Titian

In September

1565 Titian went to Cadore and designed the decorations for the church at Pieve, partly executed by his pupils. One of these is a Transfiguration, another an Annunciation (now in S. Salvatore, Venice). He continued to accept commissions to the last. He had selected as the place for his burial the chapel of the Crucifix in the church of the Frani; and, in return for a grave, he offered the Franciscans a picture of the "Pieta." This work he nearly finished ; but some differences arose regarding it, and he then settled to be interred in his native Pieve. Titian was about ninety-nine years of age when the plague, which was then raging in Venice, carried him off on Aug. 27, 1576. He was buried in the church of the Frani, as at first intended, and his "Pieta" (now in the Venice Academy) was finished by Palma Giovane, who at that time was his assistant. He lies near his own famous paint ing, the "Madonna di Casa Pesaro." No memorial marked his grave, until by Austrian command Canova executed a monument. Immediately after Titian's own death, his son and assistant Orazio died of the same epidemic. His sumptuous mansion was plundered during the plague by thieves.

Titian's portrait of himself in the sixties is at Berlin; Madrid has his portrait as an old man of 80. He was highly distinguished, and a fine speaker, enjoying (as is said by Vasari, who saw him in the spring of 1566) health and prosperity unequalled. He was patronised by the Estes, the Gonzagas, the Medicis, the Farneses. He was favoured by Charles V. and by Philip II. He gave splen did entertainments; and it is related that, when Henry III. of France passed through Venice on his way from Poland to take the French throne, he called on Titian with a train of nobles, and the painter presented him as a gift with all the pictures of which he inquired the price. He was not a man of universal genius, like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo ; his one great and supreme endowment was that of painting. He carried to its acme the great colourist conception of the Venetian school.

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 imagi nation with a force that had never before been approached. The earliest Italian picture, expressly designated as "landscape" was one which Titian sent in 1552 to Philip II. His productive faculty was immense, even when we allow for the abnormal length of his professional career.

The later pictures were painted loosely, telling well from a dis tant view. He himself averred that after his visit to Rome in 1546

ne had greatly improved in art ; and in his very last days he said that he was then beginning to understand what painting meant. In nis earlier pictures the gamut of colour rests mainly upon red and green, in the later ones upon deep yellow and blue. Palma Giovane records that Titian would set pictures aside for months, and after wards, examining them with a stern countenance, as if they were his mortal enemies, would set to work upon them like a man pos sessed; also that he kept many pictures in progress at the same time, turning from one to the other, and that in his final operation on pictures of the last period he worked far more with finger than with brush. ,Michelangelo's verdict after inspecting the picture of "Danae in the Rain of Gold," during Titian's stay in Rome, "That man would have had no equal if art had done as much for him as nature," has often been quoted. He was thinking principally of draughtsmanship, for he added, "Pity that in Venice they don't learn how to draw well." However, as a draughtsman of the human figure Titian was competent and fine, and he is reported to have studied anatomy. His rendering of the nude was lifelike. He distanced all predecessors in the study of colour.

Titian's son, Orazio, born before 1525, who assisted Titian pro fessionally, became a portrait-painter of mark. He executed a picture in the hall of the great council, destroyed by fire. Several other artists of the Vecelli family followed in the wake of Titian. Francesco Vecelli, his brother (d. 156o), was introduced to paint ing by Titian, and painted in the church of S. Vito in Cadore a picture of the titular saint armed. But he was diverted from paint ing to mercantile life. Marco Vecelli, called Marco di Tiziano (1545-1611), a distant relation, was constantly with the mas ter, and learned his methods of work. He has left some able pro ductions—in the ducal palace, the "Meeting of Charles V. and Clement VII. in 1529"; in S. Giacomo di Rialto, an "Annuncia tion"; in SS. Giovani e Paolo, "Christ Fulminant." A son of Marco, named Tiziano (or Tizianello), painted early in the i7th century. There was another relative, Girolamo Dente, who, being a scholar and assistant of Titian, was called Girolamo di Tiziano. Various pictures of his were touched up by the master. Apart from members of his family, the scholars of Titian were not nu merous; Paris Bordone and Bonifazio were the two of superior excellence. It is said that Titian engraved on copper and on wood, but this may well be questioned. He provided drawings for en gravers. In 1508 according to Vasari appeared the series of wood cuts "Trionfi della Fede" designed by Titian (facsimile reproduc tions P. Kristeller, Berlin, 1906). A few bold and sketchy pen drawings are extant (Louvre, Uffizi).