"At present he is occupied with a wonderful work, which will be scarcely credited by posterity (I do not allude to the basilica of the Vatican, where he directs the works): it is the town of Rome, which he is restoring in almost its ancient grandeur; for, by removing the highest accumulations of earth, digging down to the lowest foundations, and restoring everything according to the descriptions of ancient authors, he has so carried Pope Leo and the Romans along with him as to induce every one to look on him as a god sent from heaven to restore to the ancient city her ancient majesty.
"With all this he is so far from being proud that he comes as a friend to every one, and does not shun the words and remarks of any one; he likes to hear his views discussed in order to obtain instruction and to instruct others, which he regards as the object of life. He respects and honors Fabius as a master and a father, speaking to him of everything and following his counsels."
A rare man, indeed, this Raphael; not proud, not envious, but confiding, learning from everybody, sincere and unselfish.
For the fourth hall in the Vatican, the Sala di Costantino, Raphael made the cartoon for "The Battle of Constantine." In the centre of the picture Constantine is dashing across the battle-field on a white horse, with his spear levelled at Maxentius, who, with his army, is driven back into the Tiber. The whole picture is remarkable for life and spirit.
Raphael now undertook the paintings in the Loggie of the Farnesina, for Agostino Chigi, – the fable of Cupid and Psyche, from Apuleius. "A certain king had three daughters, of whom Psyche, the youngest, excites the jealousy of Venus by her beauty. The goddess accordingly directs her son Cupid to punish the princess by inspiring her with love for an unworthy individual. Cupid himself becomes enamoured of her, shows her to the Graces, and carries her off. He visits her by night, warning her not to indulge in curiosity as to his appearance. Psyche, however, instigated by her envious sisters, disobeys the injunction. She lights a lamp, a drop of heated oil from which awakens her sleeping lover. Cupid upbraids her, and quits her in anger. Psyche wanders about, filled with despair. Meanwhile Venus has been informed of her son's attachment, imprisons him, and requests Juno and Ceres to aid her in seeking for Psyche, which both goddesses decline to do. She then drives in her dove-chariot to Jupiter, and begs him to grant her the assistance of Mercury. Her request is complied with, and Mercury flies forth to search for Psyche. Venus torments her in every conceivable manner, and imposes impossible tasks on her, which, however, with the aid of friends, she is enabled to perform. At length she is desired to bring a casket from the infernal regions, and even this, to the astonishment of Venus, she succeeds in accomplishing. Cupid, having at length escaped from his captivity, begs Jupiter to grant him Psyche; Jupiter kisses him, and commands Mercury to summon the gods to deliberate on the matter. The messenger of the gods then conducts Psyche to Olympus, she becomes immortal, and the gods celebrate the nuptial banquet. In this pleasing fable Psyche obviously represents the human soul purified by passions and misfortunes, and thus fitted for the enjoyment of celestial happiness."
Raphael had time only to make cartoons for the greater part of this work, while his pupils executed them. The paintings were criticised, and it was said that the talent of Raphael was declining.
Hurt by such an unwarrantable opinion, Raphael gladly accepted an order from Cardinal Giuliano de' Medici for a "Transfiguration" for the Cathedral of Narbonne. At the same time the cardinal ordered the "Raising of Lazarus" from Sebastiano del Piombo. Michael Angelo made the drawings for this picture, it is said, so that this work might equal or surpass that of Raphael. When the latter was apprised of this, he replied cheerfully, "Michael Angelo pays me a great honor, since it is in reality himself that he offers as my rival and not Sebastiano."
The "Transfiguration," now in the Vatican, is in two sections. In the upper portion Christ has risen into the air above Mount Tabor, and has appeared to Peter, James, and John, on the mount. At this moment the voice is heard saying, "This is my beloved Son: hear him."
At the foot of the mount, an afflicted father, followed by a crowd of people, has brought his demoniac boy to the Apostles, to be healed. The disciples point to the Saviour as the only one who has the power to cast out evil spirits.
