William Michael Rossetti

“ As a draughtsman of the human figure Titian was not only competent but good and fine, and he is reported to have studied anatomy deeply; but one can easily understand that he fell not a little short of the standard of Michelangelo, and even of other leading Florentines. He was wont to paint in a nude figure with Venetian red, supplemented by a little lake in the contour and towards the extremities. He observed that a colourist ought to manipulate white, black, and red, and that the carnations cannot be done in a first painting, but by replicating various tints and mingling the colours. ”

“ Pre-eminent inventive power or sublimity of intellect he never evinced. Even in energy of action and more especially in majesty or affluence of composition the palm is not his; it is (so far as concerns the Venetian school) assignable to Tintoretto. Titian is a painter who by wondrous magic of genius and of art satisfies the eye, and through the eye the feelings, sometimes the mind.
Titian's pictures abound with memories of his home-country and of the region which led from the hill -summits of Cadore to the queen -city of the Adriatic. ”

“ It has been said, and probably with truth, that he tried to emulate Palma Vecchio in softness as well as Giorgione in richness. Michelangelo's verdict after inspecting the picture of Danae in the Kain of Gold, executed in 1546, has often been quoted. He said, " That man would have had no equal if art had done as much for him as nature." He was thinking principally of severity and majesty of draughtsmanship, for he added, "Pity that in Venice they don't learn how to draw well." ”

“ The group of Hercules and Lichas is considered as the most terrible conception of Canova s mind, and in its peculiar style as scarcely to be excelled.
Under the second head, namely, compositions of grace and elegance, the statue of Hebe takes the first place in point of date. Four times has the artist embodied in stone the goddess of youth, and each time with some variation. The only material improvement, however, is the substitution of a support more suitable to the simplicity of the art. ”

“ The model filled Italy with admiration ; the marble was procured, and the chisel of the sculptor ready to- be applied to it, when the jealousy of churchmen as to the site, or some other cause, deprived the country of the projected work. The mind of Canova was inspired with the warmest sense of devotion, and though foiled in this instance he resolved to consecrate a shrine to the cause. In his native village he began to make preparations for erecting a temple which was to contain, not only the above statue, but other works of his own ”

“ This great picture, which was burned with several others in 1577, represented in life-size the moment at which the Venetian captain, D Alviano, fronted the enemy, with horses and men crashing down into the stream. Fontana's engraving, and a sketch by Titian himself in the gallery of the Uffizi in Florence, record the energetic composition. As a matter of professional and worldly success, his position from about this time may be regarded as higher than that of any other painter known to history, except Raphael, Michelangelo, and at a later date Rubens. ”

“ Titian was a man of correct features and handsome person, with an uncommon air of penetrating observation and self-possessed composure, a Venetian presence worthy to pair with any of those " most potent, grave, and reverend signers " whom his pencil has. transmitted to posterity. He was highly distinguished, courteous, and winning hi society, personally unassuming, and a fine speaker, enjoying (as is said by Vasari, who saw him in the spring of 1566) health and prosperity unequalled. ”

“ The other son Orazio, born towards 1528, who (as we have seen) assisted Titian professionally, became a portrait- painter of mark, some of his likenesses, almost comparable with Titian's own, being often confounded with his by owners and connoisseurs. He executed an important picture in the hall of the great council, destroyed by fire. He gave to alchemy some of the time which might have been bestowed upon painting. Several other artists of the Vecelli family followed in the wake of Titian. ”

“ A fresco of Hercules on the Morosini Palace is said to have been one of his earliest works; others were the Virgin and Child, in the Vienna Belvedere, and the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth (from the convent of S. Andrea) , now in the Venetian academy. In 1507-8 Giorgione was com missioned by the state to execute frescos on the re-erected Fondaco de Tedeschi. Titian and Morto da Feltre worked along with him, and some fragments of Titian's paintings, which are reputed to have surpassed Giorgione's, are still discernible. ”

“ Amongst those who patronized the old man was the patrician family Falier of Venice, and by this means young Canova was first introduced to the senator of that name, who afterwards became his most zealous patron. Between the younger son, Giuseppe Falier, and the artist a friendship commenced which terminated only with life. From the interest which was excited in this family for Canova, the senator Falier was induced to receive him under his immediate protection. ”

