Titian
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Pius and Philip were by now sufficiently alarmed by Turkish supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean to opt for a formal alliance with Venice. The zealous ascetic Pius had looked for an excuse to form a crusading Christian alliance against the crescent of Islam since his election in 1566. Philip now came to see the Venetians as a front line of defence against the Turks, who were poised to attack Spain from the central Mediterranean and the Barbary Coast; and with the Netherlands apparently under control he could afford the cost of joining the crusade. This time it was Venice, which had the most to lose but was ever hopeful of a settlement that would reopen the Levant to its mercantile galleys, that held back – until Turkish landings along the coast of Dalmatia threatened invasion of the Friuli and the Lido. The anti-Turkish Holy League, brokered from Rome over many months by Cardinal Granvelle, was signed by all three parties on 20 May 1571.
The allied Christian fleets assembled at Messina in August. Sebastiano Venier, in charge of the Venetian fleet, was in his early seventies, twice the age of the papal commander Marcantonio Colonna. The dashing Don John of Austria, the illegitimate son of Charles V born twenty-six years earlier at Ratisbon after the emperor’s affair with the burgher’s daughter Barbara Blomberg, assumed overall control. The pope himself designed the fighting banner, an image of Christ Crucified and the emblems of the three allies emblazoned on an azure background, which was presented to Don John at Messina by Cardinal Granvelle with the words ‘Take, O illustrious Prince, the insignia of the Word Made Flesh. Take the living symbol of the holy Faith whose defender you will be in this enterprise. He gives you glorious victory over the impious enemy, and by your hand shall his pride be laid in the dust.’
On 16 September the fleets headed for Corfu where they received information that the Turks were in the Gulf of Lepanto (modern Naupactus on the Gulf of Patras). The two massive formations sighted one another there at dawn on the morning of 7 October, a brilliantly sunny day: contemporary descriptions of the ensuing battle dwell on the flashing helmets, armour and weapons. The Turks had something like 230 vessels and over 50,000 men, the Christians some 200 galleys and about 40,000 men. The opposing fleets were otherwise comparably crewed and used similar tactics: rowing into formation, firing, closing to board infantry. It was the superior firepower of the Venetian galleasses and artillery, the more protective armour worn by the allies, and not least the discipline and fighting spirit instilled in their men by Sebastiano Venier and Don John of Austria that gave the Christians the advantage that culminated at the end of the day in the near annihilation of the Turkish fleet. Estimates of the respective losses vary, but approximations indicate that the Turks lost at least three times as many galleys and men as the Venetians. Fifteen thousand Christian galley slaves, furthermore, were set free and the plunder taken from the Turkish vessels was beyond the most optimistic dreams of the victors.
Almost immediately after the news reached Venice twelve days later cheering crowds assembled in the Piazza San Marco and a Te Deum was sung in the basilica. Of all the public celebrations so far enacted in Venice this was the most elaborate and prolonged demonstration of patriotic fervour. People danced in the streets, complete strangers embraced. For days the city, lit up by torches and fireworks, resounded with music by Andrea Gabrieli.7 The drapers’ guild organized another three-day spectacular that transformed the Rialto Bridge and surrounding streets with displays of tapestries and of paintings by Bellini, Pordenone, Titian and other Venetian artists, all lit by lanterns. The rejoicing carried on through the carnival of 1572 with a masquerade procession led by the figure of Victory trampling on a bleeding serpent. The Venetian historian Paolo Paruta, in a funeral oration for the dead delivered in the basilica of San Marco, described the Battle of Lepanto as ‘the most beautiful and most joyful day that this city, in all her history, has ever seen’. The jubilation was no less explosive in Rome, where the pope designated 7 October as the feast day of the Holy Rosary; or in Spain, where Philip II’s treasury had contributed the lion’s share of the cost of the battle and the rhetoric proclaimed that the kingdom had fulfilled its destiny as God’s champion against the infidel. Many years later Miguel de Cervantes, who had fought with the Spaniards and sustained a wound that permanently maimed his left hand, remembered it as ‘the greatest occasion that past or present ages have witnessed or that the future can hope to witness’.8
But if Lepanto was the greatest naval victory since ancient times it was also the least decisive. Venice’s allies began bickering within months and soon regretted their military investment in a part of the Mediterranean where the Most Serene Republic would reap the major benefit. The Venetians, who recognized that one battle, however glorious, had not won the war, advocated mounting another attack before the Turkish fleet had time to recover and rearm. Aware that they could not win a war against the Turks without support, they maintained the hope that Philip could be persuaded to join them in another campaign against the Turks. Of all his closest advisers the one most capable of turning the king was his secretary, the Italophile and connoisseur of painting Antonio Pérez, who had played a significant role in negotiating the alliance. So when in November 1571 Pérez, at a meeting with Leonardo Donà, the Venetian ambassador in Madrid, expressed a desire to possess a signed painting by Titian, Donà lost no time in communicating the request to the Council of Ten, which took an immediate decision to present Pérez with two of the most beautiful pictures in Titian’s studio, one a religious subject, the other ‘some beautiful story’.
