CHAPTER VI

[113]

The Doges Agostino Barberigo, and Leonardo Loredano, Consalvo of Cordova, Giovanni Borgherini and his tutor, Luigi Crasso, and others, are mentioned as having sat to Giorgione for their portraits. Modern criticism has recently distributed several "Giorgionesque" portraits in English collections among Licinio, Lotto, and even Polidoro! But this disintegrating process may be, and has been, carried too far.

[114]

Two more small works may be mentioned which may tentatively be ascribed to Giorgione. "The Two Musicians," in the Glasgow Gallery (recently transferred to Campagnola), and a "Sta. Justina" (known to me only from a photograph), which has passed lately into the collection of Herr von Kauffmann at Berlin.Signor Venturi (L'Arte, 1900) has just acquired for the National Gallery in Rome a "St. George slaying the Dragon." Judging only from the photograph, I should say he is correct in his identification of this as Giorgione's work. It seems to be akin to the "Apollo and Daphne," and "Orpheus and Eurydice."

Signor Venturi (L'Arte, 1900) has just acquired for the National Gallery in Rome a "St. George slaying the Dragon." Judging only from the photograph, I should say he is correct in his identification of this as Giorgione's work. It seems to be akin to the "Apollo and Daphne," and "Orpheus and Eurydice."

[115]

I am pleased to find Signor Venturi has anticipated my own conclusion in his recently publishedLa Galleria Crespi.

[116]

Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse (In the National Gallery, p. 223) has already rightly recognised the same hand in this picture and in the "Epiphany" hanging just below.

[117]

Meravig, i. 124.

[118]

By a happy accident the new "Giorgione" label, intended for the "Epiphany," No. 1160, was for some time affixed to No. 1173.

[119]

When in the Orleans Gallery the picture was engraved under Giorgione's name by de Longueil and Halbon.

[120]

New illustrated edition of the National Gallery Catalogue, 1900.

[121]

Now in America, in Mrs. Gardner's Collection.

[122]

Crowe and Cavalcaselle:Titian, i. p. III. This picture was then at Burleigh House.

[123]

SeeLa Galleria Crespi, 1900.

[124]

The Earlier Work of Titianp. 24.Portfolio, October 1897.

[125]

Tizian, p. 16.

[126]

Morelli, ii. 57, note.

[127]

Seeantea,p. 71.

[128]

With the exception of the right arm, which Titian has let fall, instead placing it behind the head of the sleeping goddess. The effect of the beautiful curve is thereby lost, and Titian shows himself Giorgione's inferior in quality of line.

[129]

As in the "Aeneas and Evander" (Vienna), the "Judith" (St. Petersburg), the Madrid "Madonna and Saints," etc.

[130]

As in the "Caterina Cornare" of the Crespi collection at Milan.

[131]

Magazine of Art. July 1895.

[132]

North American Review. October 1899.

[133]

Magazine of Art, 1890, pp. 91 and 138.

[134]

The small divergencies of detail in the dress of the "Adulteress," etc., are just such as an imitator might have ventured to make. The hand and arm of the Christ have, however, been altered for the better.

[135]

This is the first time in Venetian art that the subject appears. It is frequently found later.

[136]

Cariani is by some made responsible for the whole picture. A comparison with an authentic example hanging (in the new arrangement of the Long Gallery), close by, ought surely to convince the advocates of Cariani of their mistake.

[137]

Morto da Feltre is mentioned by Vasari as having assisted Giorgione in the decoration of the Fondaco de' Tedeschi. This was in 1508. Otherwise, we know of no pupils or assistants employed by the master, a fact which goes to show that his influence was felt, not so much through any personal teaching, as through his work.

