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Titian

Titian was the grand old master of Venetian painting and enjoyed an extraordinarily long and productive life. By the time he died of the plague in 1576, he was the most esteemed artist in Europe and his works adorned the walls of the palaces of kings, princes and popes. Like many ambitious artists, from early in his career Titian sought the patronage of the most powerful rulers of the day.

He was born in Pieve di Cadore on the Venetian mainland, probably around 1490, and enjoyed a first-class training as a painter, entering the studio of Giovanni Bellini in Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Under Bellini, the most brilliant Venetian painter of the Quattrocento, the Serenissima produced a painter who could vie with the best in Florence, hitherto the dominant artistic centre in Italy. Bellini’s studio proved a magnet for aspiring artists in Venice, and Titian was joined by Giorgione and Sebastiano del Piombo.

The early death of Giorgione in 1510, and the departure of Sebastiano for Rome, followed by the death of the aged Bellini in 1516, left the field clear for Titian. The success of his altarpiece of the Assumption, with the majestic, red-robed figure of the Madonna ascending to heaven against a gold background, painted for the high altar of the Franciscan church of the Frari, proclaimed Titian as the leading painter in Venice. The ambitious young artist now sought recognition from the rulers of neighbouring states, notably Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara and Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, both leading patrons of the arts.

In the early 1520s Alfonso d’Este commissioned works for the camerino, or little study, in his palace in Ferrara. The duke wished to secure the services of the greatest living Italian artists: Michelangelo and Fra Bartolommeo from Florence, Raphael from Urbino, and Giovanni Bellini from Venice, with the aim to surpass his sister Isabella D’Este, whose famous studiolo in Mantua contained paintings by Andrea Mantegna and Pietro Perugino. Alfonso, however, was largely unsuccessful: Raphael and Fra Bartolommeo died before they could carry out the commission, and Michelangelo failed to execute a single painting, so the frustrated duke was left with just one work by Giovanni Bellini.

Alfonso therefore decided to commission Titian from nearby Venice. The ambitious artist was only too happy to oblige, and painted three mythological subjects for the duke: the Worship of Venus, the Bacchanal of the Andrians (both Prado, Madrid) and Bacchus and Ariadne (National Gallery, London), pastoral idylls set in beautiful landscapes filled with pagan, pleasure-loving figures. They were to serve as the prototype for Titian’s second series of mythological paintings, of which the Rape of Europa is the last and finest example.

The mythological paintings for the Duke of Ferrara were an example of Titian’s versatility; he was already regarded as a master of religious works, portraits and female nudes. Following the success of these works, he was commissioned to paint portraits by the leading rulers of Northern Italy: the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua, the Medici Dukes of Florence and the della Rovere Dukes of Urbino. These rulers were under the suzerainty of Spain, which had defeated France in a series of wars at the beginning of the sixteenth century and now exerted direct or indirect control over the entire Italian peninsula, with the exception of the independent Republic of Venice. The King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was the ruler of a world wide empire encompassing Spain, the New World, Germany, the Netherlands, Milan and Naples. During the 1530s and 1540s, following an introduction by Federigo Gonzaga, a close ally of the emperor, Titian executed a number of portraits of Charles V. It was to be Charles’ son Philip who was to become the Venetian artist’s most important patron.

The two men met for the first time in Milan in December, 1548, when Philip was touring the Habsburg possessions in Northern Italy. The prince had been brought up in Spain and this was the first chance to visit the extensive patrimony that he was soon to inherit from his father. It was a disparate empire comprising Spain, the Netherlands, much of the Italian peninsula, extensive Habsburg landholdings in Germany, Bohemia and Austria, and the newly discovered Americas. Although Philip was given royal treatment on his travels, his reserved character and inability to speak foreign languages made a poor comparison with his father, an outgoing man, possessing regal presence, and a natural linguist.

The prince had blond hair, pale blue eyes, large lips and the prominent Habsburg jaw. The Venetian ambassador Federigo Badovaro described his appearance:

‘He is small in stature and his limbs are mean. He has a fine large forehead, his eyes are large and blue, his eyebrows are thick and close together, the nose well proportioned; his mouth is big and the lower lip protuberant; this last is rather unbecoming. His beard is short and pointed. His skin is white and his hair is fair, which makes him look a Fleming; but he has the manners of a Spaniard.’ Overall, Philip appeared to have made little impression on those he met on his travels. He was ‘not very agreeable to the Italians, not very acceptable to the Flemish, odious to the Germans’, in Badovaro’s words.

