The notion of individual talent bore a talismanic significance in the fertile imagination of Cinquecento art theorists; at its most enthusiastic this conceit ushered in a new era in Italian art whereby a small number of artists invested with a hitherto unparalleled position of authority widely influenced the aesthetic tastes of their own lifetimes. On the one hand, this partial transference of authority from patrons and learned theorists to artists highly skilled in their crafts has an innate logic to it: theoretical knowledge is incomplete without firsthand knowledge of practice to enhance it. Therefore, it is not unusual that Renaissance connoisseur Guilio Mancini advised collectors of paintings to look at them like a painter.[1] Nor was it unusual for artists to be asked their opinions on aesthetic issues, as patrons of this period grew familiar with the sanitized vision of the artist-courtier – a vision endorsed by artists such as Leonardo, Raphael and Titian. Gradually, this new identity softened the distinction between artisans and the new gentility. Yet the implications of this shift were as weighty as the praise these artists received. Literary records of the fourteenth century often employed the term ingenium or ingegno when praising the practice of the visual arts in general, while in the fifteenth century, the term became more commonly associated with individual artists.[2] Baldesar Castiglione, in his widely popular, Il Libro del Cortegiano, of 1528, frequently refers to ingegno’s capacity to transcend the mere imitation of virtue. Ultimately, his ideal courtier was expressed in very loose terms aware that the true substance of the ideal was dependent on the elusive quality of individual genius.[3] Renowned Neo-Platonist, Marsilio Ficino upheld a similar view of genius’ imponderable significance stating that “not every man can understand how and in what manner the skilful work of a clever artisan is constructed, but only he who possesses a like artistic genius.”[4] It was this same wonderment of individual talent that afforded the artist-genius unusual license. A letter written by the royal patron Isabella d’Este to Giovanni Bellini, October 19th, 1505, is a famous example of the sort of subjugation patrons of immense civic authority were willing to accept in order to receive the latest creation of a renowned master:
We have accepted the Nativity in place of the narrative [historia] that you initially promised to do, which greatly pleases us, holding it as dear as any painting we have… we have been vexed with a fever so that we have not been able to attend to such matters, but now that we are in better health, it has come to us to write this present letter of ours, praying you that you will be agreeable to painting another picture, and we leave to you the responsibility of conceiving the poetic invention, when you do not doubt that we desire it, that beyond the courteous and honorable payment for it, we shall feel eternal gratitude.[5]
Albeit exceptional, poetic license of this scope was issued in commissioned works of the Cinquecento, though more frequently the artist was assigned a theme.[6] The veneration of the artist-genius had repercussions on the traditional relationship between viewer and the created object, implying new authority in the artist’s message through which the viewer was at times required to work to understand.[7] Similarly, there was an increasingly enthusiastic appreciation of unfinished works and rough sketches amongst professionals and amateurs during the second half of the century, giving rise to what is modernly identified as the birth of connoisseurship. Collecting and studying the drawings of these artists, the amateur connoisseur sought an intimate link to the person responsible for the drawing. More often than the subject portrayed, it was the idea of the artist’s genius which titillated fascination. .[8]
Titian and Michelangelo were arguably the most renowned artists of the Renaissance, deified in heroic terms in artist biographies and courtly treatises while they were still producing work. Painting portraits for such illustrious men as the Emperor Charles V and Pope Paul III, Titian became the consummate court painter, his talents thought to surpass even nature in its pictorial gifts. The creations of Michelangelo were frequently touted as the measure of excellence in the visual arts; even Lodovico Dolce, though proudly Venetian, promoted this sentiment in his frequent declarations of Titian as “another Michelangelo”.[9] That Michelangelo was continually praised in courtly circles despite his documented lack of tact, or diplomatic skills, suggests how greatly valued the notion of artist-genius was in the sixteenth century. The concept of guidizio naturale, which presupposed that supreme talent was innate, not learned, was often evoked in the biographical writings of Titian and Michelangelo to serve as a common pretense for their genius; similar sentiments persist in the artists’ own words.[10] Their deaths were commemorated with the same superhuman preponderance that defined their lives: the hubristic proportions of their funerary plans were comparable to those of emperors and saints.[11] Inevitably, the metaphysical transformation of their personas took on divine implications, symptomatic of the humanist faith in the self’s nearly limitless vertical flexibility.[12]
Both of these artists were still producing public works of art in their final years of extreme old age.[13] The biophysical degeneration of an individual in old age is often perceived as a crisis, a transformative phase where one must undergo a process of resocialization in order to contend with the reversal of roles involved as one becomes more and more dependent on those younger than himself. The degenerative effects to the elderly artist’s body and mind also created new obstacles such as lack of muscle strength, nervous control, stamina, and eyesight, inevitably forcing changes upon the art-making process. As a primary point of inquiry, this essay will examine the crisis of identity of the artist-genius, both for the artist and the social reception of the artist, in his advancement into old age and the mutual need to mitigate the negative and positive connotations of being an elderly artist-genius. Looking at the final works of Michelangelo and Titian as the expressions of elderly men coping with a new social identity, I would like to characterize certain age-related distinctions to these works that had not existed earlier. These changes were not subtle, and as a result, those who permeated the genius of these artists would arrive at a crisis of their own, in having to choose whether to maintain the supremacy of the artist and his aesthetic views, or excuse the change as the byproduct of the artist’s physical and mental deterioration.Perceptions and Representations of the Elderly in the Renaissance
In the Renaissance, various treatises arose that explicitly outlined strictures on the elderly person’s role in society. The Ciceronian optimism is clearly absent in the tone of book II of Il Libro when Castiglione, in his own voice, writes:
For myself, I think that the reason for this faulty judgment in the old is that the passing years rob them of many of the favorable conditions of life… and in consequence the physical constitution changes and the organs through which the soul exercises its power grow feeble… Since, therefore, the senile spirit is an unsuitable vessel for many of the pleasures of life, it cannot enjoy them; and just as even rare and delicate wine taste sour to those whose palates are spoilt through sickness, so to old people because of their incapacity (which does not however, lack desire) pleasures seem cold and insipid and very different from those they recall having once enjoyed, although the pleasures themselves are the same.[15]Castiglione adopts the Aristotelian view of the elderly as contemptuous, distinctly isolated from the rest of society due to their mental and physical deficiencies, yet curiously, not lacking in desire, which in his evaluation of the elderly courtier proves particularly abhorrent. The elderly courtier must desist from romantic love or suffer the consequences of public humiliation; this sentiment persists in literary and pictorial motifs of binary opposites (young woman/old man or old woman/young man) throughout Renaissance Europe with the same incriminatory tone of its foolish behaviour.[16] Similarly, the elderly courtier must desist from activities associated with youth, including music, games, arms and dancing, and instead “act like oracles to whom everyone will turn for advice.”[17] This attitude was widely held: in describing the need of propriety by artists in their depictions of subjects, Dolce includes within a list of improper examples, “…nor should [the artist] make an old man exhibit the feelings of a youth.”[18] In Raffaello Borghini’s art treatise, Il riposo (1584), parallels were drawn between the elderly courtier and the elderly artist.[19] In both, emphasis is placed on the learned, non-practicing, role of the elderly within their sphere of specialty. The elderly artist was a liability to the established social identity of the artist-as-intellectual (elevated from the lowly status of the artisan of a century earlier) in that the mental deficiencies thought to occur in old age sabotaged this rhetorical advantage, associating the mind with the same frailties as the body. In his second edition of Vite, Giorgio Vasari frequently chastised artists creating public works in extreme old age, most notably in his chapter on Pontormo, but also, in passages of his chapter on Titian where he states that art in old age should only be pursued for recreation.[20] It is perhaps due to this general disdain for the youth-like ambition of elderly artists that Ascanio Condivi took rhetorical liberties with his biography of Michelangelo in 1553 to ennoble the artist’s behaviour in old age, and downplay the excitable passions evident in his late poetry.[21]
Curiosity about aging and the ever-evolving trend towards naturalism lead to the appearance of wrinkles in various subjects of Renaissance painting and sculpture. The connotation of wrinkles with Original Sin was evoked in Michelangelo’s Fall of Man scene of his Sistine Ceiling program, the moment of expulsion from the Garden of Eden marking the unfortunate inception of aging for mankind. Saints such as St. Jerome and Joseph and even God himself were often depicted visibly aged during this period in order to advance the positive connotations of wisdom and pedagogy upon that phase of life. Most unusual were depictions of Joseph as a feeble old man despite biblical accounts of his relatively youthful age when he wedded Mary.[22] Often this can be explained by his presence in Holy Family motifs, of which he was seldom portrayed outside of, and their secondary role as illustrations of the three ages of man, with baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph demonstrating a concordant progression of life.[23] As the elder in these subjects, Joseph was often portrayed stooping, sometimes with a cane, possessing an ambiguous role as the patriarch protector yet fundamentally powerless. As elderly figures grew intensively life-like in the visual arts their presence evoked certain anxieties with aging and death, causing them to replace the traditional iconography of skeletons as the newest symbol of memento mori.[24]
The Rise of the Artist-Genius
At its most optimistic, the notion of the artist-genius attained a quasi-divine status. Cinquecento art theorists were constantly struggling to establish a properly unified and articulated conceptual definition of painting, which led to various musings upon an open-ended quality of art thought to be grasped only at an intuitive or spiritual level. This gap in theory was addressed in different ways: Vasari, in the preface to his third and penultimate age of art, referred to this quality as grazia, which in Vasari’s use of the term denotes a divine achievement by the artist beyond the science of art;[31] Dolce referred to this quality as “charm” (e questa è la venustà) in concordance with the Plinian ideal assigned to Apelles, which, lacking explicit spiritual import, derived its significance from the pleasurable effect caused by its own indefinable nature.[32] The spiritual dignity of art-making was evoked in various treatises, due largely to the devotional role of images in the rituals of the Catholic Church.[33] The notion of the divine artist was not simply a rhetorical flourish, as certain usages of the term divino seem stronger and more deliberate; an example is Anton Francesco Doni’s explicit mention of the religious ramifications of his belief in Michelangelo in the following statement, from a letter of 1543: “Your marbles and your colors deserve more honor and more reverence than the gods themselves, so that you should be adored by men and without dying be raised by angels to one of the most splendid thrones of Paradise…and certainly I take you to be a God, but with license from our faith”.[34] The transition from the adept artist relying on rote practice of antique and natural models as a repertory of ideas, to the artist relying on inner visions, or fantasia, grew in importance throughout the sixteenth century. As Erwin Panofsky writes, “It was assumed that the artistic mind was able to transform reality into an Idea, to affect an autonomous synthesis of the objective data, and such a mind no longer needed such regulations, valid a priori or empirically confirmed, as mathematical laws, the concurrence of public opinion, and the testimonials of ancient writers.”[35] Placing the emphasis on the image-forming faculty of the mind the artist-genius became ever more like God the creator, creating anew rather than copying from his work. From a Neo-Platonist standpoint, this image-forming faculty was able to channel the true essence of things from the cosmic mind. Naturally, Michelangelo endorsed this emphasis on the mind in his popular dictum that the artist must possess ‘compasses in his eyes rather than in his hands.’[36] This would also have a rhetorical benefit for the aging Michelangelo, as theory-based styles were thought to be more closely aligned with the soul than rote practice, and hence less corruptible by aging.[37]
As previously mentioned, the first negative view of the elderly artist appeared in sixteenth century art literature. The primary problem for these critics was the noticeable stylistic decline in the artist’s work, which threatened the integrity of the learned image of the artist.[38] In late works of both Michelangelo and Titian there is the immediate sense of a whittling down of complexity, thought at first to be the result of physical and/or mental degeneration. By this period in their lives the two artists had established themselves within the highest strata of genius, caught up in the quasi-mystical implications of their mastery. Yet their determination to continue to make public works of art long into their eighties challenged commonly held views on how an elderly artist should behave. Borghini, in 1584, echoes the sentiment of Castiglione when he writes “because of the degeneration of the body, both aged courtier and artist must leave behind the sensual and ascend to a mode of contemplation that culminates in a mystical union with the divine.”[39] He associates keen eyesight, steady hand, taste and gusto with the senses – their deficiency in old age as made apparent in stylistic decline, necessitates this ascension towards contemplating divine images, a passive rather than active role in the arts. In a telling letter to the 87 year old Michelangelo, Vasari informs the master of new developments in the systematic art academy of Florence, with hopes of wooing the master back:
…and for the old artists who are past the period of labour, his Excellency has (for the benefit and honour of us all, and to his own immortal memory in this world) provided an infirmary, where they may in retirement cultivate divine knowledge, to the end that they may live like Christians, and among them do many acts of charity till they fall into the grave; and I wish that a thousand blessings may attend them.[40]This statement is significant for two reasons: one, it indicates that a social service was in place to enforce the passive resignation of artists in old age; and two, it is implied by Vasari’s emphasis that he believes Michelangelo would benefit from this service, and that perhaps the limitations of tolerance for the genius license at such at accelerated age had been reached.