The examination in detail of all those pictures best entitled, on internal evidence, to rank as genuine productions of Giorgione has incidentally revealed to us much that is characteristic of the man himself. We started with the axiom that a man's work is his best autobiography, and where, as in Giorgione's case, so little historical or documentary record exists, such indications of character as may be gleaned from a study of his life's work become of the utmost value.Le style c'est l'hommeis a saying eminently applicable in cases where, as with Giorgione, the personal element is strongly marked. The subject, as we have seen over and over again, is so highly charged with the artist's mood, with his individual feelings and emotions, that it becomes unrecognisable as mere illustration, and the work passes by virtue of sheer inspiration into the higher realms of creative art. Such fusion of personality and subject is the characteristic of lyrical art, and in this domain Giorgione is a supreme master. His genius, as Morelli rightly pointed out, is essentially lyrical in contradistinction to Titian's, which is essentially dramatic. Take the epithets that we have constantly applied to his pictures in the course of our survey, and see how theybear out this statement—epithets such as romantic, fantastic, picturesque, gay, or again, delicate, refined, sensitive, serene, and the like; these bear witness to qualities of mind where the keynote is invariably exquisite feeling. Giorgione was, in fact, what is commonly called a poet-painter, gifted with the artistic temperament to an extraordinary degree, essentially impulsive, a man of moods. It is inevitable that such a man produces work of varying merit; inequality must be a characteristic feature of his art. In less fortunate circumstances than those in which Giorgione was placed, such temperaments as his become peevish, morose, morbid; but his lines were cast in pleasant places, and his moods were healthy, joyous, and serene. He does not concern himself with the tragedy of life, with its pathos or its disappointments. In his two renderings of "Christ bearing the Cross"[138]the only instances we have of his portrayal of the Man of Sorrows—he appeals more to our sense of the dignity of humanity, and to the nobility of the Christ, than to our tenderer sympathies. How different from the pathetic Pietàs of his master, Giambellini! This shrinking from pain and sorrow, this dislike to the representation of suffering is, however, as much due to the natural gaiety and elasticity of youth as to the happy accident of his surroundings. We must never forget that Giorgione's whole achievement was over at an age when some men's life-work has hardly begun. The eighteen years of his activity were what we sometimes call the years of promise, and he mustnot be judged as we judge a Titian or a Michel Angelo. He is the wonderful youth, full of joyous aspirations, gilding all he touches with the radiance of his spirit. His pictures, suffused with a golden glow, are the reflection of his sunny life; the vividness and intensity of his passion are expressed in the gorgeousness of his colours.

I have elsewhere dwelt upon the precocity of Giorgione's talent, with its accompanying qualities of versatility, inequality, and productiveness, and I have pointed out the analogous phenomena in music and poetry. Giorgione, Schubert, and Keats are alike in temperament and quality of expression. They are curiously alike in the shortness of their lives,[139]and the fever-heat of their production. But they are strangely distinct in the manner of their lives. The disparity of outward circumstances accounts for the healthy tone of Giorgione's art, when contrasted with the morbid utterances of Keats. Schubert suffered privations and poverty, and his song was wrung from him alike at moments of inspiration and of necessity. But Giorgione is all aglow with natural energy; he suffered no restraints, nor is his art forced or morbid. Confine his spirit, check the play of his fancy, set him a task prescribed by convention or hampered by conditions, and you get proof of the fretfulness, the impatience of restraint which the artist felt. The "Judgment of Solomon" and "The Adulteress before Christ," the only two "set" pieces he ever attempted, eloquently show how he fell short when struggling athwart hisgenius. For to register a fact was utterly foreign to his nature; he records an impression, frankly surrendering his spirit to the sense of joy and beauty. He is not seldom incoherent, and may even grow careless, but in power of imagination and exuberance of fancy he is always supreme.

In one respect, however, Giorgione shows himself a greater than Schubert or Keats. He has a profounder insight into human nature in its varying aspects than either the musician or the poet. He is less a visionary, because his experience of men and things is greater than theirs; his outlook is wider, he is less self-centred. This power of grasping objective truth naturally shows itself most readily in the portraits he painted, and it was due to the force of circumstances, as I believe, that this faculty was trained and developed. Had Giorgione lived aloof from the world, had not his natural reticence and sensitiveness been dominated by outside influences, he might have remained all his life dreaming dreams, and seeing visions, a lyric poet indeed, but not a great and living, influence in his generation. Yet such undoubtedly he was, for he effected nothing short of a revolution in the contemporary art of Venice. Can the same be said of Schubert or Keats? The truth is that Giorgione had opportunities of studying human nature such as the others never enjoyed; fortune smiled upon him in his earliest years, and he found himself thrust into the society of the great, who were eager to sit to him for their portraits. How the young Castelfrancan first achieved such distinction is not told us by the historians, but I have ventured to connect his start in life withthe presence of the ex-Queen of Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro, at Asolo, near Castelfranco; I think it more than probable that her patronage and recommendation launched the young painter on his successful career in Venice. Certain it is that he painted her portrait in his earlier days, and if, as I have sought to prove, Signor Crespi's picture is the long-lost portrait of the great lady, we may well understand the instant success such an achievement won.

