His Works

Titian’s pictures abound with memories of his home-country and of the region which led from the hill-summits of Cadore to the queen-city of the Adriatic. He was almost the first painter to exhibit an appreciation of mountains, mainly those of a turreted type, exemplified in the Dolomites. Indeed he gave to landscape generally a new and original vitality, expressing the quality of, the objects of nature and their control over the sentiments and imagination with a force that had never before been approached. The earliest Italian picture expressly designated as “ landscape “ was one which Vecelli sent in 1552 to Philip II. His productive faculty was immense, even when we allow for the abnormal length of his professional career. In Italy, England and elsewhere more than a thousand pictures figure as Titian’s; of these about 250 may be regarded as dubious or spurious. There are, for instance, 6 pictures in the National Gallery, London, 18 in the Louvre, 16 in the Pitti, 18 in the Uffizi, 7 in the Naples Museum, 8 in the Venetian Academy (besides the series in the private meeting-hall) and 41 in the Madrid Museum. In the National Gallery 3 other works used to be assigned to Titian, hut are now regarded rather as examples of his school.

Naturally a good deal of attention has been given by artists, connoisseurs and experts to probing the secret of how Titian managed to obtain such astonishing results in color and surface.’ The upshot of this research is but meager; the secret seems to be not so much one of workmanship as of faculty. His figures were put in with the brush dipped in a brown solution, and then altered and worked up as his intention developed. The later pictures were touched off rapidly, telling well from a distant view. He himself averred that after his visit to Rome in 1546 he had greatly improved in art; and in his very last days he said—certainly with the modesty of genius, perhaps also with some of the tenacity of old age—that he was then beginning to understand what painting meant. In his earlier pictures the gamut of color rests mainly upon red and green, in the later ones upon deep yellow and blue. The pigments which he used were nothing unusual; indeed they were both few and common. 

Palma Giovane records that Vecelli would set pictures aside for months, and afterwards, examining them with a stern countenance, as if they were his mortal enemies, would set to work upon them like a man possessed; also that he kept many pictures in progress at the same time, turning from one to the other, and that in his final operations he worked far more with finger than with brush. It has been said, and probably with truth, that he tried to emulate Palma Vecchio in softness as well as Giorgione in richness. Michelangelo’s verdict after inspecting the picture of “ Danae in the Rain of Gold,” executed in 1546, has often been quoted. Fle said, “That man would have had no equal if art had done as much for him as nature.” He was thinking principally of severity and majesty of draughtsmanship, for he added, “ Pity that in Venice they don’t learn how to draw well.” 

As a draughtsman of the human figure Titian was not only competent but good and fine, and he is reported to have studied anatomy deeply; but one can easily understand that he fell not a little short of the standard of Michelangelo, and even of other leading Florentines. He was wont to paint in a nude figure with Venetian red, supplemented by a little lake in the contour and towards the extremities. He observed that a colorist ought to manipulate white, black and red, and that the carnations cannot be done in a first painting, but by replicating various tints and mingling the colors. He distanced all predecessors in the study of color as applied to draperies, working on the principle (in which Giorgione may perhaps have forestalled him) that red comes forward to the eye, yellow retains the rays of light, and blue assimilates to shadow. In his subject-pictures the figures are not very numerous, and the attitudes are mostly reserved; even in bacchanals or battles the athletic display has more of facility than of furor. His architectural scenes were sometimes exectited by other persons, especially the Rosas of Brescia. The glow of late afternoon, or the passionate ardour of early sundown, was much affected by Titian in the lighting of his pictures. Generally it may be said that he took great pains in completing his works, and pains also in concealing the traces of labour. He appears to have had little liking for teaching, partly from distaste of the trouble, and partly (if we are to believe biographers) from jealousy. He was quite willing, however, to turn to some account the work of his scholars: it is related that on going out of doors he would leave his studio open, so that the pupils had a clandestine opportunity of copying his works, and if the copies proved of saleable quality he would buy them cheap, touch them up, and resell them.

We must now briefly advert to Titian’s individual works, taking them in approximate order of time, and merely dividing portraits from other pictures. Details already given indicate that he did not exhibit any extreme precocity; the earliest works which we proceed to mention may date towards 1505. In the chapel of S. Rocco, Venice, is his” Christ Carrying the Cross,” now greatly dilapidated; it was an object of so much popular devotion as to produce offerings which formed the first funds for building the Scuola di S. Rocco: in the scuola itself is his “Man of Sorrows.”  The nobly beautiful picture in the Villa Borghese in Rome, commonly named “Divine and Human Love” (by some, Artless and Sated Love), bears some obvious relation to the style 01 Palma Vecchio. The story goes that Titian was enamored of Palma’s daughter; but nothing distinct on this point is forthcoming. The “Tribute Money” (“Christ and the Pharisee “), now in the Dresden Gallery, dated towards 1508; Titian is said to have painted this highly finished picture in order to prove to some Germans that the effect of detail could be produced without those extreme minutiae which mark the style of Albert Durer. 

The St Mark in the church of the Salute - the evangelist enthroned, along with SS. Sebastian, Roch, Cosmo and Damian - a picture much in the style of Giorgione, belongs to 1512. Towards 1518 was painted, also in the same class of style, the “Three Ages,” now in Bridgewater House - a woman guiding the fingers of a shepherd on a reed-pipe, two sleeping children, a cupid, an old man with two skulls, and a second shepherd in the distance - one of the most poetically impressive among all Titian’s works. Another work of approximate date was the “Worship of Venus,” in the Madrid Museum, showing a statue of Venus, two nymphs, numerous cupids hunting a hare, and other figures. Two of the pictures in the National Gallery, London - the  Holy Family and. St Catherine and the Noli me tangere were going on at much the same time as the great Assumption of the Madonna. In 1521 Vecelli finished a painting which had long been due to Duke Alphonso of Ferrara, probably The  Bacchanal, with Ariadne dozing over her wine-cup, which is now in Madrid. The famous Bacchus and Ariadne in the National Gallery was produced for the same patron in 1523. 

The Flora  of the Uflizi, the Venus of Darmstadt, and the lovely Venus Anadyomene of the Bridge may date a year or so earlier. Another work of 1523 is the stupendous  Entombment of Christ in the Louvre, whose depth of color and of shadow stands as the pictorial equivalent of individual facial expression; the same composition, a less admirable work, appears in the Manfrini Gallery. The Louvre picture comes from the Gonzaga collection and from the gallery of Charles I. in Whitehall. In 1530 Titian completed the St Peter Martyr for the church of SS. Giovanni e Paulo; for this work he bore off the prize in competition with Palma Vecchio and Pordenone. Of all his pictures this was the most daring in design of action, while it yielded to none in general power of workmanship and of feeling. It showed the influence of Michelangelo, who was in Venice.  While Vecelli was engaged upon it, a calamitous fire destroyed it in 1867; the copy of it which has taken its place is the handiwork of Cardi da Cigoli. To 1530 belongs also the Madonna del Conoglio (Louvre), painted for Gonzaga; to 1536 the Ventis of Floreoce to 1538 the portraits of the Twelve Caesars, for Gonzaga; ard to 1539 the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple.