It used to be said that Titian,
when a child, painted upon the wall of the Casa Sampieri, with
flower-juice, a Madonna and Infant with a boy-angel; but
modern connoisseurs say that the picture is a common work, of
a date later than. Titian’s decease. He was still a child
when sent by his parents to Venice, to an uncle’s house.
There he was placed under an art teacher, who may perhaps have
been Sebastiano Zuccato, a mosaicist and painter now
forgotten. He next became a pupil of Gentile Bellini, whom he
left after a while, because the master considered him too
offhand in work. Here he had the opportunity of studying many
fine antiques. His last instructor was Giovanni Beilini; but
Titian was not altogether satisfied with his tutoring.
The youth was a contemporary of
Giorgione and Palma Vecchio; when his period of pupilage
expired, he is surmised to have entered into a sort of
partnership with Giorgione. A fresco of “Hercules” on the
Morosini Palace is said to have been one of his earliest
works; others were the “Virgin and’Child,” in the Vienna
Belvedere, and the “Visitation. of Mary and Elizabeth”
(from the convent of S. Andrea), now in the Venetian Academy.
In 1507—1508 Giorgione was commissioned by the state to
execute frescoes on the re-erected Fondaco de’ Tedeschi.
Titian and Morto da Feltre worked along with him, and some
fragments of Titian’s paintings, which are reputed to have
surpassed Giorgione’s, are still discernible.
According to one account,
Giorgione was nettled at this superiority, and denied Titian
admittance to his house thenceforth. Stories of jealousies
between painters are rife in all regions, and in none more
than in the Venetian—various statements of this kind
applying to Titian himself. One should neither accept nor
reject them uninquiringly; counter-evidence of some weight can
be cited for Vecelli’s vindication in relation to Moroni,
Corleggio, Lotto and Coello. Towards 1511, after the cessation
of the League of Cambrai— which had endeavoured to shatter
the power of the Venetian republic, and had at any rate
succeeded in clipping the wings of the lion of St Mark—Vecelli
went to Padua, and painted in the Scuola di S. Antonio a
series of frescoes, which continue to be an object of high
curiosity to the students of his genius, although they cannot
be matched against his finest achievements in oil
painting.
Another fresco, dated 1523, is
“ St Christopher carrying the Infant Christ,” at the foot
of the doge’s steps in the ducal palace of Venice. From
Padua Titian in 1512 returned to Venice; and in 1513 he
obtained a broker’s patent in the Fondaco de’ Tedeschj
(state-warehouse for the German merchants), termed “ La
Sanseria “ or “ Senseria “ (a privilege much coveted by
rising or risen artists), and became superintendent of the
government works, being especially charged to complete the
paintings left unfinished by Giovanni Bellini in the hall of
the great council in the ducal palace. He set up an atelier on
the Grand Canal, at S. Samuele—the precise site being now
unknown. It was not until 1516, upon the death of Bellini,
that he came into actual enjoyment of his patent, at the same
date an arrangement for painting was entered into with Titian
alone, to the exclusion of other artists who bad heretofore
been associated with him.
The patent yielded him a good
annuity—f 20 crowns—and exempted ‘him from certain
taxes—he being bound in return to paint likenesses of the
successive doges of his time at the fixed price of eight
crowns each. The actual number which he executed was five.
Titian, it may be well to note as a landmark in this all but
centenarian life of incessant artistic labour and
productiveness, was now (if we adopt 1477 as the birth-date)
in the fortieth year of his age. The same year, 1516,
witnessed his first journey to Ferrara. Two years later was
produced, for the high altar of the church of the Fran, one of
his most world-renowned masterpieces, the “Assumption of the
Madonna,” now in the Venetian Academy. It excited a vast
sensation, being indeed the most extraordinary piece of
colourist execution on a great scale which Italy had yet seen.
The signoria took note of the facts and did not fail to
observe that Titian was neglecting his work in the hall of the
great council.