The latter cannot be identified. The religious painting was a variant (Madrid, Prado) of the Entombment of Christ that Titian had sent to Philip in 1559. There exist a number of studio variants of Philip’s masterpiece,9 of which a record of the outline composition had been transferred on to a new canvas. The one now in Madrid, which is signed ‘TITIANVS. F.’ and looks as though the master may have touched it up with his own brush to make it more presentable, is of higher quality than the others and the most likely to have been the one chosen for Pérez. Christ’s face, which is tranquil in the original, is distorted in the copy by His suffering, and the anatomy of His body is weaker. The relief carvings on the tomb have been replaced by a smooth marble surface; and Joseph of Arimathea’s red silk robe changed into a curious spotted affair (a suggestion from Valerio Zuccato or Cesare Vecellio, both experts in the latest fashions?), and a building that looks like Castel Sant’Angelo added to the background.
But Philip, who was sliding towards his second bankruptcy, was beyond the reach of Venetian diplomacy. The king was overwhelmed by other problems, including a crisis of stability in Peru. Charles IX of France was intriguing against him on several fronts, not least in the Netherlands where he supported the rebellion. As the cost of that war soared out of control, Alba, whose bloodletting was proving counter-productive, requested new supplies: ‘It is not the Turks who are troubling Christendom but the heretics, and these are already within our gates.’ Philip turned the duke down: ‘I shall never have enough money to satisfy your needs.’ A revolt in 1572 incited by the Prince of Orange, who had organized a military and diplomatic offensive, was the undoing of ‘the butcher of Flanders’. His counter-offensive failed and Philip accepted his request for recall.10
Pius V, now a sick man, did his best to spur Spain into action. But, although the victory at Lepanto remained a major propaganda weapon of the Counter-Reformation opposition to heretical faiths, the death on 1 May 1572 of the pope who had been its champion extinguished the fighting spirit of the holy crusade. Venice was alone, and on 7 March 1573 representatives of the Republican government agreed peace terms with the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople. The principal clause of the treaty ceded Cyprus to the Turks, who retained control of the island for just over three centuries.
It is a great irony of Venetian history that one of the most celebrated of all naval victories marked the beginning of the long, slow decline of the Republic as a military and mercantile power. The maritime empire continued to shrink while o
ther trading nations, especially the English, Dutch and Portuguese, sailed round the Cape, more effectively than the Portuguese had done at the end of the previous century, to the lucrative markets in India and the Far East. Shipbuilding in the arsenal gradually ceased to be a major Venetian industry. Other ports – Marseilles, Ragusa and Livorno – developed an interest in eastern trade while Seville continued to enjoy a monopoly on the Spanish bullion from the Americas. But, even as the wealth and power of the Republic diminished, the Myth of Venice lived on, refreshed by the propagandistic value of Lepanto. On 8 November 1571, a month after the victory, the Great Council issued a declaration that ‘if ever a noted action of bygone times deserved to be represented and kept alive in the minds of the people, none was more entitled to such a distinction than the victory of the Holy League over the Turkish armada’. Several years after the Peace of Constantinople Veronese’s painting of Doge Sebastiano Venier Offering Thanks to Christ for the Victory of Lepanto was placed over the tribune of the Sala del Collegio, and his splendid representation of Venice Enthroned with Justice and Peace installed on the ceiling of the same room.11
The three capi of the Council of Ten had previously chosen Titian to commemorate the battle with Giuseppe Salviati as his assistant. But Titian, who also received a commission from Philip of Spain for an allegorical celebration of the victory and of the birth of his son, the Infante Don Ferdinand, on 4 December, prevaricated; and Tintoretto seized the opportunity with an enormous painting (now lost) of the battle for the hall of the library of the doge’s palace, for which he was rewarded in 1574 with a sanseria for life. Titian meanwhile was in no hurry either to fulfil Philip’s order, which was the first in their long relationship that was accompanied by precise instructions, and was all the more disinclined to tackle it before he received a reaction to an erotic history painting that he had sent to the king on 1 August 1571, on the very eve of the great battle. The subject was the Rape of Lucretia, which he had described to Philip three years earlier as ‘a subject of larger compass and greater artifice than I have undertaken for years’.
FIVE
‘In This my Old Age’
Titian, perhaps the most famous Painter, and certainly amongst the most famous, sometimes painted with such fine and diligent brushwork that it seems almost as though he wanted us to count the hairs; and sometimes it pleased him better to represent a coarser style with few and very rough strokes. Intelligent spectators of such a diverse manner will recognise in the one feminine charm, in the other masculine strength; the former will receive praise, the latter admiration; you might feel sweetly inclined towards the delicate style, and by the rough violently raped.