Public Reception to the Elderly Michelangelo and his Later Work
Vasari was not the only one to make explicit claims of Michelangelo’s visionary power: In the letter correspondence between the artist and Vittoria Colonna of 1538-1546 a similar sentiment exists. The letters in question pertain to correspondence about various buon-disegno works of art Michelangelo gave freely to Colonna throughout this period of time, the subjects of which varied yet each possessed the same intimate attention and were received both as tokens of friendship and as tools for spiritual introspection. Colonna once confessed that she would spend hours at a time studying the drawings he sent, presumably working out the veiled meanings which Michelangelo incorporated into the drawings. As Alexander Nagel pointed out, Michelangelo’s reform sensibilities, and in particular his distaste for the notion of salvation earned through works, motivated the artist to associate his making and giving of art to Colonna with religious commentary of the reformers on the divine gift of Christ’s sacrifice.[46] Somewhat frustrated with Colonna’s initial misunderstanding of his intentions with the gifts, Michelangelo explicitly drew the parallel between his gift of art with Christ’s gift of himself, as a selfless act that does not require obligatory compensation. In doing so his letters implicitly leave room for a conception of art that would conform to a higher principle of grace.[47] Clearly, Colonna accepted this view when she wrote to him: “I had the greatest faith in God, that he would grant you a supernatural grace in making this Christ.”[48] In his youth, Michelangelo was closely associated with the Neo-Platonist movement, which played an important role in his poetry of 1530’s to 1540’s and even in old age, in some of the letters to Colonna.[49] Much like the license afforded the temperamental genius (of which Michelangelo was famously associated with, in art literature as well as in Raphael’s School of Athens) Neo-Platonism was another beneficial means of imparting mystical authority for the artist-genius.[50]
Closely associated with Neo-Platonism, the positive connotations of Ficinian melancholy, and the higher principles of grace, the elderly Michelangelo was well protected from the negative connotations of his advanced age. The conceptual source of his art was redirected away from the physical body to realms far more difficult to evaluate. In 1562, Vasari asked the then 87 year old Michelangelo to contribute a sketch to finish the chapel of San Lorenzo:
I am commanded also to say, that if you have a sketch or any part of the designs made for it, and would accommodate us with it, the service it would be of to us would not be small, but would be an assurance to his Excellency of a proper execution of the work, and be attended with honour- or if you should not be able to do this, on account of age or other accidents, at least deign to send a description of it by another hand, because this honorable Academy may misunderstand the matter, and having to operate on a work begun by you, may, by not having some light given them by your great mind, do that which was not according to your intent…”[51]
Although Vasari accounts for the physical degeneration of the artist as an impediment to the task, he nonetheless assumes a transcendental quality to the artist’s image-making faculties that even a verbal description was considered superior to the finished proposals of younger members of the academy. Such reverence persisted beyond the artist’s death, as the task that had been begun by Michelangelo remains unfinished to this day.
The degree of physical deterioration in Michelangelo’s final years has been a source of debate amongst scholars. David Rosand challenges Alexander Perrig’s overemphasis on the uncontrolled manual jerks of the aging master, insisting the limits placed on the drawing efforts of a hand weak from age cannot be easily reconciled with our knowledge of Michelangelo wielding hammer and chisel only a few days before his death.[52] The artist’s own frustration with his Florence Pieta, at some point in 1555 when he lunged at the work with a hammer, breaking the left arm into pieces, suggests at least some personal sense of decline, and frequently in his letters and poetry Michelangelo lamented his loss of youth.[53] Yet, in one of his sonnets dated c.1541-44 there is evidence of a possible optimistic view to his aging, and a sense of perfection achieved in his final works:
That wise man, who through labors manifoldAnd length of years, toils at the rebel stone
Shall see one form alone
Perfect, in living grace, before he die;
Since to high things untold
Late we attain, and soon must bid goodbye.