At this early stage Philip was already showing an interest in the arts, and had been particularly impressed by the Palazzo Doria in Genoa and the Palazzo del Te in Mantua, with its large collection of paintings by Titian, but he was not yet a major patron. However he knew how pleased his father had been with a number of portraits he had commissioned from Titian, including the magnificent Equestrian Portrait of Charles V (Prado, Madrid) celebrating the emperor’s victory over the German Protestant princes at the battle of Muhlberg (since 1517, when Martin Luther had first taken a stand against the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformation had divided Germany on religious lines and Charles, as Holy Roman Emperor, had spent years attempting to control his unruly, Protestant subjects). Charles was flattered by Titian’s depiction of him as a modern-day St George, mounted on his black charger, holding a spear, portrayed against a brilliant sunset. He decided to create Titian Knight of the Golden Spur and appointed him Count Palatine of the Holy Roman Empire, unheard of honours for a mere artist. The painter celebrated by commissioning the Sienese medallist Pastorino de’ Pastorini to portray him in profile as an ancient Roman with the inscription EQUES prominently displayed beneath.

Like his father, Philip enjoyed Titian’s company and decided to ask the artist to paint his portrait. The result was a splendid full length portrait of the prince wearing a suit of damascened armour, designed to show that Philip was worthy to inherit his father’s mantle.

Shortly afterwards, the prince and the painter parted, and Philip continued his tour of the Habsburg patrimony in the Netherlands, where he enjoyed spectacular celebrations at the palace of Binche, the magnificent residence of Charles V’s sister Mary of Hungary, an assiduous collector of the works of Titian. When he rejoined his father in Augsburg, Philip was able to admire a work that the painter had just given to his father entitled Venus with Cupid and an Organist (there are five versions of this painting, showing its popularity), a highly erotic work where the organist gazes back at the naked Venus lying behind him, her foot nonchalantly resting on his tunic, while Cupid fondles her breast. What is particularly remarkable about this painting is that the organist’s features bear a marked resemblance to those of Philip.

If Titian intended this to be a tribute to the young prince, he was completely successful. From this moment onwards Philip acquired a passion for the artists’s work. Initially, he had voiced some criticism over the painter’s technique in a portrait of his aunt Mary of Burgundy, writing: ‘you can easily see the haste with which he [Titian] painted it, and if there had been more time I would have made him work on it again.’ However, any reservations the prince may have held about the freedom of the painter’s technique soon disappeared. In 12 September 1550, Philip wrote to the Spanish ambassador to Venice, Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, urging him to speed Titian’s return to Augsburg: ‘it would greatly please me that he [Titian] should come as soon as possible, I commission you, if he has not already left when you receive this, to urge him to hasten his departure’.

Titian was keen to accept such a prestigious invitation, spending the winter of 1550–1 as the prince’s guest in Augsburg. By the time the two men parted (they were never to meet again), they had made an agreement whereby Titian was to supply Philip with paintings on a regular basis. In effect he was appointed court artist in absentia, serving his master in Spain while remaining in Venice. This was to continue for the rest of the artist’s life.

The next commission that Titian executed for the prince, a series of six mythological paintings taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, depicts the loves and lusts of the Gods. He referred to these paintings as poesie, poems in paint, where the paintings should aspire to the level of poetry and inspire similar feelings and intellectual thoughts as the poems themselves (in the sixteenth century mythological painting was ranked alongside religious works as the highest form of art). Unlike the light-hearted nature of the mythologies that he had painted for the Duke of Ferrara, however, these works convey a more complex message. Titian, like many Renaissance humanists, was influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics, which defined the main characteristics of tragedy as pity and fear.

All six poesie follow Aristotle’s work in demonstrating an ambivalent mood, where the force of love between Gods and mortals is fragile and fraught with danger, and may lead either to ecstasy or to tragedy. The myths that Titian chose to depict, in chronological order, were: Danae, Venus and Adonis, Perseus and Andromeda, Diana and Actaeon, Diana and Callisto and the Rape of Europa, the last in the series. The mood of these paintings varies, commencing with an ecstatic Danae, awaiting her ravishment by Jupiter, who descends in a cloud of gold. In contrast Venus clings to the departing Adonis, only too aware that the huntsman is going to his death. Love is triumphant once again as Perseus swoops through the air to kill the dragon threatening the chained Andromeda. But the two scenes with the goddess Diana are full of impending tragedy as the unsuspecting Actaeon comes across the naked goddess bathing with her maidens, while her maid Callisto, who is carrying Jupiter’s child, tries to hide her pregnant body from the unflinching gaze of the goddess. In the last scene, Europa sprawls in a position of abandonment across the back of Jupiter, disguised as a bull, who will ravish her as soon as she arrives on the shores of Crete.

A further painting, of Jason and Medea, was never executed but the Death of Actaeon (National Gallery, London), painted after the Rape of Europa remained in the artist’s studio until his death. It is therefore not part of the series that was sent to Philip II, and is the darkest painting of all, depicting the moment when the goddess Diana fires her arrow at the startled Actaeon, who is already being transformed into a stag. The actual myths themselves are discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.