“ He gave splendid entertain ments at times; and it is related that, when Henry III. of France passed through Venice on his way from Poland to take the French throne, he called on Titian with a train of nobles, and the painter presented him as a gift with all the pictures of which he inquired the price. He was not a man of universal genius or varied faculty and accomplishment, like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; his one great and supreme endowment was that of painting. ”

“ If my poor talents can be useful in any other land, they must be of some utility to Italy ; and ought not her claim to be preferred to all others? "
Numerous works were produced in the years 1795-97, of which several were repetitions of previous produc tions. It is only necessary to notice the celebrated group representing the Parting of Venus and Adonis. This famous production was sent to Naples. The French Revolution was now extending its shocks over Italy ; and Canova sought obscurity and repose in hia native Passagno. ”

“ The Flora of the Uffizi, the Venus of Darmstadt, and the lovely Venus Anadyomene of the Bridgewater Gallery may date a year or so earlier. Another work of 1523 is the stupendous Entombment of Christ in the Louvre, whose depth of colour and of shadow stands as the pictorial equivalent of individual facial expression; the same composition, a less admirable work, appears in the Manfrini Gallery. The Louvre picture comes from the Gonzaga collection and from the gallery of Charles I. in White hall. In 1530 Titian completed the St Peter Martyr for the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo ”

“ The prominent defect of Canova s attrac tive and highly trained art is that which may be summed up in the word artificiality, that quality, so characteristic of the modern mind, which seizes upon certain properties of conception and execution in the art of the past, and upon certain types of beauty or emotion in life, and makes a compound of the two regulating both by the standard of taste prevalent in contemporary " high society." a standard which, referring to cultivation and refinement as its higher term, declines towards fashion as the lower. ”

“ In fact, there is ground for thinking that all his pensions and privileges, large as they were nominally, brought in but precarious returns. It has been pointed out that in the summer of 1566 (when he was elected into the Florentine academy) he made an official declaration of his income, and put down the various items apparently below their value, not naming at all his salary or pensions. ”

“ According to one account, Giorgione was nettled at this superiority, and denied Titian admittance to his house thenceforth. Stories of jealousies between painters are rife in all regions, and in none more than in the Venetian, various statements of this kind apply ing to Titian himself. One should neither accept nor reject them uninquiringly; counter-evidence of some weight can be cited for Vecelli's vindication in relation to Moroni, Correggio, Lotto, and Coello. ”

“ The cenotaphs and funeral monuments fall next to be noticed. Of these the most splendid is the monument to the Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria, consisting of nine figures. Besides the two for the Roman pontiffs already mentioned, there is one for Alfieri, another for Emo, a Venetian admiral, and a small model of a cenotaph for Nelson, besides a great variety of monumental rilievos. ”

“ At three years of age Canova was deprived of both parents, his father dying and his mother rerr.arrying. Their loss, however, was compensated by the tender solicitude and care of his paternal grandfather and grandmother, the latter of whom lived to experience in her turn the "kindest personal attention from her grandson, who, when he had the means, gave her an asylum in his house at Rome. The father and grandfather of our artist followed the occupation of stone-cutters or minor statuaries ; and it is said that their family had for several ages supplied Passagno with members of that calling. ”

“ The anecdote may or may not be true. By his kind patron Canova was placed under Bernardi, or, as he is generally called by filiation, Torretto, a sculptor of considerable eminence, who had taken up a temporary residence at Pagnano, a vil lage in the vicinity of the senator s mansion. This took place whilst Canova was in his thirteenth year; and with Torretto he continued about two years, making in many respects considerable progress. This master returned to Venice, where he soon afterwards died ”

“ Sansovino, Eleonora duchess of Urbino, Francesco duke of Urbino, Catherine Cornaro queen of Cyprus (these four are in the Uffizi) ; Charles V. on horseback (Madrid) ; Cardinal Bembo (Naples) , discovered in an uncared-for condition in 1878, very unlike the portrait in the Barberini Gallery. The female portraits done by Titian are few, and are almost invariably of women of exalted rank. Of Ariosto, with whom Titian was intimate in Ferrara, though there may probably have been nothing approach ing to a romantic friendship between them, the painter is said to have done three portraits. ”