Vasari says, "In this work the master has of a truth produced figures and heads of such extraordinary beauty, so new, so varied, and at all points so admirable, that among the many works executed by his hand this, by the common consent of all artists, is declared to be the most worthily renowned, the most excellent, the most divine. Whoever shall desire to see in what manner Christ transformed into the Godhead should be represented, let him come and behold it in this picture… But as if that sublime genius had gathered all the force of his powers into one effort, whereby the glory and the majesty of art should be made manifest in the countenance of Christ: having completed that, as one who had finished the great work which he had to accomplish, he touched the pencils no more, being shortly afterwards overtaken by death."
Before the "Transfiguration" was completed, Raphael was seized with a violent fever, probably contracted through his researches among the ruins of Rome. Weak from overwork, he seems to have realized at once that his labors were finished. He made his will, giving his works of art to his pupils; his beautiful home to Cardinal Bibiena, though the cardinal died soon after without ever living in it; a thousand crowns to purchase a house whose rental should defray the expense of twelve masses monthly at the altar of his chapel in the Pantheon, which he had long before made ready for his body; and the rest of his property to his relatives and Margherita.
He died on the night of Good Friday, April 6, 1520, at the age of thirty-seven. All Rome was bent with grief at the death of its idol. He lay in state in his beautiful home, on a catafalque surrounded by lighted tapers, the unfinished "Transfiguration" behind it.
An immense crowd followed the body to the Pantheon; his last beautiful picture, its colors yet damp, being carried in the procession.
His friend Cardinal Pietro Bembo wrote his epitaph in Latin: "Dedicated to Raphael Sanzio, the son of Giovanni of Urbino, the most eminent painter, who emulated the ancients. In whom the union of Nature and Art is easily perceived. He increased the glory of the pontiffs Julius II. and Leo X. by his works of painting and architecture. He lived exactly thirty-seven years, and died on the anniversary of his birth, April 6, 1520.
"Living, great Nature feared he might outvie
Her works, and, dying, fears herself to die."
Count Castiglione wrote to his mother, "It seems as if I were not in Rome, since my poor Raphael is here no longer." The pope, Leo X., could not be comforted, and, it is said, burst into tears, exclaiming, "Ora pro nobis." The Mantuan Ambassador wrote home the day after Raphael's death, "Nothing is talked of here but the loss of the man who at the close of his three-and-thirtieth year [thirty-seventh] has now ended his first life; his second, that of his posthumous fame, independent of death and transitory things, through his works, and in what the learned will write in his praise, must continue forever."
Three hundred and thirteen years after his death his tomb was opened, in 1833, and the complete skeleton was found. After five weeks, the precious remains were enclosed in a leaden coffin, and that in a marble sarcophagus, and reburied at night, the Pantheon being illuminated, and the chief artists and cultivated people of the city bearing torches in the reverent procession.
Dead at thirty-seven, and yet how amazing the amount of work accomplished. He left two hundred and eighty-seven pictures and five hundred and seventy-six drawings and studies. Michael Angelo said Raphael owed more to his wonderful industry than to his genius. When asked once by his pupils how he accomplished so much, Raphael replied, "From my earliest childhood I have made it a principle never to neglect anything."
Passavant says, "He was the most ideal artist that God has ever created." His maxim was, "We must not represent things as they are, but as they should be."
Says Charles C. Perkins of Boston, "Throughout all his works there is not an expression of face, or a contour, whether of muscle or drapery, which is not exactly suited to its end; nor in the thousands of figures which he drew or painted can we recall an ungraceful or a mannered line or pose. This was because of all artists since the Greeks, he had the most perfect feeling for true beauty. The beautiful was his special field, and hence he is first among his kind. Leonardo had more depth, Michael Angelo more grandeur, Correggio more sweetness; but none of them approached Raphael as an exponent of beauty whether in young or old, in mortals or immortals, in earthly or divine beings.
"Raphael was in truth the greatest of artists, because the most comprehensive, blending as he did the opposing tendencies of the mystics and the naturalists into a perfect whole by reverent study of nature and of the antique. Bred in a devotional school of art, and transferred to an atmosphere charged with classical ideas, he retained enough of the first, while he absorbed enough of the second, to make him a painter of works Christian in spirit and Greek in elegance and purity of form and style."