Various attempts have been made to give the Rape of Europa and the other poesie a Christian or philosophical interpretation. Philip was a fervent Catholic who owned a copy of the standard translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into Spanish by Jorge da Bustamente that stressed the moral and Christian content in the myths. Proponents of this interpretation put forward a metaphysical point of view, citing Philip’s awareness of the prevailing Neo-Platonist philosophy, an attempt to reconcile paganism with Christianity.

But there is not a shred of evidence to support these arguments. What seems much more likely is that the time artist and patron spent together in Augsburg during the winter of 1550–1 gave them ample opportunity to discuss the commission in detail and this resulted in a shared vision. Philip relished Titian’s love of painting the female nude (interestingly all six heroines are nude, or almost nude, while the three male protagonists, Adonis, Perseus and Actaeon, are all clothed) and appreciated the paintings primarily for their physical beauty.

In addition, Philip trusted Titian’s judgement. Working for a prince who was shortly to become the most powerful ruler in Europe (Philip’s father Charles V abdicated in 1555, leaving his brother Ferdinand to succeed him as Holy Roman Emperor while Philip himself took control of all his other possessions), Titian was given complete independence in his choice of subjects and how he interpreted them. Despite his broad, humanist education which meant that he was much better versed in the classics than Titian, who was unable to read Latin, the prince allowed the artist to take the liberty of changing one mythological subject for another and eliminating a third one without any consultation. This appears all the more remarkable since Philip was famed for exerting such close control over every aspect of his life, including his other artistic commissions.

There is no correspondence to demonstrate what Philip agreed with Titian in Augsburg and some major art historians have therefore exaggerated the degree of artistic independence enjoyed by Titian, regarding this as a turning point in his career, and indeed in the history of sixteenth-century art. David Rosand, who has written extensively on the artist, was convinced of this, stating: ‘With the courtly know-how of a Raphael and the almost arrogant self-confidence of a Michelangelo, Titian seemed to have achieved the social status that had been a goal of Renaissance painters at least since Alberti’s [a multi-talented Florentine artist and writer] first articulation of such a program in 1435.’

Ernst Gombrich, an Austrian émigré who came to England in the 1930s and whose The Story of Art is generally regarded as the best introduction to the visual arts, claimed that ‘in earlier times it was the prince who bestowed his favours on the artist. Now it almost came to pass that the roles were reversed, and that the artist granted a favour to a rich prince or potentate by accepting a commission from him.’ He concluded the passage by making an even bolder statement: ‘At last the artist was free.’ Gombrich was thinking in particular of the polymath Leonardo da Vinci, a brilliant artist, scientist, architect, engineer and inventor who made a series of astonishing designs of weapons of war, flying machines and water systems, as well as executing paintings and sculpture, while working at the court of Milan in the 1480s and 1490s (though his patron, the Duke of Milan, was endlessly frustrated by Leonardo behaving as a free spirit and failing to complete the various commissions he undertook, notably the fresco of the Last Supper).

These claims are too bold, but Titian does deserve to be ranked alongside Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael at the summit of sixteenth-century art. The four men raised the position of the artist to a new level in society. Leonardo ended his days as the confidant of François I of France. Michelangelo was a sculptor, painter, architect and poet who dared to confront the fearsome Pope Julius II during the painting of the Sistine Chapel. Raphael was a painter and architect, and the friend of Pope Leo X who presided at the artist’s wedding in the villa of the wealthy banker Agostino Chigi in Rome (now known as the Villa Farnesina).

Titian, however, was a painter, not a polymath, and his exalted status was due entirely to his ability with the paintbrush. Carlo Ridolfi, writing his life in the seventeenth century, recorded a famous story of how the artist dropped his paintbrush while painting Charles V’s portrait ‘which the emperor picked up [an unheard breach of protocol], and bowing low, Titian declared: ‘Sire, one of your servants does not deserve such an honour.’ To this Charles replied: ‘Titian deserves to be served by Caesar.’

To show his appreciation of his favourite painter, Charles’ son Philip paid Titian an annual salary of 500 ducats, the sum that a leading member of the Venetian government was likely to earn in a year, ten times the wages of a manual worker in the Arsenal (the dockyard in Venice where ships were built and repaired). But the note of flattery that the painter liked to use when writing to his patron shows that he was a consummate courtier, anxious not to take any liberties. Titian compared Philip with Alexander the Great, with the painter cast in the role of Apelles, pre-eminent among ancient painters and famed for his portrait of Alexander.

The large number of letters between artist and patron during the 1550s shows the importance both men attached to the commission of the six poesie, Philip urging haste in the completion and delivery of the paintings, Titian anxious to ensure that they have arrived safely and that they have been well received. The tone for the whole series was set by the first subject Titian chose, possibly the most erotic picture he ever painted. Danae was a reworking of a theme that he had executed some 20 years earlier for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, another great patron of the arts. Alessandro was grandson of Pope Paul III, whose portrait had been painted by Titian. The pope had renounced his sybaritic youth, during which he had sired a number of illegitimate children, when he was elected to the papacy, and had subsequently led the reform of the Catholic Church and set up the Council of Trent.

