Titian

by Sheila Hale

  18 In his ‘Life of Perino del Vaga’ Vasari had played down Titian’s relationship with the Farnese, but in the ‘Life of Titian’ he probably exaggerated their enthusiasm for the triple portrait.

  FIVE: A MATTER OF RELIGION

  1 This is excluding the early Man with a Quilted Sleeve, the shape of whose nose does not match the known self-portraits. There is disagreement about the date of the Berlin picture, which some associate with a self-portrait Vasari said Titian painted for his children before going to Rome, others with one mentioned by the same author which would have been done around 1562–4. Charles Hope’s dating of 1546–7 is endorsed by David Jaffé in London 2003, who also points out that the treatment of the head is similar to the two central figures in the Vendramin Family of around the same date, and by Miguel Falomir in Vienna and Venice 2007, pp. 203–4.

  2 There are two copies, in the Florence Uffizi and Milan Ambrosiana.

  3 For Titian’s family see Hope 2007.

  4 It is just possible that Pietro Alessandrini was married to Orsa, in which case she would have been the mother of Giovanni and his sisters.

  5 They were not installed there until 1572.

  6 In 1547 Titian was paid for painting Donà’s official portrait together with that of his predecessor Pietro Lando for the Great Council Hall, where they perished in the fire of 1577.

  7 The dating of both is controversial. The Santo Spirito ceiling is sometimes dated 1542, when the commission was transferred to Titian from Vasari, but more compelling circumstantial and stylistic evidence points to a date soon after Titian’s return from Rome, after, that is, the resolution of his dispute with the monks of the church over the Pentecost. The San Giovanni Evangelista ceiling probably antedates his trip to Rome. A date around 1555, the preference of some scholars (including Humfrey 2007) is less likely because Titian at that time was absorbed by commissions from the Habsburg family.

  8 There have been two slightly different attempts to reconstruct the arrangement of the ceiling, by Schulz 1968 and by S. Gramigna Dian (see Washington and Venice 1990).

  9 Most recently by Augusto Gentili in Vienna and Venice 2007.

  10 The drawing is in black chalk with white highlighting on grey paper. The only other surviving preparatory sketch which can be securely attributed to Titian is the one for The Battle of Spoleto, which was also surely done for the benefit of assistants.

  11 One of the paintings was probably the Pardo Venus (Paris, Louvre) begun in the 1520s and sent to Philip in 1552. Another may have been the Crucifixion (Madrid, Escorial), sent to Philip four years later.

  12 Luis de Avila y Zúñuga, Comentarios de la Guerra de Alemania hecha por Carlo V, 1546–7.

  13 Cesare, who was born around 1521, was the son of Antonio Vecellio, a brother of Titian’s grandfather Conte. He is best known for his book about contemporary and antique costume, Habiti antichi et moderni di diverse parti del mondo. In 1590 he wrote that he had watched Titian paint the armour of the Elector of Saxony, one of the portraits Titian executed in Augsburg.

  14 Sebastiano del Piombo often used slate for devotional images, which suggests that Titian borrowed the idea from him while in Rome.

  SIX: AUGSBURG

  1 Jacob Fugger had built the first almshouses in Europe in Augsburg, still known as the Fuggerei.

  2 Gian Giacomo Leonardo to Guidobaldo della Rovere, 7 April 1548.

  3 One of a number of later copies of the lost original is in Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

  4 One of the copies is in Madrid, Prado.

  5 There is a division of opinion about whether this damaged picture is the original by Titian or a copy.

  6 Tityus was condemned to have his liver eternally devoured by a vulture; Sisyphus to push an enormous rock uphill for ever; Tantalus to be frustrated in his desire for food and drink; Ixion to turn for ever on his wheel.

  7 One of the best is the vivid but mysterious Man with a Clock (Madrid, Prado), probably of approximately the same date.

  8 Caesare Ripa, Nova Iconologia, 1616, as cited by Rowlands 1996.

  9 Most scholars believe this portrait was painted at Augsburg in 1548, or, since investigation in 2004 revealed that it was painted over a Salome, that it is a replica by assistants of the original. Hope (in conversation) argues that it was commissioned at Busseto in 1543, along with the portrait of Isabella in black, and that it was the nose of this one that Charles asked Titian to repair. He bases his argument in part on a letter written by Titian to the emperor in October 1544 in which he says that he had consigned two portraits of the empress, presumably this one and the lost portrait in black, to Diego de Mendoza.