Raphael will live, not only through his works but through the adoration we all pay to a lovable character. The perennial fountain of goodness and sweetness in Raphael's soul, which "won for him the favor of the great," as Giovio said, while living, has won for him the homage of the world, now that he is dead. He had by nature a sunny, kindly disposition: he had what every person living may have, and would do well to cultivate: a spirit that did not find fault, lips that spoke no censure of anybody, but praise where praise was possible, and such self-control that not an enemy was ever made by his temper or his lack of consideration for others. He was enthusiastic, but he had the self-poise of a great nature. True, his life was short. As Grimm says, "Four single statements exhaust the story of his life: he lived, he loved, he worked, he died young." He helped everybody, and what more is there in life than this?
TITIAN
"If I were required," says Mrs. Jameson, "to sum up in two great names whatever the art of painting had contemplated and achieved of highest and best, I would invoke Raphael and Titian. The former as the most perfect example of all that has been accomplished in the expression of thought through the medium of form; the latter, of all that has been accomplished in the expression of life through the medium of color. Hence it is that, while both have given us mind, and both have given us beauty, Mind is ever the characteristic of Raphael —Beauty, that of Titian.
"Considered under this point of view, these wonderful men remain to us as representatives of the two great departments of art. All who went before them, and all who follow after them, may be ranged under the banners of one or the other of these great kings and leaders. Under the banners of Raphael appear the majestic thinkers in art, the Florentine and Roman painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and Albert Dürer, in Germany. Ranged on the side of Titian appear the Venetian, the Lombard, the Spanish, and Flemish masters. When a school of art arose which aimed at uniting the characteristics of both, what was the result? A something second-hand and neutral – the school of the Academicians and the mannerists, a crowd of painters who neither felt what they saw, nor saw what they felt; who trusted neither to the God within them, nor the nature around them; and who ended by giving us Form without Soul – Beauty without Life."
Ruskin says, "When Titian or Tintoret look at a human being, they see at a glance the whole of its nature, outside and in; all that it has of form, of color, of passion, or of thought; saintliness and loveliness; fleshly power and spiritual power; grace, or strength, or softness, or whatsoever other quality, those men will see to the full, and so paint that, when narrower people come to look at what they have done, every one may, if he chooses, find his own special pleasure in the work. The sensualist will find sensuality in Titian; the thinker will find thought; the saint, sanctity; the colorist, color; the anatomist, form; and yet the picture will never be a popular one in the full sense, for none of these narrower people will find their special taste so alone consulted as that the qualities which would insure their gratification shall be sifted or separated from others; they are checked by the presence of the other qualities, which insure the gratification of other men… Only there is a strange undercurrent of everlasting murmur about the name of Titian, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they."
Strong praise indeed! – "the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they;" – strong praise for the tireless worker, of whom Ludovico Dolce wrote, who knew him personally, that "he was most modest; that he never spoke reproachfully of other painters; that, in his discourse, he was ever ready to give honor where honor was due; that he was, moreover, an eloquent speaker, having an excellent wit and a perfect judgment in all things; of a most sweet and gentle nature, affable and most courteous in manner; so that whoever once conversed with him could not choose but love him thenceforth forever." He was remarkably calm and self-poised through life, saying that a painter should never be agitated. And yet he was a man of strong feelings and tender affections.
Titian, the lover of the beautiful, was born at Arsenale, in the Valley of Cadore, in the heart of the Venetian Alps, in the year 1477. His father, Gregorio Vecelli, was a brave soldier, a member of the Council of Cadore, inspector of mines, superintendent of the castle, and, though probably limited in means, was universally esteemed for wisdom and uprightness. Of the mother, Lucia, little is known, save that she bore to Gregorio four children, Caterina, Francesco, Orsa, and Titian.
In this Alpine country, with its waterfalls and its rushing river, Piave, with its mountain wild-flowers, its jagged rocks and nestling cottages, the boy Titian grew to be passionately fond of nature; to idolize beauty of form and face, and to revel in color. The clouds, the sky, the cliffs, the greensward, were a constant delight. In after years he put all these changing scenes upon canvas, becoming the most famous idealist as well as the "greatest landscape-painter of the Venetian school."
