The universality of Titian's genius is not questioned today, for he was surpassingly great in all aspects of the painter's art. In his portraits he searched and penetrated human character and recorded it in canvases of pictorial brilliance. His religious compositions cover the full range of emotion from the charm of his youthful Madonnas to the tragic depths of the late "Crucifixion" and the "Entombment." In his mythological pictures he captured the gaiety and abandon of the pagan world of antiquity, and in his paintings of the nude Venus ("Venus and Adonis") and the Danae ("Danae with Nursemaid") he set a standard for physical beauty and often sumptuous eroticism that has never been surpassed. Other great masters--Rubens and Nicolas Poussin, for example--paid him the compliment of imitation.
It is certain that Titian's first independent commission was for the frescoes of three miracles of St. Anthony of Padua. The finest in composition is the "Miracle of the Speaking Infant"; another, the "Miracle of the Irascible Son," has a very beautiful landscape background that demonstrates how similar in topography and mood were Titian's and Giorgione's works at this time. In fact, after Giorgione's death in 1510, Titian assumed the task of adding the landscape background to Giorgione's unfinished "Sleeping Venus" (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), a fact recorded by a contemporary writer, Marcantonio Michiel. Still Giorgionesque is the somewhat more lush setting of Titian's "Baptism of Christ" (c. 1515, Capitoline Museum, Rome), in which the donor, Giovanni Ram, appears at the lower right.
The authorship of individual portraits is the most difficult of all to establish, but the "Gentleman in Blue" (so-called "Ariosto") is certainly Titian's because it is signed with the initials T.V. (Tiziano Vecellio). The volume and the interest in texture in the quilted sleeve seem to identify Titian's own style. On the other hand, "The Concert" has been one of the most debated portraits, because since the 17th century it was thought to be most typical of Giorgione. The pronounced psychological content as well as the notable clarity of modelling in the central figure has led 20th-century critics to favour Titian. Technique and the clear intelligence of the young Venetian aristocrat in the "Young Man with Cap and Gloves" has led modern critics to attribute this and similar portraits to Titian.
The earliest compositions on mythological or allegorical themes show the young artist still under the spell of Giorgione in his creation of a poetic Arcadian world where nothing commonplace or sordid exists. The inspiration lies in the idyllic world of the love lyrics of the 16th-century Italian poets Jacopo Sannazzaro and Pietro Bembo. "The Three Ages of Man," where the erotic relationship of the young couple is discreetly muted and a mood of tenderness and sadness prevails, is one of the most exquisite of these. The contemporary "Sacred and Profane Love" is likewise set in a landscape of extraordinary beauty, but here the allegory is less easily understood. The most generally accepted interpretation holds that the two women are the twin Venuses, according to Neoplatonic theory and symbolism. The terrestrial Venus, on the left, stands for the generative forces of nature, both physical and intellectual, while the nude Venus, on the right, represents eternal and divine love. Essentially an ideally beautiful young woman rather than a cruel biblical antiheroine is the lovely "Salome."
The standard for the reclining nude female obliquely placed in the picture space was established by Giorgione in the "Sleeping Venus." In Titian's "Venus of Urbino" the ideal rendering of the body and the position remain virtually unchanged, except that the goddess is awake and reclines upon a couch within the spacious room of a palace. For sheer beauty of form these two works were never surpassed. Despite the inherent eroticism of the subject, Titian managed it with restraint and good taste. Variations on the theme recur throughout his career.
"Assumption," oil painting by Titian, 1516-18; in Santa Maria dei Frari, Venice |
The posture of the Madonna in the "Assumption" and the composition of Titian's "Madonna and Child with SS. Francis and Alvise and Alvise Gozzi as Donor" reveal the influence of Titian's contemporary Raphael; and the pose of St. Sebastian in the "Resurrection Altarpiece," the influence of Michelangelo. These influences, however, are of secondary importance since the landscapes, the physical types, and the colour are totally Titian's own.
In the "Pesaro Madonna" (1519-26) Titian created a new type of composition, in which the Madonna and Saints with the male members of the Pesaro family are placed within a monumental columnar portico of a church. The picture is flooded with sunlight and shadows. This work established a formula that was widely followed by later Venetian Renaissance painters and served as an inspiration for some Baroque masters, including Rubens and Van Dyck.
Such a quantity of masterpieces by Titian followed that only a few can be mentioned. The poetic charm of the artist's pictures with landscape continues in the "Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit" and the "Madonna and Child with SS. John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria" (c. 1530). The "Entombment" is his first tragic masterpiece, where in a twilight setting the irrevocable finality of death and the despair of Christ's followers are memorably evoked. The stately "Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple," a very large canvas, reflects the splendour of Venetian Renaissance society in the great architectural setting, partly in the latest style of the contemporary architects Serlio and Jacopo Sansovino. The pageantry of the scene also belongs to well-established tradition in Venetian art, but the organization, with its emphasis on verticals and horizontals, constitutes Titian's interpretation of the High Renaissance style.
Titian's other portraits in the 1520s and 1530s provide a gallery of the leading aristocrats of Italy. A splendid example is "Alfonso d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto" (1533), brilliantly rendered in gleaming armour ornamented with gold. He is accompanied by a small page whose head reaches his waist. The introduction of a secondary figure to give scale is a device frequently adopted by Titian. Another refulgent portrait in armour, but without the secondary figure, is that of "Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino" (1536-38). Emphasis here is given to the Duke's military career, not only by the armour but also by the baton in hand and the three others in the background. These works are essentially idealized state portraits, although the heads are very convincingly rendered. "Doge Andrea Gritti" is to a greater extent a symbol of the office--that is, that of ruler of Venice. The gigantic body in a canvas of large size is sweeping in design and commanding in presence. In later works, too, Titian very effectively managed the scaling of a figure to appear massive by filling the space of the canvas--in his portraits of Pietro Aretino, for example, where he gives his subject a leonine bulkiness. Allowing more space around the figure in "The Young Englishman," he projected a personality of cultivated elegance and human warmth.