M 



TITIAN. 



TITSINGH, ISAAC. 



palatine of the empire aud made him knight of the order of St. lago. 

 In the patent of nobility given at Barcelona, as Kidolfi says, in 1553, 

 which ought probably to be 1535, Titian is styled besides count pala- 

 tine, knight, and count of the sacred Lateran palace, and of the 

 imperial court and consistory. Charles left Barcelona in 1542, and did 

 not return until 1556 : for this reason Bermudez concludes that 1553 

 in Kidolfi has originated from an error of the copyist for 1535. Ber- 

 mudez supposes that Titian left Spain in May 1535, when Charles 

 went to Africa, and that he went to that country in 1532, after he 

 painted Charles for a second time at Bologna. Titian painted several 

 works in Spain ; but of those which were in the royal galleries it is 

 not exactly known which were painted in Spain, or which were sent 

 there from Italy, both to Charles and to Philip, or which were 

 purchase.! after the death of Titian. There are however in Spain 

 several of Titian's masterpieces : a Sleeping Venus, " a matchless 

 deity," as Cumberland terms it, which was saved from the conflagra- 

 tion of the Prado, in the time of Philip IV., by which several of 

 Titian's and other valuable pictures were destroyed ; also two cele- 

 brated groups from the Ludovisi palace at Rome, cue of Bacchanals, 

 the other of Cupids ; a Last Supper in the refectory of the Escurial, 

 painted for Philip II. ; Christ in the Garden, and St. Margaret with 

 the Dragon. The Last Supper was sent by Titian to Philip in 1554 ; 

 and in an accompanying letter he states that he had been occupied 

 seven years over it, during which time, to use his own words, he had 

 laboured almost continually upon it : this is another testimony that 

 Titian was not in Spain so late as 1553 and the following years. In 

 this letter Titian complains of the irregularity with which two grants 

 made to him by the emperor, in 1541 and 1548, were paid, amounting 

 to 400 crowns per annum. Philip answered it in 1558, and gave 

 peremptory orders that the sums should be duly paid, with the follow- 

 ing admonition, in his own handwriting, to the governor of Milan : 

 " You know how I am interested in this order, as it affects Titian; 

 comply with it therefore in such a manner as to give me no occasion to 

 repeat it." These 400 crowns, together with the 300 granted by the 

 state were alone sufficient to support Titian in a comfortable manner ; 

 and the income derived from his works enabled him to live in great 

 affluence : his house was a place of resort to the nobles of Venice. 

 He painted many pictures for Philip. In a letter addressed by Titian 

 to Philip, shortly after Philip married Queen Mary of England, Titian 

 mentions a Venus and Adonis, which he seut him at the same time, 

 also a Danae, which he had previously sent, and a Perseus and Andro- 

 meda, and a Medea and Jason, which he was about to send ; likewise 

 a religious piece, which he had had ten years in hand. He does not 

 name this religious piece ; but about this time he painted his celebrated 

 picture of the Martyrdom of San Lorenzo for Philip II. : it is a night 

 scene, and the whole light of the picture is from the fire, two torches, 

 and a ray of light from heaven. In this picture, though he was then 

 old, Titian has displayed a power of composition and design equal to 

 his colouring, and has much surpassed every other master who has 

 painted this subject : he repeated the picture, with some slight 

 alterations in the background, for the church of the Jesuits at Venice. 

 Titian often repeated his pictures; but the principal part of the 

 copies were painted by his scholars : he finished them only, but he 

 generally introduced some alterations in the backgrounds. 



In 1566 Vasari visited Titian, and, although he was then eighty-nine 

 years of age, he found him with his pencil in his hand, and derived 

 great pleasure from his conversation. The pencil of Titian however was 

 active for still ten years, although the pictures he produced at this 

 time were not calculated to add to his reputation : they are extremely 

 careless and slight in their execution. He died of the plague in 1576, 

 aged ninety-nine, with the reputation of the greatest colourist and 

 one of the greatest painters that ever lived ; and having himself 

 enjoyed a European fame for upwards of seventy years. He was 

 buried, by express permission of the senate (which, as he died of the 

 plague, was necessary), without pomp in the church of Santa Maria 

 gloriosa de' Frari, where his famous picture of the Assumption of the 

 Virgin stood before it was removed to the Academy ; but no monument 

 has yet been raised to him, though a splendid one was projected in 

 Canova's time. 



Much has been said by the Florentines, and some recent critics of 

 different schools, in disparagement of the design of Titian ; yet, as far 

 as regards propriety of design, there can be no comparison between 

 the earlier and best works of Titian and those of the anatomical 

 school of Florence in the latter half of the sixteenth century. In the 

 works of Titian there is no ostentation of any kind whatever; no 

 artifice. In composition, in design, in chiar'oscuro, and in colouring, 

 he sought truth only, and that according to his own perception of it. 