Here, if anywhere, we get Giorgione's great interpretative qualities, his penetration into human nature, his reading of character. It is an astonishing thing for one so young to have done, explicable psychologically on the existence of a lively sympathy between the great lady and the poet-painter. Had we other portraits of the fair sex by Giorgione, I venture to think we should find in them his reading of the human soul even more plainly evidenced than in the male portraits we actually possess.[140]For it is clear that the artist was "impressionable," and he would have given us more sympathetic interpretations of the fair sex than those which Titian has left us. The so-called "Portrait of the Physician Parma" (at Vienna) is another instance of Giorgione's grasp of character, the virility and suppressed energy being admirably seized, the conception approaching more nearly to Titian's in its essential dignity than is usually the case with Giorgione's portraits. It is a matter of more regret, therefore, that the likenesses of the Doges Agostino Barberigo and Leonardo Loredano are missing, forin them we might have had specimens of work comparable to the Caterina Cornaro, which, in my opinion at all events, is Giorgione's masterpiece of portraiture.

I have given reasons elsewhere for dating this portrait at latest 1500. It is probably anterior by a few years to the close of the century. This deduction, if correct, has far-reaching consequences: it becomes actually the firstmodernportrait ever painted, for it is the earliest instance of a portrait instinct with the newer life of the Renaissance. And this brings us to the question: What was Giorgione's relation to that great awakening of the human spirit which we call the Renaissance? Mr. Berenson answers the question thus: "His pictures are the perfect reflex of the Renaissance at its height."[141]If this be taken to mean that Giorgioneanticipatedthe aspirations and ideals of the riper Renaissance, I think we may acquiesce in the phrase; but that the onward movement of this great revival coincided only with the artist's years, and culminated at his death, is not historically correct. The wave had not reached its highest point by the year 1510, and Titian was yet to rise to a fuller and grander expression of the human soul. But Giorgione may rightly be called the Herald of the Renaissance, not only by virtue of the position he holds in Venetian painting, but by priority of appearance on the wider horizon of Italian Art.

Let us take the four great representative exponents of Italian Art at its best, Raphael, Correggio, Leonardo, and Michel Angelo. Chronologically, Giorgione precedes Raphael and Correggio, though Leonardo andMichel Angelo were born before him.[142]But had either of the latter proclaimed a new order of things as early as 1495? Michel Angelo was just twenty years old, and he had not yet carved his "Pietà" for S. Peter's. Leonardo, a man of forty-three, had not completed his "Cenacolo," and the "Mona Lisa" would not be created for another five or six years. Giorgione's "Caterina Cornaro," therefore, becomes the first masterpiece of the earlier Renaissance, and proclaims a revolution in the history of portraiture. In Venice itself we have only to look at the contemporary portraits by Alvise Vivarini and Gentile Bellini, and at the slightly earlier busts by Antonello da Messina, to see what a world of difference in feeling and interpretation there is between them and Giorgione's portraits. What a splendid array of artistic triumphs must have sprung up around this masterpiece! The Cobham portrait and the National Gallery "Poet" are alone left us in much of their pristine splendour, but what of the lost portraits of the great Consalvo and of the Doge Agostino Barberigo, both of which must date from the year 1500?