The story is told, though it has been denied by some authorities, that before he was ten years of age he had painted, on the walls of his home at Cadore, with the juice of flowers, a Madonna, the Child standing on her knee, while an angel kneels at her feet. The father and relatives were greatly surprised and pleased, and the lad was taken to Venice, seventy miles from Cadore, and placed with an uncle, so that he might study under the best artists.
His first teacher seems to have been Sebastian Zuccato, the leader of the guild of mosaic-workers. He was soon, however, drawn to the studio of Gentile Bellini, an artist seventy years old, noted for his knowledge of perspective and skill in composition. He had travelled much, and had gathered into his home pictures and mosaics of great value: the head of Plato, a statue of Venus by Praxiteles, and other renowned works. What an influence has such a home on a susceptible boy of eleven or twelve years of age! Gentile was a man of tender heart as well as of refined taste. Asked to paint portraits of the sultan and sultana, the aged artist went to Constantinople in 1479 and presented the ruler with a picture of the decapitation of St. John. The sultan criticised the work, and, to show the painter the truth of the criticism, had the head of a slave struck off in his presence, whereupon the artist, sick at heart, returned at once to Venice.
The young Cadorine studied carefully the minute drawings of Gentile Bellini, but, with an originality peculiar to himself, sketched boldly and rapidly. The master was displeased, and the boy sought the studio of his brother, Giovanni Bellini, an artist with more brilliant style, and broader contrasts in light and shade.
Here he met Giorgione as a fellow-pupil, who soon became his warm friend. This man studied the works of Leonardo da Vinci, and became distinguished for boldness of design and richness of color. Titian was his assistant and devoted admirer.
Another person who greatly influenced the early life of Titian was Palma Vecchio of Bergamo, eminent for his portraits of women. Perhaps there was a special bond between these two men, for it is asserted that Titian loved Palma's beautiful daughter, Violante. Palma had three daughters, whom he frequently painted; one picture, now at Dresden, shows Violante in the centre between her two sisters; another, St. Barbara in the church of Santa Maria Formosa in Venice, Palma's masterpiece, and still another, Violante, at Vienna, with a violet in her bosom.
Titian's earliest works were a fresco of Hercules, on the front of the Morosini Palace; a Madonna, now in the Vienna Belvedere, which shows genuine feeling with careful finish; and portraits of his parents, now lost. His first important work was painted about the year 1500, when he was twenty-three, "Sacred and Profane Love," now in the Borghese Palace at Rome.
Eaton says of this, "Out of Venice there is nothing of Titian's to compare to his 'Sacred and Profane Love.'… Description can give no idea of the consummate beauty of this composition. It has all Titian's matchless warmth of coloring, with a correctness of design no other painter of the Venetian school ever attained. It is nature, but not individual nature; it is ideal beauty in all its perfection, and breathing life in all its truth, that we behold."
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who have studied the more than one thousand pictures to which the name of Titian is attached, say in their life of the great painter, "The scene is laid in a pleasure ground surrounded by landscape, swathed in the balmy atmosphere of an autumnal evening. A warm glow is shed over hill, dale, and shore, and streaks of gray cloud alternate with bands of light in a sunset sky. To the right, in the distance, a church on an island, and a clump of cottages on a bend of land, bathed by the waters of the sea; and two horsemen on a road watch their hounds coursing a hare. To the left a block of buildings and a tower half illumined by a ray of sun crown the hillside, where a knight with his lance rides to meet a knot of villagers.
"Nearer to the foreground, and at measured intervals, saplings throw their branches lightly on the sky, which, nearer still, is intercepted in the centre of the space by a group of rich-leaved trees, rising fan-like behind the marble trough of an antique fountain. Enchanting lines of hill and plain, here in shadow, there in light, lead us to the foreground, where the women sit on a lawn watered by the stream that issues from the fountain, and rich in weeds that shoot forked leaves and spikes out of the grass.
