Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain04cham).pdf/302
Vecelli or Vecellio. Learned rudiments of
painting at Cadore, where a Madonna in
fresco, at the Casa
Vallenzasco, is
pointed out as his
first work; went to
Venice at the age
of nine or ten, and
was apprenticed by
his uncle, Antonio
Vecelli, to an unknown
artist, perhaps
Seb. Zuccato.
After frequenting the workshops of Gentile
and Giovanni Bellini, where he met Palma
and Giorgione, he began to decorate house
fronts and to paint Madonnas. A small
Madonna of this time, in the Vienna Museum,
though eclectic, is individual, while the
Man of Sorrows, in the Scuola, and the
Christ bearing his Cross, in the Church of
S. Rocco, Venice, show that Giorgione then
influenced him, as Palma Vecchio did when
he painted the Sacred and Profane Love
(1503 ?), Palazzo Borghese, Rome. Other
early works are: Madonna with St. Anthony
(1511), Uffizi, Florence; and portraits of
the Doge Niccolò Marcello (1505-8), Vatican
Gallery, Rome, and of Marco Barberigo,
Palazzo Giustiniani, Padua. In 1508, either
in competition or in association with Giorgione,
Titian decorated the Fondaco de' Tedeschi,
Venice, with now destroyed frescos,
of whose style some idea may be formed
from the rapidly executed, masterly, and
brilliant frescos of Joachim and Anna, in the
Scuola del Carmine, and of Three Miracles
by St. Anthony (1511), in the Scuola del
Santo, Padua. In this year Titian entered
the service of Alfonso I., Duke of Ferrara,
for whom he painted the Christ of the
Tribute Money (1514), Dresden Gallery, and
the Bacchus and Ariadne (1523), National
Gallery, London. Between the frescos at
Padua and the Bacchus, he also produced
the Madonna with Saints (1512), in the
sacristy of the Salute, Venice; Assumption
(1518), in Venice Academy; Annunciation,
in S. Niccolò, Treviso, and the Scuola di
S. Rocco (1525), Venice; a Madonna with
Saints (1520), S. Domenico, Ancona; Altarpiece
of Brescia, in five compartments
(1522), SS. Nazaro e Celso, Brescia; Madonna
di S. Niccolò (1523), Vatican Gallery,
Rome; and the Entombment, Louvre, Paris.
This and the St. Peter Martyr are examples
of Titian's powers at their height. The life
of Titian was not marked by any striking
incidents or vicissitudes, and was spent in
unceasing labour in Venice, Mantua, Ferrara,
and Padua, etc. In 1530, and again in
1532, he went to Bologna, where he met
Charles V., who created him Count Palatine
and Knight of the Golden Spur by letters
patent, bestowed many high privileges upon
him, and then, as afterwards, sat to him for
his portrait. The finest among his pictures
of the Emperor is Charles V. at Mühlberg
(1548), Madrid Museum, once one of the
great masterpieces of painting. Among
Titian's earlier works are: Flora (1520),
Uffizi, Florence; Laura Dianti at her Toilet
(1523), Louvre; Madonna di Casa Pesaro
(1526), S. M. de' Frari, Venice; Magdalen
(1531 ?), Bella di Tiziano (1534), Palazzo
Pitti, Florence; Venus of the Tribune
(1537), Uffizi. In 1537 Titian decorated
the great Hall of the Ducal Palace with the
Battle of Cadore (burned in 1577); in 1539
he painted the Presentation of the Virgin,
Venice Academy, and in 1545 produced the
Danaë of the Naples Museum. When painting,
Titian covered his canvas with low-toned
opaque colour, glazed everything, and
in some instances spent years over a picture.
"Unlike the early Flemish painters,
he and the other great Venetians," says
Hamerton, "worked independent of drawn
lines, and in this gave evidence of greater
technical advancement. They took things
by the middle and developed them in mass,
with a thorough study of modelling in light
and shade." Taken in their totality, Titian's
pictures fairly entitle him to be called the
greatest of all painters; for while others
may have surpassed him in single qualities,