Giorgione is then the Herald of the Renaissance, and never did genius arise in more fitting season. It was the right psychological moment for such a man, and Giorgione "painted pictures so perfectly in touch with the ripened spirit of the Renaissance that they met with the success which those things only findthat at the same moment wake us to the full sense of a need and satisfy it."[143]This is the secret of his overwhelming influence on succeeding painters in Venice,—not, indeed, on his direct pupil Sebastiano del Piombo, and on his friend and associate Titian (who may fairly be called his pupil), but on such different natures as Lotto, Palma, Bonifazio, Bordone, Pordenone, Cariani, Romanino, Dosso Dossi, and a host of smaller men. The School of Giorgione numbers far more adherents than even the School of Leonardo, or the School of Raphael, not because of any direct teaching of the master, but because the "Giorgionesque" spirit was abroad, and the taste of the day required paintings like Giorgione's to satisfy it. But as no revolution can be effected without a struggle, and as there are invariably people opposed to any reform, whether in art or in anything else, we need not be surprised to find the academic faction, represented by the aged Giambellini and his pupils, resisting the progress of the Newer Art. In Giorgione's own lifetime, the exact measure of the opposition is not easy to gauge, but it bore fruit a few years later in the machinations of the official Bellinesque party to keep Titian out of the Ducal Palace when he was seeking State recognition,[144]Nevertheless, Giambellini, even at his age, found it advisable to modulate into the newer key, as may be seen in his "S. Giovanni Crisostomo enthroned," where not only is the conception lyrical and the treatment romantic, but theactual composition is on the lines of the essentially Giorgionesque equilateral triangle. This great altar-piece was painted three years after Giorgione's death, and no more splendid testimonial to the young painter's genius could be found than in the forced homage thus paid to his memory by the octogenarian Giambellini.[145]

We have already, in the course of our survey of Giorgione's pictures, noted the points wherein he was an initiator. "Genre subjects," and "Landscape with figures," as we should say nowadays, found in him their earliest exponent. Before him artists had, indeed, painted figures with a landscape background, but the perfect blend of Nature and human nature was his achievement. This was accomplished by artistic means of the simplest, yet irresistibly subtle in their appeal. The quality of line and the sensuousness of colour nowhere cast their spells over us more strangely than in Giorgione's pictures, and by these means he wrought "effects" such as no artist has surpassed. In these purely pictorial qualities he is supreme, and claims place with the few quintessential artists of the world; to him may be applied by analogy the phrase that Liszt applied to Schubert, "Le musicien le plus poète que jamais."

As an instrument of expression, then, colour is used by Giorgione more naturally and effectively than it is by any of the Venetian painters. It appeals directly to our senses, like rare old stained glass, and seems to be of the very essence of the object itself. An engraving or photograph after such a picture as the Louvre "Pastoral Symphony" fails utterly to conveythe sense of exhilaration one feels in presence of the actual painting, simply because the tonic effect of the colour is wholly wanting. The golden shimmer of light, the vibration of the air, the saturation of atmosphere with pure colour are not only ingredients in, but are of the very essence of the creation. It has been well said that almost literally the chief colour on Giorgione's palette was sunlight.[146]His masterly treatment of light and shadow, in which he was scarcely Leonardo's inferior, enabled him to make use of rich and full-bodied colours, which are never gaudy, as sometimes with Bonifazio, or pretty, as with Catena and lesser artists. Nor is he decorative in the way that Veronese excels, or lurid like Tintoretto. Compared with Titian it is as though his colour-chord sounded in seven sharps, whilst the former strikes the key of C natural. A full rich green frequently occurs, as in the Castelfranco "Madonna" and the Louvre picture, and a deep crimson, contrasting with pure white drapery, or with golden flesh-tints, is also characteristic. In the painting of the nude he gives us real flesh and blood; his "Venus" has not the supernatural radiance that Correggio can give his ethereal beings (Giorgione, by the way, never painted an angel, so far as we know), but she glows with actual life, the blood is pulsing through the veins, she is very real. And in this connection we may notice the extraordinary skill with which Giorgione conveys a sense of texture; his painting of rich brocades, and more especially quilted stuffs and satiny folds, cannot be surpassed even by a Terburg.

The quality of line in his work makes itself felt in many ways. Beauty of contour and unbroken continuity of curve is obtained sometimes by sacrificing literal accuracy; a structurally impossible position—as the seated nude figure in the Louvre picture—is deliberately adopted to heighten the effect of line or the balance of composition. The Dresden "Venus," if she arose, would appear of strange proportions; but expressiveness is enhanced by the long flowing contours of the body, so suggestive of repose. We may notice also the emphasis obtained by parallelism; for example, the line of the left arm of the "Venus" follows the curve of the body, a trick which may be often seen in folds of drapery. This picture also illustrates a device to retain continuity of line; the right foot is hidden away so as not to interfere with the contour. Exactly the same thing may be seen in the standing figure in the Louvre "Pastoral Symphony." The trick of making a grand sweep from the top of the head downwards is usually found in the Madonna pictures, where a cunningly placed veil carries the line usually to the sloping shoulders, or else outwards to the point of the elbow, thus introducing the triangular scheme to which Giorgione was particularly partial.