  10 Wilde 1974.

  11 Ripa, Nova Iconologia.

  12 It was first recorded as being in the Fugger collection in 1650.

  13 It is displayed in the Madrid Royal Armoury.

  14 There is some debate about whether the spear is the one he carried into battle, as Hope argues in ‘Obras Maestras del Museo del Prado’, 1996, pp. 655–7, or the long lance of a Knight of St George.

  15 Aretino to the courier Lorenzetto, May 1548.

  16 Just as Vasari had told of the people of Bologna bowing to the Portrait of Paul III, both Ridolfi and Titian’s anonymous biographer wrote that when the Portrait of Charles V on Horseback was placed in a doorway those who saw it were so fooled by the horse and rider that they took them for living beings.

  17 The letter from Charles V to Ferrante Gonzaga dated 5 June 1548, Guastalla, Biblioteca Maldottiana, Fondo Gonzaga, b. 2, no. 220 (219 in printed catalogue, p. 12), was discovered by Charles Hope, who suggests that the reference to his wife might be further evidence of the existence of Titian’s second wife, although he admits that it could equally be that Charles was referring to the mother of Emilia.

  18 Alessandro Luzio, ‘Altre spigolature tizianesche’, Archivio Storico dell’Arte, II, 1890, p. 210, cited by Hope 1980a.

  19 Benedetto Agnello to Margherita Paleologo, Bussolengeo, 20 October 1549, Mantua, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 1481, cited by Hope 1980a.

  20 Lorenzo Campana, ‘Monsignor Giovanni della Casa e suoi tempi’, Studi Storici, XVI, 1907, p. 387, cited by (and tr.) Hope 1980a.

  21 It may have been as a way of thanking Cosimo for his generosity that in 1553 Titian painted and Aretino sent to the duke a pair of full-length portraits of Charles V and Prince Philip, looking a little older than Titian remembered him from their last encounter at Augsburg two years earlier. (Both are in the depository of the Florence, Pitti Palace. The Charles V is a ruin, but the Philip in reasonable condition.)

  22 The letter, written by the dramatist Andrea Calmo, is cited by Lepschy 1998.

  23 The story inspired paintings in the early nineteenth century by the French painters Bergeret and Ingres.

  24 Some authorities have expressed doubts about its authenticity.

  25 Vasari, who praised Tintoretto as ‘the most terrific brain that the art of painting has ever produced’, also criticized him for leaving ‘his finished sketches still so rough’ as though ‘done more by chance and vehemence than with judgement and design’. Ruskin, who regarded Tintoretto as ‘the most powerful painter whom the world has ever seen’, had the same reservations about the want of perfection in his work due to ‘the very fullness and impetuosity of his own mind’ (1974, I, 2).

  26 It may be the Junoesque portrait published in Belluno–Pieve di Cadore 2007.

  SEVEN: THE PRINCE AND THE PAINTER

  1 The Don Carlos invented most famously by Schiller and Verdi’s librettists had nothing else in common with Philip’s psychopath son, although it is true that Philip briefly considered marrying him to Elizabeth de Valois before marrying her himself, that Carlos developed an unhealthy attachment to his stepmother which he demonstrated by buying her expensive jewels, but it was not reciprocated. Carlos may have been in touch with the rebels in the Netherlands, and was profoundly aggrieved when Philip refused to send him there.

  2 The conventional view, supported
by most scholars from Crowe and Cavalcaselle 1881 to Miguel Falomir (Madrid 2003), is that the portrait now in Madrid was painted at Augsburg in 1550–1 and the one done at Milan is lost. Falomir’s argument that the armour (which still exists in the Madrid Royal Armoury) was made in Augsburg is not convincing because Philip owned several suits of armour by the same maker, who had been sent to Spain from Augsburg before 1549 to take his measurements. Falomir also believes that the full-length portrait that can be seen by X-ray beneath the portrait of Philip represents Charles V, although to this eye at least it looks more like an earlier version of the finished portrait with Philip facing the other way. Such changes were of course characteristic of Titian’s working method. The question is difficult to resolve because Titian and his studio painted a number of portraits of Philip, some in armour, some wearing a doublet, about which contemporary descriptions are not in all cases sufficiently detailed to allow us to distinguish one from another. I am following Hope’s chronology for reasons that will become apparent in this and subsequent chapters. See also Hope 1990c.

