by Sheila Hale
The personal device plus ultra meaning even further – beyond, that is, the pillars of Hercules which in antiquity had marked the end of the known world – had been suggested to him by his humanist physician when he ascended the Spanish throne to indicate ambitions that stretched beyond those of other men. Although the twin pillars and scroll were later adopted for the American dollar sign, Charles at this time was actually less interested in exploiting his overseas dominions – which would later pay large dividends and fuel inflation throughout late sixteenth-century Europe – than in pursuing what he regarded as his God-given missions: to be the secular leader of a reformed, reunited universal Christendom, to drive the infidel Turks out of Europe and the Mediterranean, and to preserve and extend his dynasty by arranging politically advantageous marriages for his relatives.
The ideal of a Universal Christian Monarchy, as proposed by Dante and by Erasmus – whose writings were more popular with intellectuals in Spain than in any other European country – had been articulated by his Piedmontese grand chancellor Mercurio de Gattinara, a follower of Erasmus, in a letter to Charles after his election as emperor:
Sire, now that God in His prodigious grace has elevated Your Majesty above all Kings and Princes of Christendom to a pinnacle of power occupied before by none except your mighty predecessor Charlemagne, you are on the road towards Universal Monarchy and on the point of uniting Christendom under a single shepherd.
It is not easy to define Charles’s personal religious beliefs in our own age, a time when Christian faith is regarded as a subjective decision about the existence of God and the tradition in which believers choose to worship. He, as the imperial representative of God on earth, regarded his own faith as a matter between himself and his God; and his few public comments about religion were usually made in a political context. This does not mean, as some historians have concluded, that he was irreligious. Far from it, he was an orthodox Catholic, brought up before Martin Luther and his followers questioned and complicated the traditions of the Catholic Church. It was for that reason that he failed to understand the spiritual and doctrinal bases of the Protestant Reformation; nor was he fully aware of the deep-seated desire for political and economic self-determination that underpinned the Lutheran movement in Germany. Unlike the more sceptical Erasmus – who called ‘Caesar’ not a doctor of the Gospels but their champion6 – Charles genuinely believed that reconciliation with the Protestants could be achieved by compromise and reform of Catholic malpractices, and his unwavering faith in the possibility of a reunited Christendom was strong and simple enough to allow him to hope that Pope Clement could be persuaded to share his vision at their second meeting in Bologna, where he also intended to discuss the need to finance a fleet against Barbarossa and the maintenance of the always precarious peace with France.
But first he took his month’s holiday in Mantua where Federico had, as before, spared no expense on preparations for elaborate feasts, dances, hunting parties, court spectaculars, and tennis matches at the Palazzo Tè, where the sound of the balls bouncing off roofs could be heard while Giulio Romano painted his dramatic frescos in the Sala dei Giganti. On this visit the emperor was also entertained by staged comedies for which Titian at Federico’s request had found a Venetian scene painter to work on the sets alongside Giulio Romano. Ludovico Ariosto, now within a year of his death, came from Ferrara to present the emperor with a copy of the last edition of his Orlando Furioso in which he had added Titian’s name to his list of the greatest Italian painters – it was the first mention of Titian in a prominent literary work – and for which Titian had designed Giovanni Britto’s woodcut portrait of Ariosto in profile7 for the frontispiece.
On 6 December 1532 Federico and Charles set off for Bologna where they arrived on the 13th. Federico, who was feeling unwell, returned immediately to Mantua. Although it is possible that Titian travelled with the emperor and the duke, who enjoyed his company, all that can be said with certainty is that he reached Bologna well before 14 January, when Ferrante Gonzaga wrote to Federico that Titian had painted a very lifelike portrait of the emperor and was preparing a copy for Federico. Titian stayed in Bologna until 10 March when he wrote to Federico that he was about to leave for Venice and would take his copy of the portrait of the emperor with him and finish it there.