Alessandro, however, although a cardinal and a prince of the church, had shown little desire to give up the sins of the flesh and conform to the new morality espoused by his father. He commissioned Titian to execute two paintings of his mistress Angela, one clothed, the other naked. In order to provide a modicum of decorum, Titian portrayed the cardinal’s mistress as the mythical figure of Danae (Capodimonte, Naples) lying naked on a bed about to be seduced by Jupiter, who is descending in a shower of gold (remarkably, it was deemed perfectly acceptable for women to appear nude in mythological subjects though it was seldom a cardinal’s mistress who posed in this manner).

The painting arrived in Madrid in 1554, much to the delight of the king. Later that summer Titian sent Venus and Adonis (Prado, Madrid) to London shortly after Philip’s marriage to the English Queen Mary I. To show the personal nature of the commission, the features of Adonis bear a marked resemblance to those of the king. Philip could scarcely wait for the painting’s arrival, cajoling his secretary in Italy Diego de Vargas in a letter dated May 1556: ‘The sooner you send them to me, the greater pleasure you will give me and the greater will be your service to me.’ At the same time he urged Titian, whom he addressed fondly as ‘amado nuestro [our friend]’ (a singular compliment) to complete ‘some pictures that I commissioned and that I am looking forward to very much.’ Anxious to comply, the painter obliged, sending the king Perseus and Andromeda (Wallace Collection, London), the third in the series.

A letter from Venice dated 19 June 1559, in which Titian describes the completion of both paintings recounting the myths of Diana (the fourth and fifth in the series and now in the National Gallery), shortly to be sent to Spain, includes the first mention of the Rape of Europa:

After their dispatch I shall devote myself entirely to finishing the ‘Christ on the Mount’, and the other two poesies which I have already begun – I mean the ‘Europa on the shoulders of the Bull,’ and ‘Actaeon torn by his Hounds [National Gallery, London]’. In these pieces I shall put all the knowledge which God has given me, and which has always been and ever will be dedicated to the service of your Majesty. That you will please accept this service so long as I can use my limbs, borne down by the weight of age.

It is important to note the title that Titian used for the painting: Europa on the shoulders of the Bull. He was to use other titles such as Europa sopra il tauro (Europa on the bull) but none of them contained the word ‘Rape’ which is therefore a misnomer. It was Cassiano del Pozzo, a Roman connoisseur who saw the painting in the Alcázar in Madrid in 1626, who first gave it the title by which it has been known ever since. All later comments on the painting, therefore, which have tended to be coloured by the word ‘Rape’, need to be treated with great caution.

Subsequent correspondence between artist and patron shows how concerned Titian was about Philip’s reaction on receiving the paintings. He wrote several times to ascertain whether the paintings of Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto had arrived safely (they finally reached Spain in the spring of 1561). In a typical letter dated 22 April 1560 he enquired: ‘if they have not pleased the perfect judgement of Your Majesty I will labour to remake them again, to correct past errors’. Once the king was satisfied, Titian continued, ‘I will be able to put more heart into finishing the fable of Jove with Europa [the Rape of Europa] and the story of Christ in the Orchard [the Agony in the Garden, the Escorial], in order to make something that will not prove entirely unworthy of such a great King.’

It is also interesting to note that, at this point, Titian was painting both mythological and religious subjects for Philip. The king had a complex character which has puzzled historians ever since. But (as I will describe in more detail in the next chapter) the seeming discrepancy between a man who could savagely persecute Protestants throughout his dominions while secretly enjoying a succession of mistresses is reflected in his patronage of the arts where he could take equal enjoyment from Titian’s deeply religious Agony in the Garden and his highly erotic Rape of Europa.

Titian was certainly determined that his work should be up to the highest standards and, as a result, he took his time. Over a year later, the paintings remained unfinished. On 2 April 1561 Titian wrote to the king, informing him that his Magdalen [the Escorial] was now completed, and ready to be dispatched to Spain, ‘and, in the meanwhile, I shall get ready the Christ in the Garden and the Poesy of Europa, and pray for the happiness which your Royal Crown deserves.’ Progress was slow, however. Four months later, on 19 August, he gave Philip more news: ‘Meanwhile, I shall proceed with the Christ in the Garden, the Europa and the other paintings which I have already designed to execute for your Majesty.’ Philip, in his careful way, made a note on the letter for Titian to hasten the completion of the pictures and that they should be dispatched with great care from Genoa, and not suffer the fate of an earlier painting of the Entombment, lost at sea.

Eventually, the Rape of Europa was dispatched to Spain, together with the Agony in the Garden, in 1562, with an accompanying letter to Philip. Once again there is an anxious tone to the letter which ends: ‘still, having dedicated such knowledge as I possess to Your Majesty’s service, when I hear – as I hope to do – that my pains have met with the approval of Your Majesty’s judgement, I shall devote all that is left of my life to doing reverence to your Catholic Majesty with new pictures, taking care that my pencil [i.e. brush] shall bring to that satisfactory state which I desire and the grandeur of so exalted a King demands.’

