‘When Titian paints eyes,’ observed Eugène Delacroix, who spent a lifetime admiring, studying and copying the Venetian artist, ‘they are lit with the fire of life.’ The truth of Delacroix’s aphorism is on striking display in the magnificent exhibition of Titian’s paintings at the Scuderie of the Quirinale Palace in Rome.
The exhibition does not pretend to be a comprehensive collection of Titian’s works. It is merely a selection of some of his greatest masterpieces. The gorgeous young woman known simply as ‘La Bella’ looks at you with a penetrating, unblinking gaze, her eyes so hot with the fire of life that you feel sure that, in just one moment, she will move. The portrait of wily, worldly Pope Paul III is a study in character of the very highest level: you know this man — and you do not want to cross him.
Titian was obliged to paint a succession of Venetian Doges under the terms of the pension he was awarded very early in his career by the Venetian state. That he was able to wring the individuality of the sitters out of this dull official genre is a tribute to his humanity as well as his skill. Doge Francesco Venier, looking harassed and hesitant underneath his gold robes, is one of several stunning official portraits exhibited here. There are also a number of young men, sometimes portrayed as brooding, sometimes as questioning, and sometimes as defiantly confident. Probably the least successful portrait is the one Titian would have been paid most for: his depiction of the Emperor Charles V. Even he could not get past the myth to the man concealed behind it.
In his old age, Titian invented a new style of painting, in which form is almost dissolved into colour. No attempt is made to hide the fact that a painting is a ‘constructed’ object: the brush strokes are very obvious, and that is clearly part of the point (although contemporary observers noted that Titian, in his last years, painted more with his fingers than with his brushes). The effect is extraordinary, and was to be immensely influential, defining, as it did, the notion of what it is for a picture to be ‘painterly’: Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez, not to mention Delacroix and the Impressionists, all found something to imitate in Titian’s late style.
The first picture that confronts you as you enter the exhibition is ‘The Martyrdom of St Lawrence’, an astonishing depiction of St Lawrence’s grisly death: he was grilled over a fire. This picture usually hangs in a dark church in Venice, where it is very hard to see. It is beautifully lit in this exhibition, and alone is worth the trip to Rome.
The exhibition ends with the horrifying ‘Flaying of Marsyas’: the satyr Marsyas is skinned alive for having challenged Apollo to a flute-playing competition. Marsyas should have won. But Apollo cheated, then punished Marsyas for daring to compare himself to a god by having him flayed. It is an almost unbearable scene — except that it is fascinating to examine the details of the picture carefully, and so to start to understand how Titian achieved his miraculous effects.
Still, I couldn’t leave the exhibition on that agonising note, and wanted to go back and look again at some of Titian’s more joyful masterpieces. There are plenty of them here. In the room before the ‘Flaying of Marsyas’, there is the naked ‘Danae’, lying back as Jupiter, disguised as a shower of gold, drops on to her bed. Michelangelo criticised this picture as badly drawn — which was rich coming from him, whose male and female nudes seem often to be anatomically indistinguishable. Titian’s female nudes — he rarely painted naked men — are most definitely ‘all woman’. He was the first to use female models in his studio, and the benefits of painting directly from life certainly show.
Whether you are sceptical about Titian’s art or already one his fans, the works in this exhibition will convince you that Titian was one of western art’s greatest geniuses. I cannot recommend it highly enough.