VIRGILIO MALVEZZI, CONSIDERATIONI CON OCCASIONE D’ALCUNI LUOGHI DELLE VITE D’ALCIBIADE E DI CORIOLANO, VOL. 2, 1648
Sextus Tarquinius, the hot-blooded son of the Etruscan king Tarquinius Superbus, was inflamed with desire for Lucretia, the virtuous wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, who was his friend and distant relative. Lucretia was famed for her chastity and her beauty, but it was her chastity that most excited Sextus Tarquinius. One day he presented himself at the house of Collatinus. He was welcomed as an honoured guest, but when Collatinus boasted about Lucretia’s unassailable purity, Sextus Tarquinius could restrain himself no longer. When night fell, and Lucretia retired to the nuptial bedchamber, Sextus Tarquinius followed her, drew his sword and threatened that if she did not give in to him he would kill her and one of the slave boys guarding her room, and would claim afterwards that he had surprised them in bed together. Lucretia had no choice, but the next morning she summoned her husband and the royal court, told them of her disgrace and, refusing all sympathy and pardons, plunged a dagger into her breast. The scandal forced Tarquinius Superbus to flee with his children, thus marking the end of the Etruscan dynasty and the foundation of the Roman Republic in 510 BC.
The story was first recounted by Livy in his History of Rome, and was often retold by, among others, Ovid,1 Dante,2 who placed her in a section of the Inferno reserved for virtuous pagans, Boccaccio3 and Chaucer,4 all of whom praised Lucretia’s exemplary virtue and honour. But by the time Titian came to paint the subject Renaissance writers had adopted a more cynical view of Lucretia’s resistance to what St Augustine5 had called ‘the fatal pleasure’. A late fourteenth-century interpretation of the story,6 which Titian might have known from an adaptation published in 1544,7 proposed that Lucretia’s suicide had been motivated by guilt and the danger that she might again succumb to adulterous temptations. In Machiavelli’s satirical play Mandragola Lucretia takes pleasure in her enforced adultery. Aretino, waxing polemical in a letter to a poet, maintained that shame was a better subject for a poem than honour,8 and put it to his correspondent: ‘What do you make of Lucretia? Was she not mad to listen to the promptings of honour? It would have been better if she had had her fun with him, and lived.’
While other Italian painters preferred to depict Lucretia’s suicide, Titian, taking his model from northern European engravings,9 chose the more challenging scene of her rape, perhaps as a way of demonstrating to himself and to Philip that he could still, despite his advanced years, do something as exciting as his Rape of Europa. Philip’s Rape of Lucretia (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum),10 however, does not in fact quite come off. The twist of Tarquin’s body, although it may have been an intentional attempt at contraposto, is unconvincing, as is the relationship of Lucretia’s right leg and foot. Nevertheless, it was doubtless the best Titian could do at the time in the polished style to which the king was accustomed. Although he made very few changes, apart from raising the position of the stabbing arm, the particles of dirt that have been detected between the layers of paint are evidence that he spent time on the painting. And he must have been satisfied with the composition because when Cornelis Cort paid a return visit to Venice in 1571 he made two engravings of it, one of which reverses the image, that are unusually faithful to Titian’s original design.
Although not comparable with the greatest of his poesie, the Rape of Lucretia is nevertheless a remarkable achievement for an artist in his eighties and may well have had the desired effect of titillating a ruler who could associate with a villain of royal blood but must rein in his own darker instincts, except as a voyeur of Titian’s erotic paintings (like the little slave boy who watches the rape from behind a curtain?). Titian’s Lucretia, her blonde hair beautifully coiffed, her skin and ample body soft as a ripe peach, is naked but for her pearls, earrings, fashionable identical bracelets and a translucent veil bunched between her legs that does not quite conceal her dark pubic hair. As though to draw attention to both her elegance and her nakedness Titian placed his signature ‘TITIANVS F’ on the little pink slipper she had dropped next to the bed. Tarquin by contrast remains fully clothed, and for his royal attire Titian used a brilliant and expensive palette.11 One of his bright vermilion stockings has slipped down his leg, a sign of uncivilized brutishness. His reddish-purple breeches, finished with red lake made from kermes, the most costly of red dyestuffs, are underpainted with white lead, which shows through as highlights. The meticulously individualized gold threads of his embroidered waistcoat may have been beyond the capacity of an artist whose eyesight was failing, but if they were executed by an assistant he was highly skilled. There is, however, no reason to doubt Titian’s hand in the blackish-brown painted underdrawing12 that established the composition, or in such painterly passages as the cascade of sheets, which are slightly blued by the addition of azurite, and the shot-silk effect of the valence achieved by exposing some of the pinkish-brown underpainting.
Many art historians, possibly affected by feminist sensibilities, maintain that the tear-streaked face of Lucretia represents the very epitome of terror and was intended to invite compassion, an emotional response that, according to Aristotle, was one of the defining characteristics of tragedy. It is indeed one of the most brutal of Titian’s secular paintings. Nevertheless, it is worth considering whether Titian, who was no stranger to ambigu
ity and the vagaries of human nature, might have been aware of contemporary interpretations of the story and, after a lifetime of observing faces, knew that expressions signifying terror and ecstasy are all but identical. It is not impossible that he wanted the king for whom he had painted his Ovidian erotic tragedies to imagine that this beautiful woman, having noticed that a handsome young prince is strongly attracted to her and retires to bed naked except for her jewellery, might have mixed feelings when he bursts into her room. Would he have left her jewellery on and her hair immaculately bound – unlike the loosened hair that signified rape in classical literature – only to indicate, as is frequently said, that she maintained decorum throughout her ordeal?