"Artless (Sacred) Love, on one side, leans, half-sitting, on the ledge of the trough, a crystal dish at her side, symbolizing her thoughts. Her naked figure, slightly veiled by a length of muslin, is relieved upon a silken cloth hanging across the arm, and helping to display a form of faultless shape and complexion. The left hand holds aloft the vase and emblematic incense of love; the right, resting on the ledge, supports the frame as the maiden turns, with happy earnestness, to gaze at her companion. She neither knows nor cares to heed that Cupid is leaning over the hinder ledge of the fountain and plashing in the water… Not without coquetry, or taste for sparkling color, the chestnut hair of the naked maiden is twisted in a rose-colored veil; the cloth at her loins is of that golden white which sets off so well the still more golden whiteness of her skin. The red silk falling from her arm, and partly waving in the air, is of that crimson tone which takes such wonderful carminated changes in the modulations of its surface, and brings out by its breaks the more uniform pearl of the flesh."
To this figure of Sacred Love, into which the young painter evidently put his heart, he gave the beautiful and half-pensive face of Violante. Did he intend thus to immortalize her, while he immortalized himself? Very likely.
"Sated (Profane) Love sits to the left, her back resolutely turned towards Cupid, her face determined, haughty, but serene; her charms veiled in splendid dress, her very hands concealed in gloves… A plucked rose fades unheeded by the sated one's side, and a lute lies silent under her elbow… She seems so grand in her lawns and silks; her bosom is fringed with such delicate cambric; her waist and skirt, so finely draped in satin of gray reflexes; the red girdle, with its jewelled clasp, the rich armlets, the bunch of roses in her gloved hand, all harmonize so perfectly."
For the next six or seven years, while Venice was engaged in wars with the French and the Turks, little is known of the young Titian, save that he must have been growing in fame, as he painted the picture of the infamous Cæsar Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI., Jacopo da Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, who had charge of the Papal squadron against the Turks, and other paintings, now lost. The picture of Pesaro was owned by Charles I. of England. In 1825 William I., King of the Netherlands, presented it to the city of Antwerp, where it is highly prized.
In 1507 the State of Venice engaged Giorgione to fresco the new Fondaco de' Tedeschi, a large public structure for the use of foreign merchants, which had two halls, eighty rooms, and twenty-six warehouses. A portion of this work was transferred to Titian. Above the portal in the southern face of the building, Titian painted a "Judith," the figure of a woman seated on the edge of a stone plinth, in front of a stately edifice. In her right hand she waves a sword, while with her left foot she tramples on a lifeless head. Two other grand frescos were painted by him, all now despoiled by the northern or "Tramontana" winds.
Says one writer, "Whilst Giorgione showed a fervid and original spirit, and opened up a new path, over which he shed a light that was to guide posterity, Titian exhibited in his creations a grander but more equable genius, leaning at first, indeed, on Giorgione's example, but expanding, soon after, with such force and rapidity as to place him in advance of his rival, on an eminence which no later craftsman was able to climb. Titian was characterized by this, that he painted flesh in which the blood appeared to mantle, whilst the art of the painter was merged in the power of a creator.
"He imagined forms of grander proportions, of more sunny impast, of more harmonious hues, than his competitors. With incomparable skill he gave tenderness to flesh, by transitions of half-tone and broken contrasted colors. He moderated the fire of Giorgione, whose strength lay in resolute action, fanciful movement, and a mysterious artifice in disposing shadows contrasting darkly with hot red lights, blended, strengthened, or blurred so as to produce the semblance of exuberant life."
It is said by some writers that Giorgione never forgave Titian for excelling him in the frescos of the Fondaco; but, however this may be, when the noted artist and poet died, soon after, at the age of thirty-four, Titian completed all his unfinished pictures. Giorgione loved tenderly a girl who deserted him through the influence of Morto da Feltri, an intimate friend, who lived under his roof. The latter was killed in the battle of Zara in 1519, after his friend Giorgione had died of a broken heart at the loss of his beloved.
Between 1508 and 1511 Titian painted several Madonnas, one in the Belvedere at Vienna, one in Florence, one in the Louvre, and the beautiful "Madonna and St. Bridget" now at Madrid.