Unfortunately, there is no record of what Philip’s Spanish contemporaries thought of Titian’s work. It is in Venice that we find contemporary opinions of Titian’s poesie and of Titian’s art in general. Lodovico Dolce’s influential Dialogo della Pittura, published in 1557, championed the art of Titian. It was written shortly after Giorgio Vasari’s first edition of his Lives of the Artists, first published in 1550, had omitted Titian completely. Vasari’s work, with its vast array of information on all major Italian painters from the time of Giotto onwards, ever since regarded as the single most important source on Italian Renaissance painting, was designed to show the supremacy of the Tuscan School of Painting.

Dolce and Vasari argued in favour of the two opposing ideas that dominated sixteenth-century Italian painting: the art of colore (the supremacy of colour over drawing) and that of disegno (the creation of idealized forms based on drawing). For Dolce, the art of colore was perfected in Venice with Titian as its leading practitioner, while Vasari considered the art of disegno, the main characteristic of Florentine art, to have reached its highest point in the figure of Michelangelo. The debate over the merits of the two schools of art was to continue into the seventeenth century when the art of colore was championed in the art of Peter Paul Rubens, a great admirer of Titian (he was to execute a copy of the Rape of Europa), while the French classical painter Nicholas Poussin favoured the art of disegno.

Despite the disagreements between Dolce and Vasari, and the latter’s omission of Titian in the first edition of his work, it is interesting to observe the consensus between the two men over the Rape of Europa. Dolce had marvelled over the slightly earlier Venus and Adonis in a letter to the Venetian nobleman Alessandro Contarini, how the goddess seemed to be alive and the effect she has so that a spectator feels himself ‘warmed, softened, and all the blood stirring in his veins. Nor is it any wonder: if a statue of marble could somehow with the stimuli of beauty so penetrate the marrow of a youth that he leaves a stain there, then what must this painting do, which is of flesh, which is beauty itself, which seems to breathe?’

For Dolce, the Rape of Europa possessed a similar truth to nature. Titian’s compositions were seen to be entirely original, showing true invention (the concept of invenzione was very highly regarded in the Renaissance). It was the combination of the extraordinarily lifelike depiction of everything he painted and his astonishing use of colour that singled Titian out from his contemporaries. Dolce contrasted this with the more stylized creations of the school of disegno, where artists made careful use of a series of preparatory drawings to create their compositions.

Vasari, who was an important painter in his own right, included Titian in his second edition of the Lives of the Artists, published in 1568 after he met the painter on a visit to Venice in 1566. He praised works such as the Rape of Europa for the way that they ‘seemed alive’. Vasari gave a sensitive analysis of the work and of Titian’s technique, showing how the painter was able to achieve his effects by painting in a much bolder and freer style than he had used in his youth:

Titian also painted a Europa crossing the ocean on the bull. These paintings are held most dear because of the vitality Titian gave to his figures with colours that make them seem almost alive and very natural. But it is certainly true that his method of working in these last works is very different from one he enjoyed as a young man. While his early works are executed with a certain finesse and incredible care, and made to be seen both from close up and from a distance, his last works are executed with such large and bold brush-strokes and in such broad outlines that they cannot be seen from close up but appear perfect from a distance.

Vasari’s last sentence introduces a major new development in the art of painting. Titian was now a complete master of the medium of oil paint and, to show his skill, the objects he painted, where individual brushstrokes are clearly visible close up, make perfect sense when seen from a distance. To his contemporaries, this ability was semi-miraculous. And it was this aspect of the Venetian master’s art that appealed to later artists such as Rubens and Velázquez, both of whom made a close study of the great Titians in the Spanish royal collection.

Moreover, Titian made painting look easy. The idea of casual elegance or nonchalance was very fashionable at the time. It had been put forward by Baldassare Castiglione, in his highly influential The Courtier, published in 1528, as the ideal way to behave for those living at a princely court, and Titian, acutely aware of his status as an artist working for the most powerful men and women of his time, aspired to the rank of a courtier. Consequently, he wanted to show a similar sense of ease in his paintings.

Vasari, who worked as both a painter and an architect for the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, understood this very well. He knew that Titian’s seemingly spontaneous way of painting was, in fact, the result of much careful labour:

And this comes about because although many believe them to be executed without effort, the truth is very different and these artisans are very much mistaken, for it is obvious that his paintings are reworked and that he has gone back over them with colours many times, making his effort evident. And this technique, carried out in this way, is full of good judgment, beautiful and stupendous, because it makes the pictures not only seem alive but to have been executed with great skill concealing the labour.