If nature equally
From age to age devising many a face
Have beauty’s absolute created here
In yours most fair, she’s old and must decay.[54]
Public Reception to the Elderly Titian and his Late Works
Titian became the official painter of Venice in 1516, and sustained a figurehead role throughout the remainder of his life. In 1551, he was asked to head a panel established to choose painters to execute works of so great a consequence as the hall of the Grand-Council Chamber of Venice.[57] Although Titian’s funerary plans were frustrated by the plague, an ambitious program was conceived by his peers to compete with the pomp and circumstance of Michelangelo’s funeral in Florence.[58] At the center of the program was a monument to Titian decorated with an elderly representation of the artist with his hand on a book of Science and Genius, held out to him by a winged Genius. In the portrait, Titian wore the golden chain around his neck with the Hapsburg double-eagle insignia that was proudly displayed in his own self-portraits.[59] The decision to depict Titian in old age was probably one of necessity, in that the only known visual documents of Titian were made during this phase of his life; however, the promulgation of his image in prints of his self-portraits, and the suggestive inclusions of his likeness in famous Venetian paintings such as Paolo Veronese’s Marriage at Cana (1563) and Jacopo Bassano’s Christ Driving out the Money-Changers from the Temple (1570) branded the image of Titian as one wrought by age.[60]
In addition to the personal acclaim Titian received as Official Painter of Venice, the workshop he managed in his late career was similarly esteemed, recognized as one of the most profitable and prolific workshops of the Renaissance. Titian’s role in the workshop is somewhat ambiguous, instigating some debate to how much he contributed to the products of the shop.[61] Analysis of known works of the shop indicate a discrepancy in quality between the workshop and Titian’s own work, substantiating the biographical insistence that he had no true followers and that his skill at painting was impossible to learn.[62] In her exhaustive investigation into the organization of Titian’s workshop, art historian, Erica Tietze-Conrat establishes the role of assistants: “They made replicas, sometimes even of old originals, for provincial patrons. Occasionally they may have been permitted to design the composition for such orders. They finished canvases in which essential parts – general arrangements, faces, hands – were given by the master himself. And they copied.”[63] This distribution of tasks enabled greater productivity for the aging artist while maintaining a somewhat ambiguous authorship of the master in the production of these late works. Though seemingly counter-active to the notion of the autonomous artist-genius, workshop practice was deeply ingrained in the cultural milieu of the Italian Renaissance; indeed, even Titian himself grew out of this environment, beginning as an apprentice to Giovanni Bellini. Art Historian, Bruce Cole rightfully associates Titian as fundamentally traditional in his art practice, adopting the workshop ethics of his master Bellini, and unabashedly borrowing from the work of others as a legitimate way to enrich and improve his own work.[64]
There is however a suggestion of resentment in the elderly Titian towards his pedantic role and the assumed logic of such a passive position. As mentioned previously, Vasari was particularly outspoken towards Titian’s continued practice, remarking that in his late style it would have been better if Titian had merely retired and painted privately. That Titian was well aware of Vasari’s criticisms, and by a date prior to his painted self-portraits, is well documented. His Self-Portrait while Sketching, known only through a copy, has traditionally been viewed as a deliberate response by Titian to Vasari’s criticism of the lack of disegno in Venetian art.[65] This would suggest that a similar defense of his capacity to paint at an elderly age would be a plausible motivation for this self-portrait, where the presence of his craft is explicitly shown. Titian similarly depicts himself holding a brush in his Prado Self-Portrait (c.1560-75)(fig. 1). In both portraits Titian shows his age with no signs of idealization to his features. That he was fashioning his portrait in the Prado self-conscious of his old age can be inferred by its shared features with a figure he painted in his Allegory of Prudence (fig. 2).[66] The motto included on this painting explains that the three heads shown depict the past, present, and future, at different stages of aging. Titian has included his own likeness for the personification of Old Age, and its sharp profile turning to the right, and red skullcap all correspond with the self-portrait in the Prado painting. Therefore, the Prado painting may be interpreted as a self-conscious portrayal of the elderly artist wielding his brush in a gesture of dissension from those courtly attitudes circulating in the sixteenth century that negate the practical role of elderly artists and their capacities. Geo-political differences between Venice and Florence would also have had a residual effect on this debate, whereas outside Venice old age was considered to be around 40, Titian working in his 70’s and 80’s does not seem unusual in context to the political climate of the time with men of such advanced age still active in state service.[67]
Nonetheless, Titian was subject to the negative connotations of old age. At the age of seventy the artist was living handsomely on a pension assigned to him by the Senate of Venice and on the immense presents for his work from the Emperor, along with any commissioned works his workshop was producing.[68] Despite being financially secure Titian was portrayed as stingy by Vasari, and in pictorial form, in the inclusion of his likeness as one of the money-changers in Jacopo Bassano’s Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple.[69] This characterization may have had some truth to it since financial records of the period indicate that on June 28th, 1566, when Titian lost his official tax exemption, he conceded large parts of his true income in his return to the Council of the Pregadi.[70] Doubts of the artist’s physical capacity to paint arose during this period: the Spanish ambassador Don Guzman de Silva writes, “Unfortunately he is unsteady and subject to extremes of mood… and sometimes he seems surprised at what he himself has just said or falls asleep… His temper, usually benign, has also become uncertain, and he can be terrible when roused.”