But the question remains, What is Giorgione's position among the world's great men? Is he intellectually to be ranked with the Great Thinkers of all time? Can he aspire to the position which Titian occupies? I fear not Beethoven is infinitely greater than Schubert, Shakespeare than Keats, and so, though in lesser degree, is Titian than Giorgione. I say in lesser degree, because the young poet-painter hadsomething of that profound insight into human nature, something of that wide outlook on life, something of that universal sympathy, and something of that vast influence which distinguishes the greatest intellects of all, and this it is which lessens the distance between him and Titian. Yet Titian is the greater man, for he is "the highest and completest expression of his own age."[147]

Nevertheless, in that narrower sphere of the great painters, who proclaimed the glad tidings of Liberty when the Spirit of Man awoke from Mediaevalism, may we not add yet a fifth voice to the four-part harmony of Raphael, Correggio, Leonardo, and Michel Angelo, the voice of Giorgione, the wondrous youth, "the George of Georges," who heralded the Renaissance of which we are the heirs?

NOTES:

[138]

In the Church of San Rocco, Venice, and in Mrs. Gardner's Collection in America.

[139]

Keats died at the age of twenty-five; Schubert was thirty-one; Giorgione thirty-three.

[140]

The ruined condition of the Borghese "Lady" prevents any just appreciation of the interpretative qualities.

[141]

Venetian Painters, p. 30.

[142]

Leonardo, 1452-1519; Michel Angelo, 1475-1564; Giorgione, 1477-1510; Raphael, 1483-1520; Correggio, 1494-1534. Correggio, Raphael, and Giorgione died at the ages of forty, thirty-seven, and thirty-three years respectively. Those whom the gods love die young!

[143]

Berenson:Venetian Painters, p. 29. I should prefer to substitute "ripening" for "ripened."

[144]

Fry:Giovanni Bellini, p. 44.

[145]

In S. Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice. It dates from 1513.

[146]

Mary Logan:Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court, p. 13.

[147]

Berenson:Venetian Painters, p. 48.

The following correspondence between Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, and her agent Albano in Venice, is reprinted from theArchivio Storico dell' Arte, 1888, p. 47 (article by Sig. Alessandro Luzio):—

"Sp. Amice noster charissime; Intendemo che in le cose et heredità de Zorzo da Castelfrancho pictore se ritrova una pictura de una nocte, molto bella et singulare; quando cossì fusse, desideraressimo haverla, però vi pregamo che voliati essere cum Lorenzo da Pavia et qualche altro che habbi judicio et designo, et vedere se l'è cosa excellente, et trovando de sì operiati il megio del m'co m. Carlo Valerio, nostro compatre charissimo, et de chi altro vi parerà per apostar questa pictura per noi, intendendo il precio et dandone aviso. Et quando vi paresse de concludere il mercato, essendo cosa bona, per dubio non fusse levata da altri, fati quel che ve parerà: chè ne rendemo certe fareti cum ogni avantagio e fede et cum bona consulta. Ofteremone a vostri piaceri ecc."Mantua xxv. oct MDX."

"Mantua xxv. oct MDX."