"St. Bridget stands with a basin of flowers in her hand, in front of the infant Saviour, who bends out of the Virgin's arms to seize the offering, yet turns his face to his mother, as if inquiring shall he take it or not. Against the sky and white cloud of the distance, the form of St. Bridget alone is relieved. The Virgin and the saint in armor to the left stand out in front of hangings of that gorgeous green which seems peculiar in its brightness to the Venetians. With ease in action and movement, a charming expression is combined. The juicy tints and glossy handling are those of Titian's Palmesque period; and St. Bridget is the same lovely girl whose features Palma painted with equal fondness and skill in the panel called Violante, at the Belvedere of Vienna… Titian shows much greater fertility of resource in the handling of flesh than Palma, being much more clever and subtle in harmonizing light with half-tint by tender and cool transitions of gray crossed with red, and much more effective in breaking up shadow with contrasting touches of livid tone, yet fusing and blending all into a polished surface, fresh as of yesterday, and of almost spotless purity, by the use of the clearest and finest glazings that it is possible to imagine."
Titian was now thirty-four, with probably the same love for Violante in his heart, but still poor, and struggling with untiring industry for the great renown which he saw before him.
At this time Titian painted one of his most noted works, thought by some to be his masterpiece, "The Tribute Money," now in the museum at Dresden. It was painted at the request of Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. Scanelli, who wrote in 1655, tells this story concerning the picture.
"Titian was visited on a certain occasion by a company of German travellers, who were allowed to look at the pictures which his studio contained. On being asked what impression these works conveyed, these gentlemen declared that they only knew of one master capable of finishing as they thought paintings ought to be finished, and that was Dürer; their impression being that Venetian compositions invariably fell below the promise which they had given at their first commencement.
"To these observations Titian smilingly replied, that if he had thought extreme finish to be the end and aim of art, he too would have fallen into the excesses of Dürer. But, though long experience had taught him to prefer a broad and even track to a narrow and intricate path, yet he would still take occasion to show that the subtlest detail might be compassed without sacrifice of breadth; and so produced the Christ of the Tribute Money."
Crowe and Cavalcaselle say, "Vasari reflects an opinion which holds to this day, that the 'head of Christ is stupendous and miraculous.'" It was considered by all the artists of his time as the most perfect and best handled of any that Titian ever produced; but for us it has qualities of a higher merit than those of mere treatment. Single as the subject is, the thought which it embodies is very subtle.
"Christ turns towards the questioning Pharisee, and confirms with his eye the gesture of his hand, which points to the coin. His face is youthful, its features and short curly beard are finely framed in a profusion of flowing locks. The Pharisee to the right stands in profile before Jesus, holds the coin, and asks the question. The contrast is sublime between the majestic calm and elevation and what Inandt calls the 'Godlike beauty' of Christ, and the low cunning and coarse air of the Pharisee; between the delicate chiselling of the features, the soft grave eye and pure-cut mouth of the Saviour, and the sharp aquiline nose or the crafty glance of the crop-haired, malignant Hebrew…
"The form of Christ was never conceived by any of the Venetians of such ideal beauty as this. Nor has Titian ever done better; and it is quite certain that no one, Titian himself included, within the compass of the North Italian schools, reproduced the human shape with more nature and truth, and with greater delicacy of modelling. Amidst the profusion of locks that falls to Christ's shoulders, there are ringlets of which we may count the hairs, and some of these are so light that they seem to float in air, as if ready to wave at the spectator's breath. Nothing can exceed the brightness and sheen or the transparent delicacy of the colors. The drapery is admirable in shade and fold, and we distinguish with ease the loose texture of the bright red tunic, and that of the fine broadcloth which forms the blue mantle. The most perfect easel picture of which Venice ever witnessed the production, this is also the most polished work of Titian."
In 1511 Titian was called to Padua and Vicenza, where he executed some frescos, principally from the life of St. Anthony, returning to Venice in 1512.
He was now famous, and Pope Leo X. naturally desired to draw him to Rome, where Raphael and Michael Angelo were the admired of all. Cardinal Bembo, the secretary of the pope, and the friend of Raphael, importuned Titian; but the Venetian loved his own state and preferred to serve her, sending, May 31, 1513, the following petition to the Council of Ten.
"I, Titian of Cadore, having studied painting from childhood upwards, and desirous of fame rather than profit, wish to serve the Doge and Signori, rather than his highness the pope and other Signori, who in past days, and even now, have urgently asked to employ me. I am therefore anxious, if it should appear feasible, to paint in the Hall of Council, beginning, if it please their sublimity, with the canvas of the battle on the side towards the Piazza, which is so difficult that no one as yet has had the courage to attempt it."