Titian at the Pitti Palace

 

Edward Hutton ended his tour of the Pitti Palace with a discussion of its collection of masterpieces by the hand of Titian, the famed Venetian master, whom he regarded as the "greatest painter of Italy, of the world."

 There remains to be considered the splendid ever living work of Titian. The early work of the greatest painter of Italy, of the world, greatest in the variety, number, and splendour of his pictures, is represented in the Pitti, happily enough by one of the most lovely of all Italian paintings, the Concert so long given to Giorgione. A monk in cowl and tonsure touches the keys of a harpsichord, while beside him stands an older man, a clerk and perhaps a monk too, who grasps the handle of a viol; in the background, a youthful and ambiguous figure, with a cap and plume, waits, perhaps on some interval to begin a song. Yet, indeed, that is not the picture, which, whatever its subject may be, would seem to be more expressive than any other in the world. Some great joy, some great sorrow, seems about to declare itself. What music does he hear, that monk with the beautiful sensitive hands, who turns away towards his companion? Something has awakened in his soul, and he is transfigured. Perhaps for the first time, in some rhythm of the music, he has understood everything, the beauty of life which passeth like a sunshine, now that it is too late, that his youth is over and middle age is upon him. His companion, on the threshold of old age, divines his trouble and lays a hand on his shoulder quietly, as though to still the tumult of his heart. Like a vision, youth itself, ambiguous, about to possess everything waits, like a stranger, as though invoked by the music, on an interval that will never come again, that is already passed.

 

If Titian is really the sole painter of this picture, how loyal he has been to his friend, to that new spirit which lighted Venetian art  as the sun makes beautiful the world. But indeed one might think that, even with Morelli, Crowe, and Cavalcaselle, and Berenson against us, not to name others who have done much for the history of painting in Italy, we might still believe, not altogether without reason, that Giorgione had some part in the Concert, which after all passed as his altogether for two hundred and fifty years… that figure of a youth, so ambiguous in its beauty—could any other hand than Giorgione’s have painted it? does it ever appear in Titian’s innumerable masterpieces at all? Dying as he did at the age of thirty-three, Giorgione must have left many pictures unfinished, which Titian, his friend and disciple almost, may well have completed, and even signed, in an age when works, almost wholly untouched by a master, were certainly sold as his.

 

Titian’s other pictures here, with the exception of the Head of Christ and the Magdalen, are portraits all…

 

In another portrait of about the same time, the Young Englishman, we have Titian at his best. The extraordinarily beautiful English face, fulfilled with some incalculable romance, is to me at least by far the most delightful portrait in Florence. One seems to understand England, her charm, her fascination, her extraordinary pride and persistence, in looking at this picture of one of her sons. All the tragedy of her kings, the adventure to be met with on her seas, the beauty and culture of Oxford, and the serenity of her country places, come back to one fresh and unsullied memories of the defiling and trumpery cities that so lately have begun to destroy her….

Titian: Mary Magdalen

For Titian seems to have created life with something of the ease and facility of a natural force; to have desired always Beauty as the only perfect flower of life; and while he was not content with the mere truth, and never with beauty divorced from life, he has created life in such abundance that his work may well be larger than the achievement of any two other men, even the greatest in painting; yet in his work, in the work that is really his, you will find nothing that is not living, nothing that is not an impassioned gesture reaching above and beyond our vision into the realm of that force which seems to be eternal.

 

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Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 341-345.

Florence: Raphael in the Pitti Palace

There was so much to see in the Uffizi gallery that Edward Hutton could do little more, except in the case of Botticelli, than divide the collection into the schools of Florence, Siena, Umbria, and Venice and then offer just a sentence or two to each painting. Even Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, for example, was only described as a "very splendid Holy Family, splendid perhaps rather than beautiful..." But in the Pitti Palace he took notice of its great Raphael collection, and the influence of Florence on the young painter from Umbria.

