Part 2 (2/2)

What is great, and at the same time new, must inevitably suffer opposition at the outset In this case the public, adh festival of St Bernardino's Day in the year 1518 to see the vast panel, showed themselves less timorous, more enthusiastically favourable than the friars had been Fra Geruardian of Santa Maria de' Frari, and the chief y to the ruffled painter, and the Fathers retained the treasure as against the Imperial Envoy, Adorno, who had seen and admired titian's wonderful achievement on the day of its ceremonial introduction to the Venetians

To the year 1519 belongs the _Annunciation_ in the Cathedral of Treviso, the reatly overstated True, the Virgin, kneeling in the foreground as she awaits the divine e, is of unsurpassable suavity and beauty; but the foolish little archangel tuo far toaside for therepresentations of the subject due to the Florentines and the Sienese--both sculptors and painters--south of the Alps, and to the Netherlanders north of the the whole of the fifteenth century, the essential triviality of the conception in the Treviso picture makes such a work as Lorenzo Lotto's pathetic _Annunciation_ at Recanati, for all its excess of agitation, appear dignified by comparison titian's own _Annunciation_, bequeathed to the Scuola di S Rocco by Ah up on the staircase there, has a design of far greater gravity and appropriateness, and is in many respects the superior of the better known picture

[Illustration: _The Annunciation Cathedral at Treviso Froain, a few months after the death of Alfonso's duchess,--the passive, and in later life estiia, whose character has been wilfully misconceived by the later historians and poets,--ourwith him, we are told, the finished _Bacchanal_, already described above He appears to have again visited the Court in 1520, and yet again in the early part of 1523 On which of these visits he took with him and completed at Ferrara (?) the last of the Bacchanalian series, our _Bacchus and Ariadne_, is not quite clear It will not be safe to put the picture too late in the earlier section of Vecelli's work, though, with all its freshness of inspiration and still youthful passion, it shows a further advance on the _Worshi+p of Venus_ and the _Bacchanal_, and urated by the _Feast of the Gods_ of Gian Bellino To the two superb fantasies of titian already described our National Gallery picture is infinitely superior, and though tireat Venetian pictures of the golden time, it is in far better condition than they are In the _Worshi+p of Venus_ and the _Bacchanal_ the allegiance to Giorgiono has been partly, if not wholly, shaken off; the navete reionesque pieces In the _Bacchus and Ariadne_ titian's genius flaain be seen to illuinative subject of this class Certainly, with all the beauties of the _Venuses_, of the _Diana and Actaeon_, the _Diana and Calisto_, the _Rape of Europa_, we descend lower and lower in the quality of the conception as we advance, though the brush more and more reveals its supreme accomplishment, its power to summarise and subordinate Only in those later pieces, the _Venere del Pardo_ of the Louvre and the _Nymph and Shepherd_ of Vienna, is there a moment of pause, a return to the painted poeated sensuousness

[Illustration: _Bacchus and Ariadne National Gallery Froraph published by the Autotype Company_]

The _Bacchus and Ariadne_ is a titian which even the Louvre, the Museum of the Prado, and the Vienna Gallery, rich as they are in our master's works, may envy us The picture is, as it were, under the eye of most readers, and in some shape or form is familiar to all who are interested in Italian art This ti Philostratus to guide him, but Catullus himself, whose _Epithalamium Pelei et Thetidos_ he folloith a closeness which did not prevent the pictorial interpretation froh with the sainal How is it possible to better express the _At parte ex alia florens volitabat Iacchus Te quaerens, Ariadna, tuoque incensus aerGod in the canvas of the Venetian? Or to paraphrase with atruth those other lines: _Horum pars tecta quatiebant cuspide thyrsos; Pars e divolso iactabant ebant_? Ariadne's crown of stars--the _Ex Ariadneis aurea temporibus Fixa corona_ of the poem--shi+nes in titian's sky with a sublime radiance which corresponds perfectly to the description, so august in its very conciseness, of Catullus The splendour of the colour in this piece--hardly equalled in its happy audacity, save by the _Madonna del Coniglio_ or _Vierge au Lapin_ of the Louvre,[41] would be a thehtful to dwell upon, did the prescribed lience Even here, however, where in syhts of sense, he has allowed no conventional li itself in appropriately daring chromatic harmonies, he cannot be said to have evoked difficultiesthe brilliancy of those Veronese transformed into Venetians--Bonifazio Pri colour-harmony of the Brescian Romanino; or the more violent and self-assertive splendour of Gaudenzio Ferrari; or the lahest degree of poetic fancy, the highest technical acconity and moderation in the use of colour, of which our master may in the full Renaissance be considered the supreme exponent