The Rape of Europa is a magnificent example of Titian’s late technique. Throughout his career he had experimented with the possibilities of slow-drying and semi-translucent oil paint. He also added numerous glazes which give his paintings an extraordinary transparency and luminosity, and enabled him to achieve an infinite variety of hues and gradations of tone. This technique allowed flexibility; an analysis of the substantial under-drawing in his works shows how often he changed his mind as the work progressed.

Initially, the artist used a thin white gesso ground into which he drew an outline of the figures. He then proceeded to build up the composition by using numerous layers of pigment, opaque or semi-opaque scumbles (thin or dragged layers of paint) and translucent glazes (thin coats of transparent colour). The lighter passages were painted with impasto (a thick layer of pigments), while the darker ones were painted more thinly. The paint layers would then soak into and practically absorb the gesso ground. This was a very slow and complex process, allowing the paint to dry completely before the next layer of paint was applied.

Palma Giovane, who completed a number of Titian’s canvases after his master’s death (he was the son of Palma Vecchio, one of the best Venetian painters of the early sixteenth century), gave the best account of the complexities of his technique. It is extremely revealing of how Titian worked.

‘He laid in his pictures with a mass of colour, which served as a groundwork for what he wanted to express. I myself have seen such vigorous under-painting in plain red earth for the half tones or in white lead. With the same brush dipped in red, black or yellow he worked up the high parts and in four strokes he could create a remarkably fine figure.’ This freedom of brushwork is very apparent in the hands of the amorini in the Rape of Europa, which have been summarily blocked in.

Palma continues his description:

‘Then he turned the picture to the wall and left it for months without looking at it, until he returned to it and stared critically at it, as if it were a mortal enemy … Thus by repeated revisions, he brought his pictures to a high state of perfection and while one was drying he worked on another. This quintessence of a composition he then covered in many layers of living flesh.’ The complications of Titian’s technique explain why there was such a delay in the delivery of the six poesie to Philip II.

As Vasari had pointed out, the effect that Titian achieved was one of spontaneity, but, in fact, this was the product of much careful labour. Nevertheless, despite the high praise he accorded Titian, the Tuscan was still determined to prove the superior qualities of the art of disegno in which he had been schooled. Vasari could not resist including the remarks made by Michelangelo when shown the Danae by Titian (the first version belonging to Cardinal Farnese). The Florentine lavished praise on Titian’s style, saying that it

… pleased him very much but that it was a shame that in Venice they did not learn to draw well from the beginning and that those painters did not pursue their studies with more method. For the truth was, that if Titian had been assisted by art and design as much as he was by nature, and especially in reproducing living subjects, then no one could achieve more or work better, for he had a fine spirit and a lively and entrancing style.

When Francisco de Vargas, Charles V’s ambassador to Venice, asked the artist why he did not paint in a more refined manner, Titian defended the way in which his original technique singled him out and ensured his fame, replying:

Sir, I am not confident of achieving the delicacy and beauty of the brushwork of Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio and Parmigianino; and if I did, I would be judged with them, or else considered to be an imitator. But ambition, which is as natural in my art as in any other, urges me to choose a new path to make myself famous, much as the others acquired their own fame from the way that they followed.

Titian, of course, was absolutely right to disagree strongly with Michelangelo’s verdict. It was precisely his ability as a colourist as opposed to a draughtsman that was his greatest talent, and one that constitutes his claim to be one of the very greatest Old Masters.

Titian was famous in his native Venice and enjoyed a life of some splendour in the Biri Grande, the northern quarter of the city. The painter inhabited the top floor of a grand palazzo, from where he could enjoy distant views across the lagoon towards his native Dolomites, which appear through a translucent haze in the background of the Rape of Europa. During the day-time the house was full of activity, with models and sitters coming and going. They were heading for the artist’s studio in his garden. From contemporary accounts this was a well organized space, with all the accoutrements of his trade neatly arranged: the brushes cleaned and sorted, packets of linseed and walnut oil, gums and resins used as varnishes or to manufacture pigments, sacks of plaster and wood for stretcher-making, all stacked and sorted. As a maritime city, Titian was able to buy his canvases from the sail-makers who worked in the Arsenal, where the great galleons were built and supplied.

Titian also capitalized on Venice’s position as centre of the pigment trade in Italy. It was the only city in Italy where there were specialist colour suppliers as opposed to general apothecaries. For an artist with Titian’s reputation and means, he could afford the richest colours to create a sumptuous effect: lead white, brilliant vermilion and lead-tin yellow from Venice itself, earth pigments from Siena and Umbria, malachite from Hungary, scarlet cochineal from Mexico (a dye made from the dried bodies of a Coccus insect found in cactuses) and the extremely expensive ultramarine made from lapis lazuli imported from far-away lands in Asia (present day Afghanistan). Venetians were a trading nation, always open to new ideas. This was the first city in Italy to adopt the novel technique of oil paint, something that had been discovered in the Netherlands in the early fifteenth century. Titian was a master of this medium a meticulous worker who took great trouble to find exactly what he wanted. When he was based in Augsburg, he asked his friend Aretino to bring some red pigment, ‘the kind that so blazes and is so brilliant with the true colour of cochineal that even the crimson of velvet and silk would seem less than splendid in comparison with it’.