The agent replies a few days later—

"Illmaet ExcmaMamia obserma"Ho inteso quanto mi scrive la Ex. V. per una sua de xxv. del passatto, facendome intender haver inteso ritrovarsi in le cosse et eredità del q. Zorzo de Castelfrancho una pictura de una notte, molto bella et singulare; che essendo cossì si deba veder de haverla."A che rispondo a V. Ex. che ditto Zorzo morì più dì fanno da peste, et per voler servir quella ho parlato cum alcuni mei amizi,che havevano grandissime praticha cum lui, quali me affirmano non esser in ditta heredità tal pictura. Ben è vero che ditto Zorzo ne feze una a m. Thadeo Contarini, qual per la informatione ho autta non è molto perfecta sichondo vorebe quela. Un'altra pictura de la nocte feze ditto Zorzo a uno Victorio Becharo, qual per quanto intendo è de meglior desegnio et meglio finitta che non è quella del Contarini. Ma esso Becharo, al presente non si atrova in questa terra, et sichondo m'è stato afirmatto nè l'una nè l'altra non sono da vendere per pretio nesuno; però che li hanno fatte fare per volerle godere per loro; sichè mi doglio non poter satisfar al dexiderio de quella ecc."Venetijs viii Novembris 1510."Servitor"THADEUS ALBANUS."

"Illmaet ExcmaMamia obserma

"Ho inteso quanto mi scrive la Ex. V. per una sua de xxv. del passatto, facendome intender haver inteso ritrovarsi in le cosse et eredità del q. Zorzo de Castelfrancho una pictura de una notte, molto bella et singulare; che essendo cossì si deba veder de haverla.

"A che rispondo a V. Ex. che ditto Zorzo morì più dì fanno da peste, et per voler servir quella ho parlato cum alcuni mei amizi,che havevano grandissime praticha cum lui, quali me affirmano non esser in ditta heredità tal pictura. Ben è vero che ditto Zorzo ne feze una a m. Thadeo Contarini, qual per la informatione ho autta non è molto perfecta sichondo vorebe quela. Un'altra pictura de la nocte feze ditto Zorzo a uno Victorio Becharo, qual per quanto intendo è de meglior desegnio et meglio finitta che non è quella del Contarini. Ma esso Becharo, al presente non si atrova in questa terra, et sichondo m'è stato afirmatto nè l'una nè l'altra non sono da vendere per pretio nesuno; però che li hanno fatte fare per volerle godere per loro; sichè mi doglio non poter satisfar al dexiderio de quella ecc.

"Venetijs viii Novembris 1510.

"Servitor

"THADEUS ALBANUS."

From this letter we learn definitely (1) that Giorgione died in October-November 1510; (2) that he died of the plague.

I have pointed out in the text that the above description of the two pictures "de una notte" corresponds with the actual Beaumont and Vienna "Nativities," or "Adoration of the Shepherds," in which I recognise the hand of Giorgione.

The following is the only existing document in Giorgione's own handwriting. It was published by Molmenti in theBollettino delle Arti, anno ii. No. 2, and reprinted by Conti, p. 50:—

"El se dichiara per el presente come el clarissimo Messer Aluixe di Sesti die a fare a mi Zorzon de Castelfrancho quatro quadri in quadrato con le geste di Daniele in bona pictura su telle, et li telleri sarano soministrati per dito m. Aluixe, il quale doveva stabilir la spexa di detti quadri quando serano compidi et di sua satisfatione entro il presente anno 1508."Io Zorzon de Castelfrancho di mia man scrissi la presente in Venetia li 13 febrar 1508."

"Io Zorzon de Castelfrancho di mia man scrissi la presente in Venetia li 13 febrar 1508."

Whether or no Giorgione ever completed these four square canvases with the story of Daniel is unknown. There is no trace of any such pictures in modern times.

Reprinted from the "Nineteenth Century" Jan. 1902

There is something fascinating in the popular belief that Titian, the greatest of all Venetian painters, reached the patriarchal age of ninety-nine years, and was actively at work up to the day of his death. The text-books love to tell us the story of the great unfinished "Pietà" with its pathetic inscription:

Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquitPalma reverenter absolvitDeoq. dicavit opus;

and traveller, guide-book in hand, and moralist, philosophy in head, alike muse upon a phenomenon so startlingly at variance with common experience.[148]

But, sentiment aside, is there any historical evidence that Titian ever worked at his art in his hundredth year? that he even attained such a venerable age? The answer is of wider consequence than the mere question implies, for on the correct determination of Titian's own chronology depends the history of the development of the entire Venetian school of painting in the early years of the sixteenth century. I sayearly, because it is the date of Titian's birth, and not that of his death, which I shall endeavour to fix; the latter event is known beyond possibility of doubt to have occurred in August 1576. The question, therefore, to consider is, what justification, if any,is there for the universal belief that Titian was born in 1476-7, just a hundred years previously?