The ever-popular picture in the Salon Carre of the Louvre non as _Alfonso I of Ferrara and Laura Dianti_, but in the collection of Charles I called, with no nearer approach to the truth, _titian's Mistress after the Life_, coe The exuberant beauty, with the skin of dazzling fairness and the unbound hair of rippling gold, is the last in order of the earthly divinities inspired by Giorgione--the loveliest of all in sonificant, the one nearest still to the realities of life The chief harreen, and white, setting off flesh delicately rosy, the whole enfrah here and there with gleaht Vasari described how titian painted, _ottilieria_, the Duke Alfonso, and how he portrayed, too, the Signora Laura, who afterwards became the wife of the duke, _che e opera stupenda_ It is upon this foundation, and a certain real or fancied reseround holds the mirror to his splendid _donna_ and the _Alfonso of Ferrara_ of the Museo del Prado, that the popular designation of this lovely picture is founded, which probably, like so many of its class, represents a fair Venetian courtesan with a lover proud of her fresh, yet full-blown beauty Noever, the accorapher of Velazquez, Herr Carl Justi,[42] coue, with the crisply curling dark hair and beard, in titian's picture at Madrid cannot possibly be, as has hitherto been almost universally assumed, Alfonso I of Ferrara, but may very probably be his son, Ercole II This alone invalidates the favourite designation of the Louvre picture, and renders it highly unlikely that we have here the ”stupendous” portrait of the Signora Laura mentioned by Vasari A coio Cornaro_ of Castle Howard--a fa a hawk, and having a sporting dog as his companion, which was seen at the recent Venetian exhibition of the New Gallery--results in soe portrayed It is not only that the quality and cast of the close curling hair and beard are the saree exceedingly well; the syives in either case the same impression of splendid manhood fully and worthily enjoyed, yet not abused This racious Ercole II of Ferrara, then must it be held that also in the Castle Howard picture is Alfonso's son and successor portrayed In the latter canvas, which bears, according to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the later signature ”titianus F,” the personage is, it may be, a year or two older Let it be borne in mind that only on the _back_ of the canvas is, or rather was, to be found the inscription: ”Georgius Cornelius, frater Catterinae Cipri et Hierusaleinae (_sic_),” upon the authority of which it bears its present designation

The altar-piece, _The Virgin and Child with Angels, adored by St

Francis, St Blaise, and a Donor_, now in San Domenico, but formerly in San Francesco at Ancona, bears the date 1520 and the signature ”titianus Cadorinus pinsit,” this being about the first instance in which the later spelling ”titianus” appears If as a pictorial achievement it cannot rank with the San Niccol and the Pesaro altar-pieces, it presents souishable from these The conception is marked by a peculiar intensity but rarely to be e, and hardly in any other altar-piece of this particular type It reveals a passionate unrest, an element of the uncurbed, the excessive, which one expects to find rather in Lorenzo Lotto than in titian, whose draorous ests that in some shape or other the painter was acquainted with Raphael's _Madonna di Foligno_; but it is dramatic and real where the Urbinate's masterpiece was lofty and symbolical Still titian's St Francis, rapt in contemplation, is subli donor is as pathetic in the huure in a Quattrocento altar-piece, yet his expressive head is touched with the hand of a master of the full Renaissance An improved version of the upper portion of the Ancona picture, showing the Madonna and Child with angels in the clouds, appears a little later on in the S Niccol altar-piece

[Illustration: _St Sebastian Wing of altar-piece in the Church of SS

Nazzaro e Celso, Brescia Fro to the iate, Averoldo, and originally placed on the high altar in the Church of SS Nazzaro e Celso at Brescia, we find a e of style and sentiment The _St Sebastian_ presently to be referred to, constituting the right wing of the altar-piece, was coreat an interest in Venice that Tebaldi, the agent of Duke Alfonso, ate and secure the much-talked-of piece for his master titian succumbed to an offer of sixty ducats in readyneither for the first nor the last tinificant side of his character But at the last ate, drew back and left to titian the discredit without the profit of the transaction The central compartment of the Brescia altar-piece presents _The Resurrection_, the upper panels on the left and right show together the _Annunciation_, the lower left panel depicts the patron saints, Nazarus and Celsus, with the kneeling donor, Averoldo; the lower right panel has the faround, and in the landscape the Angelto St Roch

The _St Sebastian_ is neither nificent academic study of a nude athlete bound to a tree in such fashi+on as to bring into violent play at one and the same moment every muscle in his splendidly developed body There is neither in the figure nor in the beautiful face fraony or the ecstasy of ulf indeed separates the mood and the method of this superb bravura piece froionesque saint in the _St Mark_ of the Salute, or the healthy realism of the unconcerned _St Sebastian_ in the S Niccol altar-piece Here, as later on with the _St Peter Martyr_, those who adeneral, and in that of titian in particular, its freedom from mere rhetoric and the deep root that it has in Nature, must protest that in this case moderation and truth are offended by a conception in its very essence artificial Yet, brought face to face with the work itself, they will put aside the role of critic, and against their better judge unreservedly to depth and richness of colour, to irresistible beauty of ies have been drawn between the _Medicean Faun_ and the _St Sebastian_, chiefly on account of the strained position of the ar, both in the statue and the painting; but surely thecertain ure of Laocoon in the world-faroup of the Vatican Of this a model had been made by Sansovino for Cardinal Domenico Grimani, and of that model a cast was kept in titian's workshop, from which he is said to have studied

