittoria Colonna in order to impress upon the painter the necessity of making haste with it; and Colonna, who used Alfonso’s name in the same way at around the same time to obtain a drawing of a Noli me tangere from Michelangelo, may have collaborated with or even suggested the deception. Alfonso d’Avalos, the cousin and heir of her late husband, Ferdinando Francesco d’Avalos, was a close friend whom she called her brother. Federico was therefore well aware that by gratifying her wish for a beautiful weeping Magdalen he would also please Alfonso d’Avalos, who in fact agreed to take the painting with him on his next visit to Pescara. The deception – which was not actually very far from the truth – succeeded in prompting Titian to make an early start on the painting, and over the coming weeks Benedetto Agnello kept the duke closely informed about the progress of the Santa Magdalena. Titian, he wrote, had promised that it would be different and more beautiful than the one on which he was working when he received the duke’s order.

  Federico’s excitement when Titian’s Mary Magdalen arrived in Mantua on 14 April, accompanied by a letter expressing the artist’s extreme humility and devotion, was such that he wrote to Agnello that it had surpassed his expectations by far, and to Titian that it must be:

  the most beautiful work that has ever come from your most excellent hands and all the more so because it was done for me, by which I know that pleasing me is dear to you. But I have found it so very beautiful and perfect that truly of all the paintings I have seen it seems to me that this is the most beautiful, and I am more than satisfied. And my most illustrious mother says the same thing, she praises it as a most excellent work and confesses that of all the similar works of art she has seen she has never seen anything that gave her such delight, nor anything that was the equal of this by a long way; and all the others who have seen it say the same, and the more they understand the art of painting the more they praise it …

  This was the most fulsome praise Federico Gonzaga would ever lavish on a work of art. His letter did not, however, mention Pomponio’s benefice on Medole for which Titian had been agitating since the June of the previous year. Now Aretino stepped in behind the scenes. If anyone could help Titian extract the benefice for Pomponio it was the man he called the brigand chief of letters. It is possible that without the resounding successes of the portrait of Cornelia and of Vittoria Colonna’s Magdalen he would not have allowed Aretino to spill his tainted ink on his behalf. But judging from the tone and strategy of Titian’s communications with Federico Gonzaga about the benefice, that is what he decided to do. Aretino, who knew very well that Titian was entirely confident about the quality of his Mary Magdalen, had persuaded him to write the excessively humble and devoted letter that accompanied it, hoping it would be read as a suggestion that he was owed compensation. When this failed they tried a more specific request suggesting that Federico should demonstrate his acceptance of Titian’s deep affection by rewarding him with the benefice. When there was no sign of it by 18 July Aretino, who judged that the time had come to take a tougher stance, composed for Titian a letter which, although signed by Titian, bears all the hallmarks of the Scourge’s manner of extracting favours.

  Most Illustrious Lord

  I have been expecting the bull of the benefice of Medole which Your Excellency was kind enough to give me last year for my son Pomponio, and seeing that the matter is delayed for too long and that I have not even received the income of the benefice I find myself the most discontented man in this world, it seeming to me that if the goodness and generosity of Your Excellency is to come to nothing I will be constrained, to my great disgrace and infamy, to change the priest’s habit that my boy wears with the greatest pleasure in the world and in the firm hope that he may enjoy this and other benefices from Your Excellency. So I must beg you as humbly as I can to console me by seeing to it that he has this bull, without which I will remain deeply troubled as much for the sake of my boy as for my own honour which will be compromised now that I have spread the word in Venice about the gift of the benefice made to me by Your Excellency …

  The timing of the letter, and the threat that Federico’s reputation might suffer if the bull was not forthcoming, were all the more effective when four days later the tribunal in Rome granted permission for the annulment of Federico’s marriage contract with Giulia d’Aragona, which was the only remaining barrier to the emperor’s formal sanction of his marriage to Margherita Paleologo. In his euphoria Federico fired off a quantity of letters including one to his ambassador in Rome enclosing eighty scu
di with which to bribe the officials in the Curia to make haste with the settlement of the benefice; and one to Titian apologizing for his neglect: he had been so preoccupied by his marriage that sometimes he couldn’t even remember who he was, but that very day he had sent money to Rome for the expediting of the bull and promised that half the income would be available within a week. When there was no news of the bull by 31 July Titian/Aretino tried a different tactic from the one they had used in their previous threatening letter. They congratulated the duke on his marriage and expressed enduring gratitude ‘on bended knees’ for the bull – which had actually not arrived. Federico got the message, and at long last on 7 September Benedetto Agnello advised him that he had given the bull to Titian who had received it with the greatest possible joy and had promised him he would give his immediate attention to the paintings he owed the duke. At the time Titian received the bull on his son’s behalf it produced 102 scudi per annum, but since Pomponio was still so young he had to pay out of it a pension of twenty-five ducats to a vicar – a certain Ottaviano Cusatro who would later be a thorn in Titian’s side – to administer the benefice for him.

  With Titian in his debt Aretino had no difficulty in persuading him to paint a St John the Baptist as a gift to the imperial commander in charge of Milan, through whom he sought to gain favour with the Duke of Milan. The painting was dispatched in October 1531, and just in case its quality should fail to impress the commander he accompanied it with a letter describing ‘the beautiful curl of the Baptist’s hair, the fairness of his skin, the richness of his crimson tunic lined with lynx, and the deceptive beauty of the lamb which had caused a sheep to bleat’. (The painting is lost.)