Band, I. Heft) has most ingeniously, and upon what may be deemed solid grounds, renamed this most Giorgionesque of all Giorgiones after an incident in the Thebaid of Statius, Adrastus and Hypsipyle. He gives reasons which may be accepted as convincing for entitling the Three Philosophers, after a familiar incident in Book viii. of the Aeneid, “Aeneas, Evander, and Pallas contemplating the Rock of the Capitol.” His not less ingenious explanation of Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love will be dealt with a little later on. These identifications are all-important, not only in connection with the works themselves thus renamed, and for the first time satisfactorily explained, but as compelling the students of Giorgione partly to reconsider their view of his art, and, indeed, of the Venetian idyll generally.
2
For many highly ingenious interpretations of Lotto’s portraits and a sustained analysis of his art generally, Bernard Berenson’s Lorenzo Lotto should be consulted. See also Emile Michel’s article, “Les Portraits de Lorenzo Lotto,” in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1896, vol. I.
3
For these and other particulars of the childhood of Titian, see Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s elaborate Life and Times of Titian (second edition, 1881), in which are carefully summarised all the general and local authorities on the subject.
4
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Life and Times of Titian, vol. I. p. 29.
5
Die Galerien zu München und Dresden, p. 75.
6
Carlo Ridolfi (better known as a historian of the Venetian school of art than as a Venetian painter of the late time) expressly states that Palma came to Venice young and learnt much from Titan: “C’ egli apprese certa dolcezza di colorire che si avvicina alle opere prime dello stesso Tiziano” (Lermolieff: Die Galerien zu München und Dresden).
7
Vasari, Le Vite: Giorgione da Castelfranco.
8
One of these is a description of wedding festivities presided over by the Queen at Asolo, to which came, among many other guests from the capital by the Lagunes, three Venetian gentlemen and three ladies. This gentle company, in a series of conversations, dwell upon, and embroider in many variations, that inexhaustible theme, the love of man for woman. A subject this which, transposed into an atmosphere at once more frankly sensuous and of a higher spirituality, might well have served as the basis for such a picture as Titian’s Rustic Concert in the Salon Carré of the Louvre!
9
Mentioned in one of the inventories of the king’s effects, taken after his execution, as Pope Alexander and Seignior Burgeo (Borgia) his son.
10
La Vie et l’Oeuvre du Titien, 1887.
11
The 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
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