[71] In 1568, Emperor Maximilian II, while interested in the seven “fables” by Titian, expresses the fear that the artist in his advanced years can no longer paint as he used to.[72] Other patrons suspiciously inquired whether it was still wise to order form him, since he hardly ever added more than a perfunctory touch to the canvases that left his studio: in a letter dated February 29th, 1568, written to Hans Jacob Fugger by Niccolo Stoppio, an art dealer and patron, it is said that the German painter [northern apprentice Emmanuel Amberger] was producing many things which Titian then “transformed into his own with two strokes of the brush and sold as such.”[73]Such indictments show the growing suspicion of Titian’s role in the workshop during his final decades of life. Financial interests made it advisable to stress the undiminished participation of the master, as monetary value of commission was often determined according to how much was painted by the master; an example of this is the Brescia commission: the final payment was determined by a panel of artists who decided that the finished work was less Titian and more of his apprentice’s work, and decided to pay according to this distinction.[74] Suspicions of Titian’s minor role in the workshop were at times proven incorrect, such as in the case of 1573, when the Duke of Urbino instructed his agent to order a painting from a member of the shop, presupposing that that Titian himself could no longer personally accept such a commission. Titian expressed his willingness to execute the painting with his own hand. The agent who watched the progress of the work during the next weeks declared it a masterpiece.[75] Similarly, Titian defied expectations when he painted the huge altarpiece The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (c. 1548-59), for Phillip’s church of the Escorial. And in his letter to the majesty Titian also asked if he wished to order a series of ten paintings of a similar size, showing earlier scenes from the martyr’s life. Therefore, in this example, there was no evidence of physical weakness limiting Titian’s desire to paint.[76]
The reception of his late works was mixed. Art historian, Thomas Dormandy identifies a general decline in interest in Titian’s late works:
Titian in his eighth and ninth decades was reverently called upon by every important state visitor to Venice – at eighty he chatted amiably in French with Henri III of France on the occasion of the most sumptuous and last display of Venetian power- and copies of many of his early works continued to sell in every corner of Europe. But nobody except the royal recluse (Phillip II) waited impatiently for his latest autographed works.[77]
This is somewhat of an overstatement, as the commissions for Duke of Urbino in 1573 and Brescia in 1567 would attest, however the last two decades of Titian’s career witnessed a significant decline in requested original works outside the patronage of Philip II. The noticeable stylistic shift in his late work may account for this change, as the loose brushstrokes and impressionistic quality of background figures experimented with in his early work Concert Champetre (1510) migrated to the foreground in works of the 1540’s onward. In October 1545, Aretino complained that his portrait made by Titian was only “sketched rather than finished.” Even Philip II was reported to complain about Titian’s late style liberties, stating in reference to his portrait: “As to my armor, you can easily see the haste with which he painted it, and if there had been more time I would have had him work on it again.”[78]
There were however supporters of his late work such as Dolce and Vasari. Although irked by the elderly Titian’s active participation in public commissions, Vasari was surprisingly positive about Titian’s late style. He argues that, though appearing simple, the late works of Titian were complex endeavours which attest to the painter’s sprezzatura.[79] The term was coined by Castiglione in Il libro to denote “a certain nonchalance which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.”[80] Recently it has been discovered in the Portrait of Pietro Aretino that Titian laboured intensely over a carefully prepared ground only to conceal his labour with several bold strokes (“strapazzati”), thus affirming Vasari’s claim of Titian’s sprezzatura.[81] There were limitations to Vasari’s praise of Titian’s late style, especially since it counter-acted the fundamental role of disegno in Vasari’s art theory, and lacked the control and emphasis on contours that was so important to the Florentine art academy.[82] The painterly quality of Titian’s late style was in part a product of sixteenth century Venetian experimentations and was arguably less radical in a Venetian context, alongside contemporary work by Tintoretto and Andrea Schiavone, than it seemed internationally.[83] The unfinished quality of Titian’s late works, as was previously alluded to in Aretino’s complaint, received theoretical credence in the writings of Pliny, who wrote admiringly of Apelles’ unfinished works which were “more admired than those which they finished, because in them are seen the preliminary drawings left visible and the artist’s actual thoughts, and in the midst of approval’s beguilement we fell regret that the artist’s hand while engaged in the work was removed by death.”[84] With the rise of connoisseurship and the mythic status of the artist-genius in the sixteenth century a similar unfinished quality in the late works of Titian may have directly, or indirectly added to the appeal of these works in the minds of Vasari and Dolce, among others.Personal and Public Meaning in Titian’s Late Work
In tandem with the stylistic shift of Titian’s late work, an increasing emphasis on devotional themes persist in the final decades of the artist’s life, including such notable works as Crowning with Thorns (c.1570-75), Entombment (c.1570), and the Pietà (c. 1576-7); themes specific to penitence include his series of Mary Magdalene (c. 1560’s), and that of St. Jerome (c.1531-1575). This particular emphasis in his work may signify what Dormandy called an “imprint of age”, an intensive introspection evoked in the work of elderly artists brought on by their proximity to death. Contrasting early and late themes in Titian’s oeuvre, Dormandy observes that themes of conquest resonate throughout his work once he made a name for himself, both sexual and imperial; however, after the Augsburg portrait of the emperor, a new theme emerges: “In his last altarpieces, mythologies and poesies he no longer celebrated the joys and exhilarations of conquest. What he conveyed is its deep and horrible core of pain.”[85] Themes of pain are apparent in such works as his Rape of Europa, Diana and Acteon, Rape of Lucretia, Flaying of Marsyas, as well as the scenes of martyrdom of St. Lawrence and St. Sebastian. Works such as his Flaying of Marsyas and Crowning with Thorns are excessively violent portrayals of cruelty that go far beyond traditional depictions of the subject matter.[86]