  3 According to an inventory of Philip’s possessions taken in early 1554. The inventory does not in fact say that the portrait was by Titian. It may have been an enlarged copy because the 1533 portrait of Charles is three-quarter length, while Titian’s portrait of Philip is full length.

  4 In February 1549.

  5 The other two Condemned Men, which were destroyed by fire in 1734, were finished about five years later.

  6 Titian to Granvelle, 22 March 1550.

  7 Charles Hope has alerted me to an unpublished letter from Benedetto Agnello writing on 28 April 1554 to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga naming Francesco Vecellio as the cousin to whom Titian wanted the Medole benefice transferred. Francesco Vecellio, who later became a notary, was the son of Vecellone Vecellio and brother of Vincenzo Vecellio.

  8 In his letter to Granvelle, 22 March 1550, and again to Giuliano Gosellini, 10 February 1551.

  9 The portrait has not been accepted as autograph by all authorities.

  10 The second edition published in 1568, which does include a biography of Titian, is the only one usually read today.

  11 The self-portrait is recorded and described in an inventory of the Vendramin collection of 1569.

  12 The conventional dating is 1551–3, which would place it after Titian’s second visit to Augsburg. In Titian’s extensive correspondence with Philip it is mentioned only once, in 1554, as having been finished, which would seem to provide a terminus ante quem for the painting. Paul Joannides (‘Titian in London and Madrid’, Paragone, no. 657, 2004, pp. 19–24) maintains that the original is a picture formerly in London, Apsley House and that the free and open brushwork of the Madrid Danaë is more likely to place it in the 1560s, an argument that fails to take account of Titian’s ability to work simultaneously in very different styles.

  13 Scholars are divided about whether the portrait was painted on this or the earlier visit to Augsburg.

  14 The original cannot be identified. There is a three-quarter-length portrait in the Madrid Prado, and full-length versions in Naples, Capodimonte and Florence, Galleria Palatina, which are identical except for the backgrounds. The Madrid portrait could be a studio copy, about which Philip wrote to Titian and to Vargas in June 1553 that it was ‘like one of your hand’. But Philip often used this phrase, and it always seems to indicate that he thought that the work in question was autograph.

  15 Titian received nothing from the Spanish pension until 1559 when he got a large lump sum to cover the arrears. It was in payment for works done so far.

  16 By Boccaccio, for example, in his Della Geneologia de gli Dei (Of the Genealogy of the Gods).

  17 If there had been a contract it would have been unenforceable, and almost no one at that period made contracts for works destined for private possession.

  18 Both paintings were acquired for the nation from the Duke of Sutherland, Diana and Actaeon in 2009 for £50 million, Diana and Callisto in 2012 for £45 million. They are hung together on a rotating basis for six years in London and four years in Edinburgh.

  19 The Rape of Europa, acquired in 1898 by Isabella Stewart Gardner on the advice of Bernard Berenson for $100, was the first Old Master painting to enter an American collection.

  20 Lodovico Dolce, whose translations were among Titian’s primary sources, wrote in an essay published in 1559 that the purpose of classical tragedy was to contrast human frailty with the immortality and blessedness of the gods.

  EIGHT: VENUS AND ADONIS

  1 The Pardo Venus was probably the painting that Titian had offered to Alessandro Farnese, who had seen it unfinished in the studio in 1547 shortly before the two fell out over Titian’s decision to visit the emperor in Augsburg rather than return to Rome.

  2 The anecdote was reported by Philip’s chief secretary Antonio Pérez, Segundas Cartas, Paris 1603, cited by Hope 1980b.

  3 It was recorded as being in the Palace of El Pardo, where it was destroyed in the fire of 1604.

  4 Since the painting is not mentioned in any of Mary’s inventories many scholars, on account of the free handling of the paint, prefer a later date of c. 1565–70.

  5 Attempts by iconographers to explain what else the burning city would have to do with the legend of St Margaret have been unsuccessful.