In his ‘Life of Titian’ Vasari tells a story about the sitting in Bologna which is probably true since he repeats it in his biography of Alfonso Lombardo in both editions of his Lives. Alfonso Lombardo, a Ferrarese sculptor and medallist with an engaging personality, persuaded Titian to allow him to come with him while he portrayed the emperor on the pretence that he was an assistant carrying the master’s colours. He brought with him a small wax tablet, and as soon as Titian started to paint, he drew it out of his pocket and quickly sketched the model for a relief portrait of the emperor. Charles saw what he was up to, asked to see the tablet and was so impressed that he asked Lombardo whether he was a good enough artist to carve the sketch in marble. The sculptor replied that he needed only to be told where he should send the finished work, to which Charles replied that it should be brought to him at Genoa before he embarked for Spain. He was so pleased with Titian’s portrait that he paid him 1,000 crowns, but when he saw Lombardo’s finished relief carving he made Titian give him half the fee.8
Titian’s portrait of Charles V in armour is lost; and all the copies or versions he and his workshop made of it – for Ferdinand of Austria, for Francisco de los Cobos, for Federico Gonzaga and for Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino – have also disappeared. We know it only from later copies, including one by Rubens (in a private collection), and from a woodcut by Giovanni Britto and an engraving by Agostino Veneziano. In all of these he is shown three-quarter length in armour, bearded, bare-headed, with his sword raised, wearing the badge of the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece, a gold sheepskin suspended from a collar of linked fire steels in the shape of the letter B. Charles kept this portrait in his private apartments for his wife and his son Philip, who grew up with it and later ordered a portrait of himself in armour from Titian.
The Portrait of Charles V painted by Seisenegger in Bologna is now in the Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. Like his other portraits of the emperor it is full length, a format that had not yet been adopted in Italy and that Titian would not use for another decade. Charles wears the same court dress with the collar of the Golden Fleece around his neck, and is accompanied by the same adoring hunting hound that Sanudo had seen at Bassano. The Seisenegger would be of no special interest to students of Titian were it not for the existence of a nearly identical but more Italianate copy of it (Madrid, Prado). Unlike the portrait in armour, which was listed in an inventory of Charles’s possessions, there is no record of the copy of the Seisenegger before it was discovered in Philip’s wardrobe in 1600, two years after his death. Although it could theoretically have been painted at any time before that date, the Prado has never questioned its attribution to Titian, and the majority of Titian scholars remain convinced that Titian took it from the Seisenegger at the emperor’s request as a gift for Ferdinand. (Another theory is that the Prado portrait is the original by Titian and the Vienna portrait by Seisenegger is the copy.) Since there is no evidence about the relationship between the two portraits apart from the obvious fact that one must have been based on the other, we are free to ask ourselves, despite the weight of authoritative opinion in favour of the attribution to Titian, why Charles would have asked Titian to copy a portrait by another artist when he was willing and available to sit for Titian in person. Whatever one may think of the quality of the Prado painting, the vague and lifeless features of the emperor do not correspond to the other well-characterized portraits Titian was painting around the same time.9
Titian was so overwhelmed with business at Bologna that he scarcely had time to snatch a meal. Although never good at meeting deadlines, even he could not prevaricate over a portrait of the emperor; and once he had finished it he was besi
eged by requests from members of the imperial entourage for replicas of it or for portraits of themselves. His practice of keeping records of original paintings in the studio from which assistants could turn out replicas or variants accelerated to meet the demand. The emperor’s powerful chancellor, Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, commissioned a portrait, possibly of himself or of the emperor. Cobos wanted one of the emperor as well as a Lucretia. Vasari and Ridolfi say that Titian also portrayed at Bologna Antonio de Leyva, the Spanish general whom Charles later appointed governor of Milan. Sadly, there is no trace of the portrait of Leyva, and the others Titian painted at Bologna are also lost.