Fueled by a personal religious conviction, Titian worked on a Pietà (fig. 3) destined for his own tomb.[87] It is generally believed that Titian himself is portrayed both in the prostrate figure holding the hand of Christ, and in the votive panel in the lower right-hand corner, where he is depicted with his son Orazio, begging the Virgin for immunity from the plague.[88] The painting is awash in frenzied emotion, Titian’s now trade-marked fluid brushstrokes aggravating the surface around the Virgin and Christ, as Mary Magdalene’s restless posture suggests a sense of urgency in the captured moment. It is believed that Titian is portrayed in the guise of St. Jerome, acting as intermediary between viewer and Christ. The presence of both St. Jerome and Mary Magdalene would strongly emphasize the feelings of penitence by the artist. Art Historian, Phillip Fehl noticed an iconographic parallel for the gestures of this St. Jerome with one Titian painted earlier in his Madonna and Child with Sts. Dorothy and Jerome (fig.4).[89] In the earlier painting St. Jerome is reaching out touching the hand of the baby Jesus, his expression sullen with the foreknowledge of the suffering to come. In returning to this figure, employing himself in the guise of St. Jerome, Titian allies himself with the same intimate nostalgia exhibited in the figure prostrate before the dead adult Jesus. As Fehl remarked, “It is a fitting portrait of an old man looking back over his life and preparing to meet his maker.”[90]
Recently, a persuasive challenge to the traditional reading of Titian’s Allegory of Prudence (fig. 2) has been brought forth which asserts a deeply personal and pious sentiment in the painting. Erwin Panofsky was the first to posit a convincing argument on the painting that remained in Titian’s studio after his death. Believing it to be a timpano, used possibly to conceal a safe, Panofsky enlists a predominantly secular notion of prudence as the theme, which he argues is evoked in the motto and double triads of human and animal heads that make up the content of the image.[91] Panofsky identifies the three heads as Titian and his two sons, arguing that agitated relations with his youngest son may have encouraged the personal subject matter which, as its motto indicates, asserts the value of prudence in one’s youth.[92] Simona Cohen has recently dismissed this view based largely on x-ray evidence which proves that the elderly head (that both Cohen and Panofsky believe to be Titian’s self-portrait) was added much later, as was the Flemish type portrait inscription which was more common in works after 1540.[93] Cohen insists the painting was originally an impersonal Three Ages of Man theme, which Titian returned to sometime after 1540, as the brushwork of the elderly head is reminiscent of Titian’s late style, whereas the rest of the painting conforms to the tighter finish of his pre-1540 work.[94] She also believes Titian’s spiritual self-evaluation was motivated by the sermons of Bernardino Ochino of Siena, who presented nine sermons in Venice in 1539, and had a considerable influence on Titian’s circle, in particular Pietro Bembo and Pietro Aretino. Ochino preached a primitive form of Franciscan observance based on extreme poverty, simplicity, austerity and penitence.[95] In 1541, fifteen of his sermons were printed in Venice. In a sermon presented at Lucca (1538) Ochino had several times referred to sins with the tripartite temporal distinction of ‘I peccati nostril passati, presenti e future” which is reminiscent of the inscription of Titian’s Allegory.[96] In this reading of the painting, Titian has portrayed himself as sinner, out of an act of remorse and self-accusation. The Allegory therefore coincides nicely with his Pietà as two visual expressions of the elderly artist’s personal and thematic digression from the light-heartedness of his early work, towards matters of personal salvation.
Another painting found posthumously in the artist’s studio rift with personal implications is Titian’s late masterpiece, The Flaying of Marsyas (c. 1570-75) (fig. 5).[97] The subject was a popular theme in Renaissance art as a cautionary tale for artists’ wishing to emulate God as creator. Popularized in Ovid’s Metamorphosis (BK VI: 382-400), the myth recounts the satyr Marsyas’ tragic punishment at the hands of Apollo, after losing a musical contest he initiated with the god of music. The message of divine order presiding victorious over mortal artistic aspirations and the assertion of a clear delineation between the two realms had a precocious urgency in the Cinquecento, as the Council of Trent scrutinized the boundaries of artistic license and the aforementioned liberties taken in art literature blurred distinction between artist and visionary. The didactic import of such a theme seems to counter-act the rhetorical advantage of the Renaissance artist, and therefore seems an odd choice of subject matter for Titian, who appears to have painted the canvas without an established patron.[98] Titian’s interpretation of the flaying is exceptionally graphic, choosing to forego the sideway glance of the satyr’s skinned body in Guilio Romano’s fresco of Marsyas in the Palazzo del’ Te (of which Titian directly copied) by deliberately facing the primary event of the scene directly toward the viewer in all its carnage.[99] This results in an even more abhorring image, reminiscent of the explicit torture of Christian martyrs, of which Titian himself had painted many. It is an overtly pessimistic statement of human art that relishes in the divine repercussions of hubris, and in so doing, recalls the penitent character of Titian’s Pietà and Allegory of the same short period of time. The depiction of King Midas (whose esteem for the music of the satyr earned him ass’s ears) shares a strong resemblance with the known portraits of the elderly Titian.[100] Lost in melancholy reverie, King Midas bears witness to the futility of mortal art; such a sentiment may have been felt by the aging master himself, as he came to terms with his own mortality and the increasing physical degeneration that must have plagued him this close to the end of his life.