 It is generally allowed that for the pictorial imitation of nature, 

 without any addition or selection, Titian has surpassed all the other 

 great painters of Italy ; but in invention, composition, and design he 

 was inferior to many of the great paint- rs of Rome and of Florence; 

 yet in design he has had no superior in the Venetian school. His works 

 are purely historical, or simple pictures of recorded facts, and he is 

 said to have always painted from nature. It is in colouring that Titian 

 is pre-eminent : the same grandeur of colour and effect characterise 

 everything that he painted whether in the figure, in the landscape, in 

 the draperies, or in other accessories. His chiar'oscuro is true, because 

 in hia works it is a part of the colouring, but it never constitutes, as 



in some of the works of Correggio, an independent object. Titian's 

 object appears, from his works, to have been to produce a faithful 

 imitation of every appearance of nature in what he represented 

 thus we find in all his best pictures that infinite variety of local tones 

 which appear in nature. He was one of the first who commenced the 

 practice of glazing. He excelled in women and in children : his 

 numerous Venuses, as they are called, are well known : of these 

 perhaps the most richly and transparently coloured is that at Dresden ; 

 there is a duplicate of this picture in the Fitzwilliam Museum at 

 Cambridge. In his naked men he was not so successful : perhaps of 

 these the best is his John the Baptist, in the Academy at Venice, 

 formerly in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. There are two 

 other remarkable pictures by Titian in the collection of the Venetian 

 Academy which have not been mentioned a Presentation in the 

 Temple and a Deposition from the Cross. The former, originally 

 belonging to the old church della Carita, is an admirable example of 

 Titian's simple and natural style of composition ; it contains many 

 portraits: the latter is a remarkable specimen of the surpri.-ing bold- 

 ness of touch, yet truth and brilliancy of colouring, which distinguish 

 the best of his latest works. 



There is no list of the works of Titian, and it would not be an easy 

 task to make one. His portraits are extremely numerous, and in this 

 department he is almost universally considered to have surpassed all 

 other painters, not excepting Vandyck. There is at Windsor a picture 

 said to be tho portrait of Titian and Aretin, or some senator, by 

 Titian, which cannot be too highly praised : it is certniuly, for 

 colouring, one of the first pictures in the world. There are several 

 other admirable pieces by Titian in England : two in. the Bridgewater 

 Gallery, of Actaeon and Calisto ; the Princess Eboli with Philip II., at 

 Cambridge, from the Orleans Gallery, the repetition of the Dresden 

 Venus mentioned above; and the Coruaro Family, at Northumber- 

 land Housa. There is also in the Louvre at Paris a remarkably fine 

 picture for the composition of colour, representing the Entombment 

 of Christ : it is a repetition of the picture of the same subject iu the 

 Manfrini palace at Venice. The National Gallery contains seven 

 pictures attributed to Titian, of, which the Bacchus and Ariadne, and 

 Venus and Adonis are brilliant examples of his manner of painting 

 mythological subjects. 



Titian, Aretin, aud Sansovino the architect, were great friends, and 

 were almost inseparable when at Venice. Titian painted Aretin 

 several times; he is also said to have painted several portraits of 

 Ariosto, who was likewise his friend : there is one in the Manfrini 

 palace at Venice. Considering Titian's great reputation, little is 

 known concerning his private life, but he appears to have been of 

 an amiable disposition and agreeable conversation : he seems however 

 to have been particularly susceptible of jealousy. He is said to have 

 been even so jealous of his own brother Francesco Vecellio, that he 

 induced him to give up painting and to follow the occupation of a 

 merchant; his reputed jealousy of Tintoretto as a boy has been 

 mentioned. [TINTORETTO.] 



His biographers Ridolfi and others relate several anecdotes showing 

 his intimacy with Charles V., and the respect that the emperor had 

 for him. Upon one occasion, when Charles was present, whilst he 

 was painting, Titian let his brush fall, and the emperor immediately 

 picked it up and gave it to Titian, saying, " Titian is worthy of being 

 served by Caesar " (" Titiano e degno essere servito da Cesare"). 

 Northcote the painter wrote a Life of Titian, or, as some say, got 

 Hazlitt to write it for him: 'The Life of Titian, with Anecdotes of 

 the Distinguished Persons of his Time,' 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1830. 

 This book of 784 pages is a mass of matter thrown together without 

 judgment or arrangement, and it contains several inaccuracies and 

 some contradictions. It consists of two reviews of Titian's life, which 

 are distinct lives; the second review, 'from Ridolfi, Ticozzi, and 

 others,' beginning with cb. xxviii. or page 73 of the second volume, is 

 the better portion of the work, but does not appear to have been 

 written by the same hand that wrote the other portion. 



To be enabled to appreciate fully the powers of Titian it is neces- 

 sary to examine his works at Venice ; after Venice he is seen to most 

 advantage in Madrid. Bermudez has given a kind of list of his public 

 works in Spain, in his 'Dictionary of Spanish Artists;' he enumerates 

 about eighty. Titian's scholars were not very numerous : the best 

 were Paris Bordone, Bonifazio Veneziano, Girolamo di Tiziauo, and his 

 son Orazio Vecellio. His imitators were more so, for they include to a 

 certain extent all the great painters of Venice of his time, who 

 acquired a reputation subsequently to his own. Titian is said to 

 have engraved on copper and on wood. 



There were several other painters of the family of the Vecelli, for 

 whom see VECELLIO. 



TITSINGH, ISAAC, one of the most able civilians in the Dutch 

 East Indian service during the last century, was born at Amsterdam 

 in 1740. He entered the service of the East India Company of Hol- 

 land at an early age, and rose to the rank of counsellor. His naturally 

 vigorous constitution defied the pestilential effects of the climate of 

 Batavia, where in the course of seventeen years he saw the entire body 

 of his colleagues twice renewed. He was sent as supercargo to Japan 

 in 1778. The war which then raged prevented the despatch of the 

 ship sent annually from Batavia to the Dutch factory at Desiina, and 

 Titsiugh was in consequence detained there for several years. He did 