We don’t know exactly when Titian painted his magnificent Portrait of Alfonso d’Avalos, Marquis of Vasto (Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum).10 It may have been at Bologna, or in the previous year when d’Avalos wrote to Aretino to say that he would reward him if he could persuade Titian to visit him at his castle in Correggio. D’Avalos was in many ways a repulsive man: arrogant, bad tempered, ruthlessly ambitious, cruel, foppish and excessively fond of using perfumes with which he scented his saddles and his letters. But he was also highly cultivated, a poet and author of a volume in Latin about his military exploits, as well as a connoisseur and patron of the visual arts. Ariosto called him the great saviour of Italy.11 Aretino, who relied on d’Avalos to pay his imperial pension, usually praised him immoderately, but when the marquis failed to deliver the pension on time he ridiculed his effeminate habits. Charles V, impressed by his performance at the Battle of Pavia where he had captured Francis I, had made him captain general of the imperial infantry in northern Italy. Titian portrayed him in an exquisite suit of armour inlaid with gold, very like that worn by the emperor for his portrait, with the collar of the Golden Fleece around his neck and a little page or dwarf gazing up at him awestruck from the bottom left corner.
While Titian was working flat out to satisfy demands for paintings from the emperor and his entourage, he was also involved indirectly in the long-standing struggle between the papacy and his curmudgeonly old patron Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, for possession of Modena and Reggio. Although the emperor had incurred Pope Clement’s wrath by granting the contested cities to the Este, they were still occupied by imperial garrisons. Early in January 1533 Alfonso, who knew that the emperor would be guided in all Italian matters by Francisco de los Cobos, sent Matteo Casella, one of his agents in Bologna, a list of paintings in the Este collection from which Cobos was to be offered a free selection. The delighted Cobos consulted Titian, who recommended three paintings, a Judith, a St Michael and a Madonna, none of them, as far as we know, by his own hand,12 and a portrait, now lost, of Alfonso’s son and heir Ercole that Titian had painted in Ferrara. Cobos asked that the paintings be dispatched directly from Ferrara to his agent in Genoa for shipping to Spain.
Titian then made a small tactical mistake. He recommended as a fine example of his own work the portrait he had painted in the 1520s of Alfonso with his hand resting on a cannon. It had not been on Alfonso’s original list, probably because it showed him wearing the French Order of St Michael, and his agents for that reason did what they could to dissuade Cobos, saying it was an old likeness. Cobos persisted and gave instructions that the portrait should be sent to Bologna. After a delay, during which Alfonso may have had the badge of St Michael erased, the portrait arrived; and Cobos immediately made a present of it to Charles. On 15 February Casella wrote to Alfonso that Cobos had told him it was already hanging in the emperor’s rooms in Bologna and that he wondered what the pope would have to say if he knew. Casella, so he wrote in the letter, had replied that the pope would certainly not be pleased to have the features of his rival, His Excellency the Duke, engraved upon the heart of His Majesty.13
The conference at Bologna was not to be the historical landmark the emperor had hoped for. He and the pope agreed to raise a fleet against Barbarossa in the Mediterranean, but also to postpone discussions about the calling of a General Council of the Church. For Titian, however, Bologna was the most fruitful event in his career up to that time. It marked the beginning of a warm friendship with the most powerful ruler in the world that would send mild shockwaves throughout Europe and lead to at least eighty-five commissions from the Habsburg family and entourage.14 The story Ridolfi told about the emperor stooping to pick up Titian’s paintbrush may not be literally true, but nor is it merely one of the legends – Leonardo da Vinci dying in the arms of Francis I or the emperor Maximilian holding Dürer’s ladder – that Renaissance apologists invented to promote the idea of the artist as the equal of his aristocratic patrons. Whatever it was about Titian that captivated his other high-born patrons – his self-possessed, gentlemanly manner, his way of showing respect without grovelling, his refreshing lack of an agenda beyond his art and the rewards he knew it deserved, his intelligence, his sense of humour and not least his magician-like genius for conferring immortality on his sitters – it was not lost on Charles V.