In the commissioned works of his late period Titian sought to endorse a somewhat different persona, one that evoked the noble dignity he had earned in the minds of his international clientele. The motivations for this may have been largely financial, as Titian’s incessant concerns about money are well documented in his late life[101]; also, the noble persona would of had a subsidiary rhetorical benefit for his son and successor in the workshop, Orazio, had he not died prematurely soon after Titian as a result of the plague. The independent self-portraits of Titian all convey the noble rank of the artist: in each, he is shown in the sumptuous clothes of a noble with the gold chains that signify his ennoblement from Charles V.[102] In the Prado Self-Portrait Titian adopts a rare type of composition – unusually authoritative for an artist – by portraying himself in profile. One interpretation of this compositional choice is based on the visual parallel with his profile on a medal fashioned by Leone Leoni.[103] Medals were the only autonomous self-images in the Quattrocento and their circulation among courtly circles as gifts became a means for artists to bolster their popularity. In the Prado painting Titian is in the same profile and wears the same skullcap as the medal portrait. By the sixteenth century this usage of profile portraiture from ancient coinage was anachronistic and popularly associated with noble expressions of authority. Titian also promoted his noble title in the signatures of various commissioned works.[104]
The noble association to Titian’s public persona advanced the self-identity of the artist as a second Apelles. This homage was explicitly mentioned in the original legal document of Titian’s knighthood by Charles V:Observing therefore your remarkable fidelity towards us and the holy Roman Empire, together with your illustrious qualities and the endowments of your genius in that exquisite science of painting and in finishing portraits to the life, in which art indeed you appear to us to merit being named the Apelles of our age…[105]
This conceit had a rhetorical advantage for both artist and patron, as Apelles was professed to be the greatest painter of antiquity and loyal subject to one of the greatest leaders of antiquity, Alexander the Great. Many Renaissance artists appropriated the identity of Apelles to the point of being a cliché, yet for Titian, it is arguable there was a personal meaning to it. Apelles excelled in portraiture, and the female nude; so too did Titian. Titian had also revived one of Apelles’ most famous subjects in the Venus Anadyomene now in Edinburgh, and in the signatures of various commissioned works Titian employed the imperfect tense of the verb facere popularized by the ancient painter.[106] As Richard Cocke noted, “Although Apelles drew every day as Titian is reported by Dolce to have done, neither he nor Apelles relied primarily on contour line to carry the conviction of form in their painting.”[107] Titian’s stylistic shift has been interpreted as a self-conscious decision to emulate techniques recorded in classical texts.[108] The loose brushwork of Titian’s later works conform to the Plinian ideal as exemplified in Apelles that an artist must avoid excessive diligence.[109] The restricted range of Titian’s late colour has also been interpreted in the light of Pliny’s account of Apelles’ four-colour system.[110] In the final decades of Titian’s life the premonition of the artist’s death must have been lingering in the minds of friends and patrons alike. Titian’s estate was sold off quite soon after his death, putting into circulation canvases in various states. By closely fashioning his public persona as a second Apelles in both style and temperament, Titian may have attempted to conjure in his dwindling clientele the same transcendental admiration that Pliny spoke of, with regards to the final unfinished works of Apelles:
[these works are] more admired than those which they finished, because in them are seen the preliminary drawings left visible and the artist’s actual thoughts, and in the midst of approval’s beguilement we fell regret that the artist’s hand while engaged in the work was removed by death.[111]
Personal and Public Meaning in the Late Works of Michelangelo
In the last two decades of his life, Michelangelo designed three Pietàs, two sculpted by his own hand.[114] These works appear to recant the youth aesthetic of his Vatican Pietà (1499-1500), in particular its classicizing dedication to the human form:
[Michelangelo] attempted to limit the internal life of his forms and discipline them into becoming the unambiguous vehicles of sacred meaning. He reduced articulation, deployed continuities in place of contrapposto, and replaced surface sensuousness with epidermal impersonality. Physicality is subordinated to the idea, the possibilities of pleasure ruthlessly eliminated.[115]
The overt archaism of these late pietas has been interpreted as a reform aesthetic in emulation of an original conception of cult statuary.[116] Similarly, Joannides sees this as a nostalgic return to concepts learned in his youth, and in particular, Michelangelo’s early admiration of the expressive line of Giotto.[117] A further distinction to these latter permutations of the Vatican Pietà is their emphatic Christological focus, deemphasizing the role of Mary in the compositions. A similar Christological focus was at work in Michelangelo’s late poetry, as the erotic tinge to his early poetry dissipated and gave way to a deeper spiritual interest in the Divine Savior. The artist’s resemblance in the guise of Nicodemus of the Florence Pietà has encouraged scholarly discourse on the intimate spiritual importance of this late series to Michelangelo.[118] Alexander Nagel expands the dialogue between these late works and the Vatican Pietà in his observation of the disembodied arm of the unfinished Rondinani Pietà (fig. 6). The arm belongs to neither Christ nor Mary, hovering to the side, an unfinished concept of Michelangelo’s prototype for this sculpture. Opposed to the elongated abstractions of Mary and Christ, the arm is suggestive of past classicizing tendencies. Its presence evokes what Nagel calls “a sense of defeat” by the artist.[119] The decision to leave the arm in the sculptural program of the Rondinani Pietà despite its lack of functionality may allude to the artist’s growing disdain for the licentiousness of his past work, or his physical incapacity to materialize his ambitions at such an advanced age.[120] As physical records of Michelangelo’s artistic development in his late career, the pietas signify a drastic rejection of the humanist ideals, including the significance of disegno and mimesis. Their gradual simplification of form engendered abstract levels of representation culminating in the Rondanini Pietà, indicating either a decline in physical and/or mental faculties of the aging artist, or a deliberate spiritual refinement of form like that evoked in Trecento cult statuary. The divinization of the artist by his biographers became a means to explain this drastic shift, while preserving the “mortal” integrity of humanist learning.