[Illustration: DESIGN FOR A HOLY FAMILY CHATSWORTH _Froraph by Braun, Clee au Lapin Louvre Froraph by Neurdein_]

In the _Madonna di S Niccol_, which was painted or rather finished in the succeeding year, 1523, for the little Church of S Niccol de'

Frari, and is now in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican, the keynote is suavity, unbroken richness and harance of technique The coreater unity before the barbarous shaving off, when the picture went to Rome, of the circular top which it had in common with the _assunta_, the Ancona, and the Pesaro altar-pieces Technically superior to the second of these great works, it is marked by no such unity of dramatic action and sentiment, by no such passionate identification of the artist with his subject It is only in passing from one of its beauties to another that its artistic worth can be fully appreciated Then we admire the rapt expression, not less than the wonderfully painted vestments of the _St

Nicholas_,[46] the mansuetude of the _St Francis_, the Venetian loveliness of the _St Catherine_, the palpitating life of the _St

Sebastian_ The latter is not ondolier stripped and painted as he was--conteure is just as Vasari describes it, _ritratto dal' vivo e senza artificio niuno_ The royal saint of Alexandria is a sister in refined elegance of beauty and costu elaboration of coiffure, to the _St Catherine_ of the _Madonna del Coniglio_, and the not dissiure in our own _Holy Family with St Catherine_ at the National Gallery

The fresco showing St Christopher wading through the Lagunes with the infant Christ on his shoulder, painted at the foot of a staircase in the Palazzo Ducale leading fros either to this year, 1523, or to 1524 It is, so far as we know, titian's first performance as a _frescante_ since the completion, twelve years previously, of the series at the Scuola del Santo of Padua

As it at present appears, it is broad and solid in execution, rich and brilliant in colour for a fresco, very fairly preserved--deserving, in fact, of a ards technique than Crowe and Cavalcaselle have ed realism of the conception not without its pathos; yet the subject is not lifted high above the co spirit of personal interpretation which can transfigure truth without unduly transforn and decorative character, it is greatly exceeded by the htened hite, of the same subject, by Pordenone, in the British Museum

Even the colossal, half-effaced _St Christopher with the Infant Christ_, painted by the same master on the wall of a house near the Town Hall at Udine, has a finer swing, a y

[Illustration: _St Christopher with the Infant Christ Fresco in the Doge's Palace, Venice Froraph by Alinari_]

Where exactly in the life-work of titian are we to place the _Ento his sacred works, other than altar-pieces of vast dis to the _Bacchus and Ariadne_ a purely secular subjects? It was in 1523 that titian acquired a new and illustrious patron in the person of Federigo Gonzaga II, Marquess of Mantua, son of that able of collectors, the Marchioness Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, and nephew of Alfonso of Ferrara The _Ento a ”Mantua piece,”[47] Crowe and Cavalcaselle have not unnaturally assumed that it was done expressly for the Mantuan ruler, in which case, as sooes to show, it must have been painted at, or subsequently to, the latter end of 1523 Judging entirely by the style and technical execution of the canvas itself, the writer feels strongly inclined to place it earlier by some two years or thereabouts--that is to say, to put it back to a period pretty closely following upon that in which the _Worshi+p of Venus_ and the _Bacchanal_ were painted Mature as titian's art here is, it reveals, not for the last tis were saturated The beautiful head of St John shows the Giorgionesque type and the Giorgionesque feeling at its highest The Joseph of Arimathea has the robustness and the passion of the Apostles in the _assunta_, the crihts, is such as we dalen, with her features distorted by grief, rese for the necessary differences i to the love-Goddess in the _Worshi+p of Venus_ The figure of the Virgin, on the other hand, enveloped from head to foot in her mantle of cold blue, creates a type which would appear to have much influenced Paolo Veronese and his school To define the beauty, the supreme concentration of the _Ento it, is a task of difficulty

What gives to it that singular power of enchanting the eye and enthralling the spirit, the one in perfect agreement with the other, is perhaps above all its unity, not only of design, but of tone, of infor balance and interconnection of the two race--the well-orderedto accentuate the es, bound together by the bond of the sareat sorrow, and from them communicates itself, as it were, to the beholder In the colouring, while nothing jars or impairs the concert of the tints taken as a whole, each one stands out, affir, its own splendour and its own special significance And yet the yellow of the Magdalen's dress, the deep green of the coatruddier the embrowned flesh of sturdy Joseph of Ariar white of the cloth which supports the wan liin's robe, conificence than to heighten that of soleedy

Of the frescoes executed by titian for Doge Andrea Gritti in the Doge's chapel in 1524 no trace now remains They consisted of a lunette about the altar,[48] with the Virgin and Child between St Nicholas and the kneeling Doge, figures of the four Evangelists on either side of the altar, and in the lunette above the entrance St Mark seated on a lion

[Illustration: _The Madonna di Casa Pesaro Church of S Maria de'

Frari, Venice Froraph by Naya_]