Titian was a highly proficient technician, an absolute master of his trade, but he was also acutely aware that he was more than a mere artist. He therefore made sure that when a visitor came to his studio, he would find the painter dressed as befitted his social position and not in a paint-stained overall. Titian painted a number of self-portraits wearing a fur-lined cloak and adorned with the chains showing his knighthood, with not a paint brush in sight. He depicts himself with a high brow and skullcap to demonstrate the painter’s intellectuality.

Visitors were amazed that such an immaculately dressed figure could transform his female models, invariably women of low virtue, into goddesses and saints. Shortly after finishing the Rape of Europa, a Florentine visitor to his studio was amazed at the voluptuous beauty of a Mary Magdalen painted for Philip II. He recorded:

I remember that I told him she was too attractive, so fresh and dewy, for such penitence. Having understood that I meant that she should be gaunt through fasting, he answered laughing that he had painted her on the first day she had entered, before she began fasting, in order to be able to paint her as a penitent indeed, but also as lovely as he could, and that she certainly was.

What relations Titian enjoyed with his female models has always been an open question. As early as 1522, when the artist had been painting the set of poesie for Alfonso d’Este, there were rumours that he enjoyed their favours. The duke’s agent Jacopo Tebaldi had written to his master: ‘I have been to see Titian, who has no fever at all. He looks well, if somewhat exhausted, and I suspect that the girls whom he paints in different poses arouse his desires – which he then satisfies more than his limited strength permits. Though he denies it.’ Tebaldi’s insinuation is backed up by a painting (now lost) by an anonymous Venetian contemporary entitled Titian and his Courtesan where the artist has placed his hand on the pregnant belly of his companion.

On the other hand, Titian’s close friend Pietro Aretino, a salacious and gossipy writer, whose scurrilous lampoons of the ruling powers in Italy had driven him to seek refuge in Venice, did not subscribe to this view. Considering his reaction at the sight of Danae, there is little doubt how Aretino would have behaved if he had been in the artist’s shoes: ‘My God, her neck! And her breasts … would have corrupted virgins and made martyrs unfrock themselves … The front of her body drove me wild, but the wonder and marvel which really maddened me were due to her shoulders, loins and other charms.’ But, surprisingly, he defended his friend’s morality in dealing with his models in a letter to the sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino, another close friend of Titian: ‘What makes me really marvel at him, is that, whenever he sees fair ladies, and no matter where he is, he fondles them, makes a to-do of kissing them, and entertains them with a thousand juvenile pranks, but goes no further.’

Whatever the truth, all the evidence suggests that Titian was happily married to Cecilia, a barber’s daughter from his hometown of Cadore, who bore him two sons and two daughters, but she died very young in 1530. Thereafter his household was run by his sister Orsa. The painter certainly enjoyed an enviable lifestyle in his house in Venice. After a day spent painting in his studio Titian loved to entertain his friends in his house. His two closest companions were Pietro Aretino and Jacopo Sansovino, a sculptor turned architect (he was to build the Library and several fine palaces on the Grand Canal). Both originally hailed from Tuscany, but made their names in Venice. The three talented figures formed a literary and artistic triumvirate that dominated Venetian society. Aretino was a brilliant conversationalist with an obscene wit (he was reputed to have died by suffocation laughing at a filthy joke he had just told). He was also a great champion of Titian’s art and had been painted by the artist three times. Sansovino had originally been a sculptor but, after moving to Venice following the Sack of Rome in 1527, he became chief architect to the Serenissima and enjoyed numerous commissions to build churches and palaces all over the city.

Francesco Priscianese, a visitor to Titian’s house, gave a memorable account of a convivial evening in the spacious garden laid out in front of the house, where the guests included Pietro Aretino, ‘a new miracle of nature, and next to him as great an imitator of nature with the chisel as the master of the feast is with the brush, Messer Jacopo Tatti, called il Sansovino’. Priscianese continues by praising the beauty of the garden and the view towards the island of Murano: ‘This part of the sea, as soon as the sun went down, swarmed with gondolas, adorned with beautiful women, and resounded with the varied harmony and music of voices and instruments, which till midnight accompanied our delightful supper.’

This delectable lifestyle is indicative of Venice’s status as the richest and most politically stable city in Europe. Titian certainly enjoyed a great deal more freedom living in Venice than he would have done had he obeyed Philip’s wishes and moved to Spain. Not only would he have been subject to the king, but also to the Catholic Church, a much more intrusive organization than in his native Venice. The painter knew that the Council of Trent, held in an imperial town just north of Venice, had greatly increased the power and authority of the Spanish king as secular spearhead of the Catholic revival, with the Inquisition as one of his main weapons. Venetians feared that, despite its reputation for religious toleration, the decrees of the Council would lead to interference in its internal affairs and the persecution of its citizens.