Before leaving for Genoa on 28 February the emperor conferred a knighthood on Titian and invited him to his court in Spain. The patent, which is dated 10 May 1533, was sent to Titian from Barcelona, and is still preserved in the museum in Cadore. It gives Titian the power to appoint notaries and ordinary judges, and to legitimize children born out of wedlock. His own children are raised to the rank of Nobles of the Empire. Titian is described in the document as ‘the Apelles of this century’, and Charles as following the example of Alexander the Great, who would be painted only by Apelles. The tribute was by then something of a cliché, and the knighthood was not, as imperial honours went, a particularly exalted one, although later in life Titian exercised his powers to appoint attorneys and legitimize bastards. He did not however use the title in letters and only occasionally signed his paintings ‘EQVES’, knight.
Although no doubt gratified by the emperor’s admiration and patronage and the effect it would have on other noble patrons, Titian had no intention of accepting his invitation to Spain, a country that was regarded by Italians as backward and brutal, with bad roads, no proper cities and such a small mercantile and artisan class that it relied on immigrants. Madrid, a dusty provincial town with a population of no more than 4,000, was not an attractive destination for any sophisticated Venetian, let alone one as busy as Titian. And so when in August Charles’s ambassador in Venice, Lope de Soria, formally requested a licence for Titian to visit Spain in order to paint the emperor and his wife, Titian persuaded the doge to cover for him with the bogus excuse that his presence was required in Venice while he finished painting ‘certain rooms’ in the ducal palace. But Charles persisted with his invitations. Lope de Soria reminded the doge that there were plenty of other painters in Venice who could just as easily do the work in the palace. But Titian continued to prevaricate.
He was more interested in investing the money he had earned in Bologna; and as soon as he returned to Venice in March he made enquiries about the farmland near Treviso belonging to the monks of San Giorgio Maggiore for which he had been negotiating on and off with Federico Gonzaga’s help for four years. At the end of April he wrote to Federico to say that now that, thanks to him, he had sufficient funds to pay the asking price of twenty-five ducats per field he had discovered that it had risen to thirty-three. He hoped the duke would intervene on his behalf with those ‘oafish and poltroonish priests’. By December, however, the Council of Ten, which had the ultimate authority over Church land in the Republic, had entered the picture. It announced a public auction of the fields with a reserve price of seventy-five ducats per field. The proceeds, as Titian and Federico learned only later, were intended to pay one of the procurators, Andrea Tiepolo, compensation for a group of houses he owned on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore which were blocking the view of the church. The Treviso farmland now became the subject of an imbroglio involving the doge, who supported the decision of the Council of Ten, as did the abbots of Santa Maria del Pero and of San Giorgio, while four of Federico’s agents, Benedetto A
gnello, his predecessor Giacomo Malatesta, Count Nicola Maffei and Gian Giacomo Calandra, supported Titian’s claim. Titian encouraged Maffei by painting for him his beautiful Supper at Emmaus now in the Louvre and had his studio make a copy of his Magdalen for Calandra. But by May of 1534 all their attempts to acquire the land for Titian had failed.15
Titian, who was left with a substantial amount of ready money on his hands, decided to make up for the loss of the farmland by expanding the family timber business. At the end of September he sent Francesco to Vienna to negotiate with Ferdinand of Austria for rights to cut timber in Botestagno, a castle in the Tyrol just across the Austrian frontier from Cadore on the Boite River. The planks would be floated downriver to the Vecellio sawmills at Perarola where the Boite joins the Piave, and then on down to the timber yards at San Francesco della Vigna. When, on 16 October Ferdinand granted the brothers a concession to export enough timber to make 1,000 planks over the next five years, Titian rewarded him with the promise of portraits of the emperor, the empress and Prince Philip. But Francesco’s absence in Austria had also served as yet another excuse for Titian to reject the emperor’s pressing invitations to Spain, this time on the grounds that he could not possibly leave the studio in the absence of his brother, who always took his place when Titian was away from Venice. Nevertheless, he did pay a short visit to Cadore where he had bribed the council with a generous loan to allow him to use its timber yards in Venice at San Francesco della Vigna for his own imported wood, and to seek planning permission to enclose the site and erect sheds on it to protect the timber, something it had done several times without success. The application, however, was unsuccessful, as would be Titian’s repeated attempts over the next decades to persuade the Council of Pieve to obtain the necessary permission.