Anyone, I think, who has ever looked into the history of Titian's career must have been struck by the fact that for the first thirty-five years of his life (according to the usual chronology) there is absolutely no documentary record relating to him, whether in the Venetian archives or elsewhere. Not a single letter, not a single contract, not a single mention of his name occurs from which we can so much as affirm his existence before the year 1511.

On the 2nd of December in that year "Io tician di Cador Dpñtore" gives a receipt for money paid him on completion of some frescoes at Padua, and from this date on there are frequent letters and documents in existence right down to 1576, the year of his death. Is it not somewhat strange that the first thirty-five years of his life (as is commonly believed) should be a total blank so far as records go? The fact becomes the more inexplicable when we find that during these early years some of his finest work is alleged to have been executed, and he must—if we accept the chronology of his biographers—have been well known to and highly esteemed by his contemporaries.[149]Moreover, it is not for want of diligent search amongst the archives that nothing has been found, for Italian and German students have alike sought, but in vain, to discover any documentary evidence relating to his career before 1511.

The absence of any such trustworthy record has had its natural result. Conjecture has run riot, and no two writers are agreed on the subject of the nature and development of Titian's earlier art. This is the second disquieting fact whichany careful student has to face. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Titian's most exhaustive biographers,[150]have filled up the first thirty-five years of his career in their own way, but their chronology has found no favour with later writers, such as Mr. Claude Phillips in England[151]or Dr. Georg Gronau in Germany,[152]both of whom have arrived at independent conclusions. Morelli again had his theories on the subject, and M. Lafenestre[153]has his, and the ordinary gallery catalogue is usually content to state inaccurate facts without further ado.

Now, if all these conscientious writers arrive at results so widely divergent, either their logic or their data must be wrong! One and all assume that Titian lived into his hundredth year, and, therefore, was born in 1476-7; and starting with this theory as a fact, they have tried to fit in Vasari's account as best they can, and each has found a different solution of the problem. There is only one way out of this chaos of conjectures—we must see what is the evidence for the "centenarian" tradition, and if it can be shown that Titian was really born later than 1476-7, then the silence of all records about him during an alleged period of thirty-five years will become at once more intelligible, and we may be able to explain some of the other anomalies which at present confront Titian's biographers.

I propose to take the evidence in strictly chronological order.

The oldest contemporary account of Titian's career is furnished by Lodovico Dolce in hisL'Aretino, o dialogo della pittura, which was published at Venice in 1557. Dolce knew Titian personally, and wrote his treatise just at the time when the painter was at the zenith of his fame. He is our sole authority for certain incidents of Titian's early career: it willbe well, therefore, to quote in full the opening paragraphs of his narrative:

"Being born at Cadore of honourable parents, he was sent when a child of nine years old by his father to Venice to the house of his father's brother ... in order that he might be put under some proper master to study painting; his father having perceived in him even at that tender age strong marks of genius towards the art.... His uncle directly carried the child to the house of Sebastiano, father of thegentilissìmoValerio and of Francesco Zuccati (distinguished masters of the art of mosaic, by them brought to that perfection in which we now see the best pictures) to learn the principles of the art. From them he was removed to Gentile Bellini, brother of Giovanni, but much inferior to him, who at that time was at work with his brother in the Grand Council-Chamber. But Titian, impelled by Nature to greater excellence and perfection in his art, could not endure following the dry and laboured manner of Gentile, but designed with boldness and expedition. Whereupon Gentile told him he would make no progress in painting, because he diverged so much from the old style. Thereupon Titian left the stupid(goffo)Gentile, and found means to attach himself to Giovanni Bellini; but not perfectly pleased with his manner, he chose Giorgio da Castel Franco. Titian then drawing and painting with Giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished in art, that when Giorgione was painting the façade of the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, or Exchange of the German Merchants, which looks towards the Grand Canal, Titian was allotted the other side which faces the market-place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old. Here he represented a Judith of wonderful design and colour, so remarkable, indeed, that when the work came to be uncovered, it was commonly thought to be the work of Giorgione, and all the latter's friends congratulated him as being by far the best thing he had produced. Whereupon Giorgione, in great displeasure, replied that the work was from the hand of his pupil, who showed already how he could surpass his master, and, what was more, Giorgione shut himself up for some days at home, as if in despair, seeing that a young man knew more that he did."