  6 Tr. Crowe and Cavalcaselle 1881.

  7 Venier also commissioned from Titian a votive portrait of Marcantonio Trevisan for the Sala del Collegio, in which the painter was instructed to include not more than seven figures and for which he was paid 171 ducats in 1556. The portrait of Trevisan was lost in the fire in the Collegio of 1574, which also destroyed Titian’s votive portraits of Andrea Gritti and Pietro Lando. The votive portrait of Doge Antonio Grimani (Venice, Doge’s Palace, Sala delle Quattro Porte), also commissioned by Venier, was saved because it was still unfinished at the time of the fire, and was probably not completed until after Titian’s death by Marco Vecellio, who added the two sides. Sansovino’s completed library and mint can be detected in the view of Venice in the far distance.

  8 Titian’s portrait of Filippo Archinto (New York, Metropolitan Museum), the papal legate who succeeded Beccadelli in Venice in 1554, is less impressive. He is seated in the same chair, but Titian – or an assistant – took less trouble with the pleated robe. Several years later an assistant painted a second portrait of him (Philadelphia, Museum of Art, Johnson Collection), this time half concealed by a veil after his nomination to the Bishopric of Milan had been refused because of opposition from the local curia.

  9 See Hope 1990c.

  10 Tr. Chambers and Pullan 1992.

  11 In Ovid’s original, Venus warns Adonis by telling him the story of Hippomenes and Atalanta.

  12 Penny 2008 argues that Philip’s Venus and Adonis was completed with studio help and possibly based on an earlier prototype, perhaps the version in the London National Gallery, which was also finished by the studio over what appears to be a brush drawing by the master.

  13 London, National Gallery; Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum; Rome, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Barberini; and a private collection in Lausanne.

  14 Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art; New York, Metropolitan Museum; and an engraving by Robert Strange of the version that Ridolfi mentioned as being in the Farnese collection.

  15 Pavonazzo was a brownish crimson favoured by the Venetian aristocracy.

  16 Miguel Falomir in Madrid 2003.

  17 Written shortly after the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in AD 410 to restore the confidence of St Augustine’s fellow Christians.

  NINE: THE PASSING OF THE LEVIATHANS

  1 In a letter to Giovanbattista Coppola.

  2 Twenty-four years earlier Catena’s will had stipulated twenty ducats for each of his daughters plus five for the poor brothers of the painters’ guild, so even allowing for inflation there was a big gap between that sum and Lavinia’s dowry, which was, for example, about the same as the total value of the goods of Pietro
Gritti’s household.

  3 See Hope 2007b for the documented source for the names of five of the children and evidence that they had another daughter, born before Hersilia.

  In his will, as drawn up in 1583, Cornelio allocated 1,200 ducats for the dowry of Helena, which gives some idea of his personal wealth. He stipulated, however, that if she chose to become a nun it would be reduced to 300 ducats. The will is one of those rare surviving documents that give a flavour of community life at the time. It was witnessed in Sarcinelli’s house on the Piazza Grande by one harness maker, two furriers, one tailor, one goldsmith and two unidentified men who were probably shopkeepers around the square. It provided that his housekeeper must be looked after for life and that his steward be given food for life and should be succeeded in the job by his son unless he proved unsuitable.

  4 The inscription ‘LAVINIA TIT. V.F.A.B EO P.’ (Lavinia, daughter of Titian Vecellio painted by him) is not autograph, but there is no reason to doubt that the portrait, which is usually dated about 1560, is of Lavinia and by Titian’s hand.

  5 Goffen 1997a makes the attractive suggestion that it is the coat of the man in the previous painting and thus brings Venus closer to a male lover.

  6 It was transferred to Milan during the Napoleonic occupation of Venice. The Brera picture may or may not be Titian’s first St Jerome. Some scholars identify the Giorgionesque St Jerome in the Paris Louvre as a painting requested by Federico Gonzaga in 1531. Others, notably Charles Hope, point out that no painting of St Jerome was listed in the Gonzaga inventories and that the Paris picture looks more like a copy of a lost Giorgione by an unknown hand.

  7 Large panel paintings are liable to crack when subjected even to slight changes of temperature. The St Jerome, for those reasons, has not been loaned to a public exhibition since 1977.

  8 John 1: 14.

  9 By Valentina Sapienza, whose account of her discovery, ‘Il committente del San Gerolamo di Tiziano per Santa Maria Nuova: storie di mercanti, malfattori e penitenti’, Venezia Cinquecento, XVIII, no. 35, 2008, pp. 175–93, is well worth reading.