 

And it is in this mystical and smiling country, where the light is so soft and tender, softer than on any Tuscan hills, that the most perfect if not the greatest painter of the Renaissance grew up. You may find some memory of that beautiful land of hills and quiet valleys even in his latest work, after he had learned from every master, and summed up, as it were, the whole Renaissance in his achievement. But in the four pictures here in the Pitti, it is the influence of Florence you find imposing itself upon the art of Umbria, transforming it, strengthening it, and suggesting, it may be, the way of advance. Something of the art of Pietro [Perugino] you see in the portraits of Maddalena Doni, Angelo Doni, and La Donna Gravida…It is the influence of Florence we seem to find too in the simplicity of the Madonna del Granduca. Here is a picture certainly in the manner of Perugino, but with something lost, some light, some beatitude, yet with something gained also, if only in a certain measure of restraint, a real simplicity that is foreign to that master.

And then, if we compare it with the Madonna della Sedia, which is said to have been painted on the lid of a wine cask, we shall find, I think, that however many new secrets he may learn Raphael never forgot a lesson. It is Perugino who has taught him to compose so perfectly, that the space, small or large, of the picture itself becomes a means of beauty. How perfectly he has placed Madonna with her little Son, and St. John praying beside them, so that until you begin to take thought you are not aware how difficult that composition must have been, and indeed you never remember how small that tondo really is. How eagerly those easel pictures of Madonna have ben loved, and yet to-day how little they mean to us; some virtue seems to have gone out of them, so that they move us no longer, and we are indeed a little impatient at their fame, and ready to accuse Raphael of I know not what insincerity or dreadful facility.

Yet we have only to look at the portraits to know we are face to face with one of the greatest and most universal of painters. Consider then, La Donna Veleta, or the Pope Julius II, or the Leo X with the two Cardinals, how splendid they are, how absolutely characterized and full of life, life seen in the tranquillity of the artist, who has understood everything, and with whom truth has become beauty. In the Leo X with the Cardinals, Guilio de’ Medici and Lorenzo dei Rossi, how tactfully Raphael has contrived the light and shadow so that the fat heavy face of the Pope is not overemphasized, and you discern perfectly the beauty of the head, the delicacy of the nostrils, the clever, sensual, pathetic, witty mouth. And the hands seem about to move, to be a little tremulous with life, to be on the verge of a gesture, to have only just become motionless on the edge of the book. It is in these portraits that the art of Raphael is at its greatest, becomes universal, achieves, immortality.

 ###

 

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 340-341.  

Florence: Titian in the Pitti Palace

Edward Hutton ended his tour of the Pitti Palace with a discussion of its collection of Titian masterpieces by the hand of Titian, the famed Venetian master, whom he regarded as the "greatest painter of Italy, of the world."

 There remains to be considered the splendid ever living work of Titian. The early work of the greatest painter of Italy, of the world, greatest in the variety, number, and splendour of his pictures, is represented in the Pitti, happily enough by one of the most lovely of all Italian paintings, the Concert so long given to Giorgione. A monk in cowl and tonsure touches the keys of a harpsichord, while beside him stands an older man, a clerk and perhaps a monk too, who grasps the handle of a viol; in the background, a youthful and ambiguous figure, with a cap and plume, waits, perhaps on some interval to begin a song. Yet, indeed, that is not the picture, which, whatever its subject may be, would seem to be more expressive than any other in the world. Some great joy, some great sorrow, seems about to declare itself. What music does he hear, that monk with the beautiful sensitive hands, who turns away towards his companion? Something has awakened in his soul, and he is transfigured. Perhaps for the first time, in some rhythm of the music, he has understood everything, the beauty of life which passeth like a sunshine, now that it is too late, that his youth is over and middle age is upon him. His companion, on the threshold of old age, divines his trouble and lays a hand on his shoulder quietly, as though to still the tumult of his heart. Like a vision, youth itself, ambiguous, about to possess everything waits, like a stranger, as though invoked by the music, on an interval that will never come again, that is already passed.

 

If Titian is really the sole painter of this picture, how loyal he has been to his friend, to that new spirit which lighted Venetian art  as the sun makes beautiful the world. But indeed one might think that , even with Morelli, Crowe, and Cavalcaselle, and Berenson against us, not to name others who have done much for the history of painting in Italy, we might still believe, not altogether without reason, that Giorgione had some part in the Concert, which after all passed as his altogether for two hundred and fifty years… that figure of a youth, so ambiguous in its beauty—could any other hand than Giorgione’s have painted it? does it ever appear in Titian’s innumerable masterpieces at all? Dying as he did at the age of thirty-three, Giorgione must have left many pictures unfinished, which Titian, his friend and disciple almost, may well have completed, and even signed, in an age when works, almost wholly untouched by a master, were certainly sold as his.