The contrast between the treatment meted out to the sculptor Leone Leoni, working in Spain, who was imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition, and Titian’s star pupil Paolo Veronese’s encounter with the Venetian equivalent, was very instructive. Veronese was summoned in 1573 to explain why he had filled his painting of the Last Supper, in the words of the Inquisitor, with ‘buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs and other such scurrilities’. The painter was contrite, agreeing with the tribunal’s findings but, in an act of bravado, made just one alteration to the picture, changing the title to Feast in the House of Levi. The Inquisition in Venice accepted this without demur, something that it is impossible to imagine happening in Spain.

No wonder Titian wished to remain in his native city, enjoying this congenial lifestyle. Venice was the safest city in Italy (since the city’s founding eight centuries earlier, no foreign power had succeeded in invading the Venetian lagoon). The city was still rich, and there were plenty of commissions from the government, the guilds, known as scuole (schools), and wealthy private individuals. In contrast, leading Florentine artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo left their home town to seek the patronage of powerful rulers elsewhere, Leonardo with the Duke of Milan and Francis I of France, whereas Michelangelo, whose republican sympathies put him at odds with the ruling Medici, particularly after they became Grand Dukes of Tuscany (he commanded the fortifications of the city when it was besieged by an imperial army supporting the Medici in 1529–30), preferred to serve the papacy in Rome, where his greatest work was to rebuild St Peter’s.

Titian was, however, an exception among the major Venetian painters – Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione and Palma Vecchio, followed by Tintoretto and Veronese – in his reluctance to execute works for organizations within the city, either the government or the confraternities, charitable foundations that did good works and commissioned paintings for their own buildings. The few paintings that he did complete often led to a dispute over payment for his services, and he was usually extremely late in delivery. Philip II paid him an annual salary far greater than anything he could earn in Venice, and many of his fellow Venetians, no doubt envious of this largesse, considered Titian to be avaricious. This is how he is portrayed by Jacopo Bassano in his Purification of the Temple (National Gallery) where he appears as a grasping moneylender.

In addition relations between Spain and Venice were rarely amicable. Although there was a great deal of trade between the two countries, with a constant supply of oriental rugs, silks, glassware and gems heading from Venice to the palaces of Philip and his courtiers, Venetians, proud of their independence, knew that they were almost completely surrounded by Habsburg possessions. Philip II and his allies ruled Milan, Genoa, Florence and Naples. The king constantly strove to make an alliance with the Serenissima, intending to create a joint Spanish–Venetian navy which would drive the Turks and their allies from the Mediterranean. This strategy appeared to work when the Spanish–Venetian fleet won a decisive victory at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, but even this alliance did not last. Just two years later, anxious to protect their commercial interests in the Levant, the Venetians changed sides and concluded an alliance with the Turks, much to the consternation of Spain.

Nevertheless, there was a continuous shift in power between Venice and Spain during the sixteenth century, symptomatic of a general movement from the Mediterranean states to nations bordering the Atlantic. Venice reached its apogee in the late Middle Ages and this was when the city assumed the shape it has retained to the present day. A bird’s eye view woodcut of the city by Jacopo de’ Barbari, dated 1500, gives a fascinating view of the city at that time. With the exception of some churches built by Palladio, and some palaces on the Grand Canal, almost all of the major buildings that we would recognize were already in place. Despite her great wealth, however, the Serenissima’s power was steadily diminishing, as the Ottoman Turks gradually conquered her territories in the Adriatic and the Aegean which she, in turn, had taken from the Byzantine Empire.

By the mid-sixteenth century the only Christian power able to fight on equal terms with the Ottomans were the Spanish, who possessed far greater resources than Venice. Maritime trade routes were opened up by Spanish and Portugese mariners to the Americas in the west, and to India and the Spice Islands in the east (Philip II conquered Portugal in 1580 thus acquiring her vast overseas empire). Venetian ships may have played their part in the battle of Lepanto, but it was Philip’s half-brother Don John of Austria who had commanded the fleet. On the Italian terra firma the Veneto (the area of north-east Italy, including the cities of Padua, Vicenza, Verona and Bergamo ruled by Venice) was surrounded by states under Spanish control. The movement of the Rape of Europa from Venice to Spain is the first of a number of occasions in its history that the painting follows the shift in power and economic strength between nations.

This is also true in terms of the arts. At Titian’s death in 1576, Jacopo Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Bassano were all working in Venice. All three, in their different ways, were strongly influenced by Titian. The seventeenth century, however, marks a severe decline in the quality of Venetian painting. In contrast, the reign of Philip II was followed by a golden age in Spanish painting and it is no coincidence that Velázquez, the greatest Spanish artist of the seventeenth century, should have been so strongly influenced by the great Titians in the royal collection, including the Rape of Europa.