I RETURNED TO THE Sistine Madonna several times that afternoon in Dresden. Each time, I was struck anew by how astute Freud was. Raphael’s Mary is, indeed, someone we could know in our everyday lives—and absent any dimension of holiness. On each occasion, I imagined myself a teenager again, and knew I would have wanted to go out with her. I reconsidered my error in thinking that Freud was summoning this robust young woman, not Martha, to be with him. It was all part of my own nostalgia for youth, for longing without guilt, for the time of one’s physical prime.
Then, on my third viewing of the Raphael, I became uncomfortable about my idea that she is mischievous, while Freud thought that her subsuming quality is her innocence. How could I perceive the young woman differently from the way the master of human psychology did? On the other hand, I then thought, He didn’t know a real Holbein from a copy.
Yet—there is always a “yet”—the essence of Raphael’s Madonna is her humanness and vitality. That she is alive in a very human way, and seems neither immortal nor incorporeal, is what counts—more than the issue of her attitude. This is an earthy, sexy picture, not a spiritual one. One understands the deep significance of that fact to Freud only by looking at the third picture he described to Martha, the Titian.
THIS ACCOUNT OF HIS REACTIONS TO THE HOLBEIN and the Raphael are a preamble to the descriptions of Freud’s first true rapture in front of a work of art. He next wrote his fiancée:
But the picture that really captivated me was the Maundy Money [The Tribute Money], by Titian, which of course I knew already but to which I have never paid any special attention. This head of Christ, my darling, is the only one that enables even people like ourselves to imagine that such a person did exist. Indeed, it seemed that I was compelled to believe in the eminence of this man because the figure is so convincingly presented. And nothing divine about it, just a noble human countenance, far from beautiful yet full of seriousness, intensity, profound thought, and deep inner passion; if these qualities do not exist in this picture, then there is no such thing as physiognomy. I would love to have gone away with it, but there were too many people about, English ladies making copies, English ladies sitting about and whispering, English ladies wandering about and gazing. So I went away with a full heart.
Rarely have truer words, or greater depth of feeling, been expressed about a painting. In my own profession, among the well-reputed scholars, only Meyer Schapiro, Erwin Panofsky, and Kenneth Clark come close to being as appreciative of the radiance of an artwork, as capable of emotional transport, and as articulate in describing the impact human achievement can have.
If you want to understand Freud’s sensitivity—not his ideas, but the yearnings of his soul—you need to see this Titian. The state of enchantment in which it put him as a young man and which he described to the woman with whom he knew he would spend the rest of his life, is a side of Freud’s persona that is rarely seen. Feeling art in all its humanity, devoid of the canon of art history, miraculously free of the burden of too much information, he became flooded with pure emotion. In Orvieto we have seen the source of his tortured excitement; in Dresden, we can observe the picture that satisfied his serious wish to appreciate Christianity. [plate 35]
Plate 35. Titian, The Tribute Money, c. 1516, oil on panel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger Palace, Dresden
Freud’s conscientiousness in trying to understand holiness through art was remarkable, given both his agnosticism and his investigations into the psychological reasons for believing in deities.
Freud, after all, considered most religion to be an invention stemming from human need; in his theoretical writing, he never hints that it might be based on facts. It is as if he sees the Bible as pure fiction, however fascinating the myths may be. Reading the letter to Martha, I was astounded to find that one of his criteria for evaluating paintings was whether or not they successfully conveyed the existence of Jesus and Mary consistently with their portrayal in the New Testament, as if the biblical doctrine was an irrefutable truth. For Freud, the Titian inspired a degree of faith surprisingly at odds with his theoretical opposition to what he officially characterized as superstition.
Of course what excited Freud about Titian’s Jesus was more His “eminence” than His being the Son of God. In some ways, it is comparable to Freud’s reverence for Hannibal. Freud worshipped what is noble. The Titian afforded him the chance, the way the heroes of his childhood had, to behold a peak of human excellence.
Beyond that, the painting in Dresden induced communion with a state of grace Freud prized. Fascinated by the human face in general, thrilled by his new discovery of the particular power of visual art, he was delighted when in tandem these epitomized excellence. That a man-made object had the force to make the actual existence of Jesus Christ plausible, His virtues palpable, inspired him to make exactly the sort of joke—that if all those English people had not been there, he would have stolen the painting—that on other occasions he would have disparaged. Even as he and Martha would remain “people like ourselves,” through portrait art they could succumb to unexpected delights.
Do what I did; have the letter to Martha in your hand, and look at the Titian! You will readily understand the way Freud was moved, and will in all likelihood have many of the same feelings yourself.
RETRACING FREUD IN DRESDEN, YOU ENTER HIS WORLD. It is not Vienna, but it is a place where his mother tongue is spoken. The pastries that he adored, and considered his weakness, are available there; you can be primed by what you eat in a way that makes you open to the great man’s experience. The café-restaurant at the Gemäldegalerie has the best poppy seed cake I have ever tasted, and the perfect strong coffee to go with it; I was fortified by them on my fourth visit to the Titian in the course of three hours. I kept going back to this wonderful painting in part to imagine all the better Freud’s revelations in front of it, but also because I, too, was drawn to the purity of spirit of its Jesus, and was also enchanted by its regal colors and bold, compact forms. This is one of those small paintings of few forms and limited palette that, in its concision, is monumental.
The Zwinger epitomizes the Baroque style Freud liked so much, with its many staircases inside and out, variegated surfaces, and endless chambers and wings; it is also like a parable for the human mind. When you find the Titian, you will have the joy of arrival at a holy site after a pilgrimage. On each visit, I enjoyed the journey and then the feeling of reaching a haven. You can behold his treasure in perfect silence, with daylight pouring in through a window that opens on a lush garden.
No wonder, but how remarkable, that Freud fastened upon this relatively small object, a mere seventy-five by fifty-six centimeters, in a sea of pictures! When we stand in front of the Titian, where he stood, and look at the faces of Jesus and the man who is presenting Him with tribute money, they are living beings. This is one of those rare paintings from which physical force and thoughtfulness and feeling radiate. You are in the presence, more than you believe yourself to be when walking elsewhere in the city and passing Dresden’s galumphing tourists, of real flesh and intense reflection.
The modern world being what it is, I was—unlike Freud—totally alone with this masterpiece. Dresden’s malls and beer gardens were full of people on the warm July day I was there; in the picture gallery where the Titian hangs, there was, for the initial half hour I spent with it, and on my return visits, not another soul. When I was not facing the painting head-on, I sat on a well-worn sofa of quilted leather, placed against a wall at a right angle to the painting. I was able to concentrate totally, and bask in the pleasure to my heart’s content.
Freud’s Titian, painted in oil and wood, is perfectly composed. Jesus’ brick red robe, His blue cloak, and the yellow of the other man’s robe are a spectacular sequence of hues: the colors are not only rich to look at; they are the means by which the artist succeeds in placing the two bodies in space with such plausibility that we feel we could measure the distance between the other man and Jesus with calipers. The palette and its tonality work perfectly with the drawing and modeling of the figures to locate the other man, who stands at an angle, nearer to the picture plane, with the frontal Jesus positioned a foot or so behind him. The physical reality is entirely convincing.
That verisimilitude enhances the palpable thoughtfulness of the two men. And more powerful still is the spiritual aura of Jesus, the calm He emanates, the qualities Freud describes to Martha but which, as he would have been the first to admit, are beyond words.