inscription on a cartellino at the base of the picture,
Ritratto di uno di Casa Pesaro in Venetia che fu fatto generale di Sta chiesa. Titiano fecit, is unquestionably of much later date than the work itself. The cartellino is entirely out of perspective with the marble floor to which it is supposed to adhere. The part of the background showing the galleys of Pesaro’s fleet is so coarsely repainted that the original touch cannot be distinguished. The form “Titiano” is not to be found in any authentic picture by Vecelli. “Ticianus”, and much more rarely “Tician”, are the forms for the earlier period; “Titianus” is, as a rule, that of the later period. The two forms overlap in certain instances to be presently mentioned.
12
Kugler’s Italian Schools of Painting, re-edited by Sir Henry Layard.
13
Marcantonio Michiel, who saw this Baptism in the year 1531 in the house of Zuanne Ram at San Stefano in Venice, thus describes it: “La tavola del S. Zuane che battezza Cristo nel Giordano, che è nel fiume insino alle ginocchia, con el bel paese, ed esso M. Zuanne Ram ritratto sino al cinto, e con la schena contro li spettatori, fu de man de Tiziano” (Notizia d’ Opere di Disegno, pubblicata da J. Jacopo Morelli, Ed. Frizzoni, 1884).
14
This picture having been brought to completion in 1510, and Cima’s great altarpiece with the same subject, behind the high altar in the Church of San Giovanni in Bragora at Venice, being dated 1494, the inference is irresistible that in this case the head of the school borrowed much and without disguise from the painter who has always been looked upon as one of his close followers. In size, in distribution, in the arrangement and characterisation of the chief groups, the two altarpieces are so nearly related that the idea of a merely accidental and family resemblance must be dismissed. This type of Christ, then, of a perfect, manly beauty, of a divine meekness tempering majesty, dates back, not to Gian Bellini, but to Cima. The preferred type of the elder master is more passionate, more human. The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Cima in the National Gallery, shows, in a much more perfunctory fashion, a Christ similarly conceived; and the beautiful Man of Sorrows in the same collection, still nominally ascribed to Giovanni Bellini, if not from Cima’s own hand, is at any rate from that of an artist dominated by his influence. When the life’s work of the Conegliano master has been more closely studied in connection with that of his contemporaries, it will probably appear that he owes very much less to Bellini than it has been the fashion to assume. The idea of an actual subordinate co-operation with the caposcuola, like that of Bissolo, Rondinelli, Basaiti, and so many others, must be excluded. The earlier and more masculine work of Cima bears a definite relation to that of Bartolommeo Montagna.
15
Tobias and the Angel shows some curious points of contact with the large Madonna and Child with Saint Agnes and Saint John by Titian in the Louvre – a work which is far from equalling the San Marciliano picture throughout in quality. The beautiful head of the Saint Agnes is but that of the majestic archangel in reverse; the Saint John, though much younger than the Tobias, has very much the same type and movement of the head. There is in the Church of Santa Caterina in Venice a kind of paraphrase with many variations of the San Marciliano Titian, assigned by Ridolfi to the great master himself, but by Boschini to Santo Zago (Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. II. p. 432). Here the adapter has ruined Titian’s great conception by substituting his own trivial archangel for the superb figure of the original (see also a modern copy of this last piece in the Schack Gallery at Munich). A reproduction of the Titian has for purposes of comparison been placed at the end of the present monograph (p. 99).
16
Vasari places the Three Ages after the first visit to Ferrara, that is almost as much too late as he places the Tobias of the Galleria dell’Academia too early. He describes its subject as “un pastore ignudo ed una forese chi li porge certi flauti per che suoni.”
17
From an often-cited passage in the Anonimo, describing Giorgione’s great Venus now in the Dresden Gallery, in the year 1525, when it was in the house of Jeronimo Marcello at Venice, we learn that it was finished by Titian. The text says: “La tela della Venere nuda, che dorme ni uno paese con Cupidine, fu de mano de Zorzo da Castelfranco; ma lo paese e Cupidine furono finiti da Tiziano.” The Cupid, irretrievably damaged, has been altogether removed, but the landscape remains, and it certainly shows a strong family resemblance to those which enframe the figures in the Three Ages, Sacred and Profane Love, and the “Noli me tangere” of the National Gallery. The same Anonimo in 1530 saw in the house of Gabriel Vendramin at Venice a Dead Christ supported by an Angel, from the hand of Giorgone, which, according to him, had been retouched by Titian. It need hardly be pointed out, at this stage, that the work thus indicated has nothing in common with the coarse and thoroughly second-rate Dead Christ supported by Child-Angels, still to be seen at the Monte di Pietà of Treviso. The engraving of a Dead Christ supported by an Angel, reproduced in Lafenestre’s Vie et Œuvre du Titien as having possibly been derived from Giorgione’s original, is about as unlike his work or that of Titian as anything in sixteenth-century Italian art could possibly be. In the extravagance of its mannerism it comes much nearer to the late style of Pordenone or to that of his imitators.
18
Jahrbuch der Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, Heft I. 1895.
19
See also as to these paintings by Giorgione, the Notizia d’ Opere di Disegno, pubblicata da D. Jacopo Morelli, Edizione Frizzoni, 1884.
20
M. Thausing, Wiener Kunstbriefe, 1884.
21
Le Meraviglie dell’ Arte.
22
One of the many inaccuracies of Vasari in his biography of Titian is to speak of the Saint Mark as “una piccola tavoletta, un S. Marco a sedere in mezzo a certi santi.”
23
In connection with this group of works, all of them belonging to the early sixteenth century, there should also be mentioned an extraordinarily interesting and as yet little known Herodias with the Head of Saint John the Baptist by Sebastiano Del Piombo, bearing the date 1510. It shows the painter admirably in his purely Giorgionesque phase, the authentic date bearing witness that it was painted during the lifetime of the Castelfranco master. It groups therefore with the great altarpiece by Sebastiano at San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice, with Sir Francis Cook’s injured but still lovely Venetian Lady as the Magdalene (the same ruddy blonde model), and with the four Giorgionesque Saints in the Church of San Bartolommeo al Rialto.
24
Die Galerien zu München und Dresden, p. 74.
25
The Christ of the Pitti Gallery – a bust-figure of the Saviour, relieved against a level far-stretching landscape of the most solemn beauty – must date a good many years after the Tribute Money. In both works the beauty of the hand is especially remarkable. The head of the Pitti Christ in its present state might not conclusively proclaim its origin; but the sensitive and intensely significant landscape is one of Titian’s loveliest.
26
An ingenious suggestion was made that it might be that Portrait of a Gentleman of the House of Barbarigo which, according to Vasari, Titian painted with wonderful skill at the age of eighteen. The broad, masterly technique of the National Gallery picture in no way accords, however, with Vasari’s description, and marks a degree of accomplishment such as no boy of eighteen, not even Titian, could have attained. And then Vasari’s “giubbone di raso inargentato” is not the superbly luminous steel-grey sleeve of this Ariosto, but surely a vest of satin embroidered with silver. The late form of signature, “Titianus F.”, on the stone balustrade, which is one of the most Giorgionesque elements of the portrait, is disquieting, and most