Fortunately, the exact date can be fixed when the frescoes onthe Fondaco de' Tedeschi were painted, for we have original records preserved from which we learn the work was begun in 1507 and completed towards the close of 1508.[154]If Titian, then, was "scarcely twenty years old" in 1507-8, he must have been born in 1488-9. Dolce particularly emphasises his youthfulness at the time, calling himun giovanetto, a phrase he twice applies to him in the next paragraph, when he is describing the famous altar-piece of the 'Assunta,' the commission for which, as we know from other sources, was given in 1516.

"Not long afterwards he was commissioned to paint a large picture for the High Altar of the Church of the Frati Minori, where Titian, quite a young man(pur giovanetto), painted in oil the Virgin ascending to Heaven.... This was the first public work which he painted in oil, and he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man(e giovanetto)."

This phrase could hardly be applied to a man over thirty, so that Titian's birth cannot reasonably be dated before 1486 or so, and is much more likely to fall later. The previous deduction that it was 1488-9 is thus further strengthened.

The evidence, then, of Dolce, writing in 1557, is clear and consistent: Titian was born in 1488-9. Now let us see what is stated by Vasari, who is the next oldest authority.

The first edition of theLivesappeared in 1550—that is, just prior to Dolce'sDialogue—but a revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1568, in which important evidence occurs as to Titian's age. After enumerating certain pictures by the great Venetian, Vasari adds:

"(a) All these works, with many others which I omit, to avoid prolixity, have been executed up to the present age of our artist, which is above seventy-six years.... In the year 1566, when Vasari, the writer of the present history, was at Venice, he went to visit Titian, as one who was his friend, and found him, althoughthen very old, still with the pencil in his hand, and painting busily."[155]

According to Vasari, then, Titian was "above seventy-six years" when the second edition of theLiveswas written, and as from the explicit nature of the evidence this must have been between 1566, when he visited Venice, and January 1568, when his book was published, it follows that Titian was "above seventy-six years" in 1566-7—in other words, that he was born 1489-90.

Still confining ourselves to Vasari, we find two other passages bearing on the question:

"(b) Titian was born in the year 1480 at Cadore.[156]

"(c) About the year 1507 Giorgione da Castel Franco began to give to his works unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner.... Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early resolved to abandon that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded therein. He now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a short time so closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were sometimes taken for those of that master.... At the time when Titian began to adopt the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait," etc.[157]

This passage (c) makes Titian "not more than eighteen about the year 1507," and fixes the date of his birth as 1489-90, therein agreeing with the previous deduction at which we arrived when examining the passage in Vasari's second edition. Thus in two places out of three Vasari is consistent in fixing 1489-90 as the date. How, then, explain (b), which explicitly gives 1480?

Anyone conversant with Vasari's inaccuracies will hardly be surprised to find that this statement is dismissed by all Titian's biographers as manifestly a mistake. Moreover, it is inconsistent with the two passages just quoted, and either they arewrong or 1480 is a misprint for 1489. Now, from the nature of the evidence recorded by Vasari, it cannot be a matter for any doubt which is the more trustworthy statement. On the one hand, he speaks as an eye-witness of Titian's old age, and is careful to record the exact year he visited Venice and the age of the painter; on the other hand, he makes a bald statement which he certainly cannot have verified, and which is inconsistent with his own experience! In any case, in Vasari's text the evidence is two to one in favour of 1489-90 as the right date, and thus we come to the agreeable conclusion that our two oldest authorities, Dolce and Vasari, are at one in fixing Titian's birth between 1488 and 1490—in other words, about 1489.

So far, then, all is clear, and as we know from later and indisputable evidence that Titian died in 1576, it follows that he only attained the age of eighty-seven and not ninety-nine. Whence, then, comes the story of the ninety-nine years? From none other than Titian himself, and to this piece of evidence we must next turn, following out a strict chronological order.

In 1571—that is, three years after Vasari's second edition was published—Titian addresses a letter to Philip the Second of Spain in these terms:[158]

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