 

Titian’s other pictures here, with the exception of the Head of Christ and the Magdalen, are portraits all…

 

In another portrait of about the same time, the Young Englishman, we have Titian at his best. The extraordinarily beautiful English face, fulfilled with some incalculable romance, is to me at least by far the most delightful portrait in Florence. One seems to understand England, her charm, her fascination, her extraordinary pride and persistence, in looking at this picture of one of her sons. All the tragedy of her kings, the adventure to be met with on her seas, the beauty and culture of Oxford, and the serenity of her country places, come back to one fresh and unsullied memories of the defiling and trumpery cities that so lately have begun to destroy her….

Titian: Mary Magdalen

For Titian seems to have created life with something of the ease and facility of a natural force; to have desired always Beauty as the only perfect flower of life; and while he was not content with the mere truth, and never with beauty divorced from life, he has created life in such abundance that his work may well be larger than the achievement of any two other men, even the greatest in painting; yet in his work, in the work that is really his, you will find nothing that is not living, nothing that is not an impassioned gesture reaching above and beyond our vision into the realm of that force which seems to be eternal.

 

###

 

 

 

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 341-345.

Florence: Raphael in the Pitti Palace

There was so much to see in the Uffizi gallery that Edward Hutton could do little more, except in the case of Botticelli, than divide the collection into the schools of Florence, Siena, Umbria, and Venice and then offer just a sentence or two to each painting. Even Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, for example, was only described as a "very splendid Holy Family, splendid perhaps rather than beautiful..." But in the Pitti Palace he took notice of its great Raphael collection, and the influence of Florence on the young painter from Umbria.

 

And it is in this mystical and smiling country, where the light is so soft and tender, softer than on any Tuscan hills, that the most perfect if not the greatest painter of the Renaissance grew up. You may find some memory of that beautiful land of hills and quiet valleys even in his latest work, after he had learned from every master, and summed up, as it were, the whole Renaissance in his achievement. But in the four pictures here in the Pitti, it is the influence of Florence you find imposing itself upon the art of Umbria, transforming it, strengthening it, and suggesting, it may be, the way of advance. Something of the art of Pietro [Perugino] you see in the portraits of Maddalena Doni, Angelo Doni, and La Donna Gravida…It is the influence of Florence we seem to find too in the simplicity of the Madonna del Granduca. Here is a picture certainly in the manner of Perugino, but with something lost, some light, some beatitude, yet with something gained also, if only in a certain measure of restraint, a real simplicity that is foreign to that master.

And then, if we compare it with the Madonna della Sedia, which is said to have been painted on the lid of a wine cask, we shall find, I think, that however many new secrets he may learn Raphael never forgot a lesson. It is Perugino who has taught him to compose so perfectly, that the space, small or large, of the picture itself becomes a means of beauty. How perfectly he has placed Madonna with her little Son, and St. John praying beside them, so that until you begin to take thought you are not aware how difficult that composition must have been, and indeed you never remember how small that tondo really is. How eagerly those easel pictures of Madonna have ben loved, and yet to-day how little they mean to us; some virtue seems to have gone out of them, so that they move us no longer, and we are indeed a little impatient at their fame, and ready to accuse Raphael of I know not what insincerity or dreadful facility.

Yet we have only to look at the portraits to know we are face to face with one of the greatest and most universal of painters. Consider then, La Donna Veleta, or the Pope Julius II, or the Leo X with the two Cardinals, how splendid they are, how absolutely characterized and full of life, life seen in the tranquillity of the artist, who has understood everything, and with whom truth has become beauty. In the Leo X with the Cardinals, Guilio de’ Medici and Lorenzo dei Rossi, how tactfully Raphael has contrived the light and shadow so that the fat heavy face of the Pope is not overemphasized, and you discern perfectly the beauty of the head, the delicacy of the nostrils, the clever, sensual, pathetic, witty mouth. And the hands seem about to move, to be a little tremulous with life, to be on the verge of a gesture, to have only just become motionless on the edge of the book. It is in these portraits that the art of Raphael is at its greatest, becomes universal, achieves, immortality.

 ###

 

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 340-341.