In the sixteenth century there was a growing pessimism towards the humanist conceit of man’s nearly limitless flexibility in fashioning his persona, as had been popularized by Quattrocento thinker Pico della Mirandola. Secular writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli and Ludovico Ariosto opposed the view of a willed metamorphosis through intellectual discipline.[121] Discredited in the secular sense, the opportunity to legitimately will the fashioning of the mind and soul found rhetorical advantage in the theological considerations of the Protestant Reformation, particularly in the doctrine of predestinarianism. This doctrine represented “a return to the Augustinian miracle of conversion through grace, a miracle which the individual accepts but does not initiate.”[122] Michelangelo’s enthusiasm for reform views in his old age has already been mentioned. The idea that the artist chose to forego the sacrament of penitence for a more intimate form of communication with his Savior through his art suggests a protestant-like faith in his own abilities as a believer. Michelangelo’s assumption that his artistic gifts derive from a divine source is implicit in his account of Raphael, as one who “had this art not from nature, but from long study.”[123] In his private writings, he makes it explicit: “(I was born) for that fine art which defeats nature of one bears it down from heaven with him, although one must exert oneself fully in every way.”[124] Often in his poetry he drew on the concetto of the artist as a reanimator who, like Pygmalion, infuses spirit into lifeless and inert matter: “Even if you were made of stone, I believe I could love you with such faith that I could make you walk with me more than one step, and if you were dead I would make you speak…”[125] A possible concession for the divine artist is made in Francesco da Hollanda’s Dialoghi romani con Michelangelo, of 1548, where a rhetorical Michelangelo in the dialogue states: “In order to imitate to some extent the venerable image of our Lord it is not sufficient merely to be a great master in painting and very wise, but I think that it is necessary for the painter to be very moral in his mode of life, or even, if such were possible, a saint, so that the Holy Spirit may inspire his intellect.”[126] In a letter written by the aging artist, Michelangelo expresses disdain for normal artistic work implying a higher purpose to his work.[127]The emphasis on the image-making faculties of the mind as a transcendent attribute of the artist-genius loses its rhetorical advantage as the individual reaches extreme old age, due to the perceived mental deterioration such aging causes. This fallibility potentially undermines the authority of the artist-genius. As we have seen with the elderly Titian, speculations arose to his ability to perform, and his clientele for new works dwindled. An appeal to the higher principle of grace as a source of artistic ingegno in the aging artist’s willed self-fashioning protected the integrity of his late work on the basis of the perceived incorruptible nature of the soul in Cinquecento religious thought. In Achille Bocchi’s Symbolicarum quaestionum libri quinque published in Bologna in 1533 the author states that “whatever may be the nature of the faculty that admonishes us, conceives, exerts willpower and vitality, [the soul] stems from superior divine origin and is therefore eternal”.[128] As Matthias Winner has pointed out, Michelangelo’s buon-disegno known as Il Sogno (fig.7) demonstrates a remote knowledge of the Aristotelian concept “Entelechia Psyche” which refers to the soul as the life and form of the body; a similar demonstration is found in one of his sonnets to Tommaso Cavalieri:
In order to return from whence it cameThe immortal form down to your prison house
Of earth came like an angel, with such grace
It honors earth by healing every brain.[129]
The sonnet attests to Michelangelo’s understanding of the soul as immortal, and therefore fundamentally incorruptible. Winner believes the content of the drawing, Il Sogno, is connected to ideas in this sonnet, wherein the angel who places his ‘inspiring’ trumpet-like instrument on the forehead of the male nude causes the spiritual infusion of a soul, animating an otherwise lifeless body.[130] The image can also be read as marking the moment of divine inspiration in an artist-genius, as Ruvoldt notes the strong Ficinian associations of the melancholic genius in the trumpet’s placement at the figures forehead; similarly the gestures of a turning head and upward glance belong to the pictorial vocabulary of divine inspiration.[131] Ambiguity was part of the appeal of Michelangelo’s gift drawings, in that it was the task of the viewer to strive to understand after a considerable time of contemplation. The dual reading of the drawing as both a depiction of the soul’s arrival into a terrestrial prison and that of a melancholic genius in the throes of divine inspiration invokes a possible parallel between the two activities of the soul which share a similar rhetorical advantage for the divine artist: the first alludes to the concept of guidizio naturale in its enunciation of inception, while the latter explicitly refers to the circuitus spiritualis through which the higher principle of grace can be imparted upon the artist’s intellect. Michelangelo’s assertion of the eternal quality of the soul in his sonnet, and the potentially divine allusions to artistic ingegno in his Sogno suggest the artist was aware of the desirable potency of divine connotations, and, nearing an age in which the purely terrestrial connotations of the mind could be suspect of deterioration, it is possible Michelangelo endorsed his public persona as a spiritual visionary in order to validate his continued efforts in the arts.
The most significant platform for this endorsement was his Last Judgment (1536-41) in the Sistine Chapel. Whereas artists such as Raphael fashioned their own image on the social mannerisms that were popular at the time, Michelangelo was far more abstract in his self-image, in that he integrated his identity with the emotive resonance of the work, importing faint clues to his own presence within it. In his own poetry, Michelangelo consistently refers to himself as an extension of his art, and frequently uses the verb fabbricare to indicate the (literary) creation of illusions about the self.[132] There is little doubt that passages of Dante’s Divina Commedia are referenced in this fresco, most notably, in the lower right corner, Charon on his bark from the third Canto of Inferno, and Minos directly behind Charon, from Canto V.[133] Michelangelo was continually at pains to associate a parallel between the deeply religious poet and himself, as was enthusiastic commentators of the artist’s work.[134] According to art historian, Paul Barolsky, the deeper significance of Michelangelo’s emulation of Dante is in his narrative mode: “Like Dante, who wrote about himself in his Vita Nuova and Commedia, Michelangelo self-consciously formed himself in a still highly confessional mode.”[135] Yet Dante also personified a rare type of artist whose moral conviction took on a quasi-divine status in the opinions of Renaissance commentators. Emulating Dante greatly advanced the concept of Michelangelo’s own visionary power.
As to the confessional nature of the Last Judgment fresco, many scholars agree that the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew (fig.8) near the center of the composition bears a symbolic resemblance to Michelangelo.[136] Some believe this choice of identity was made to recall the ancient story of the flaying of Marsyas, a story invested with Christian undertones in the beginning of Dante’s Paradiso. Christ as Judge in this fresco also bears a remarkable resemblance to the classical sculpture, the Apollo of Belevedere, which strengthens the argument that the flayed skin of Bartholomew is meant to refer to Marsyas.[137] In this reading of the flayed skin as a symbolic self-portrait, Michelangelo used the fresco to confess his own feelings of guilt, in a way that is reminiscent of Dante’s own mode of narration. The motivation for the Marsyas-Michelangelo association may have also been to underscore the martyr-like suffering the artist had undergone in the creation of his Sistine chapel frescoes. As Beat Wyss writes:
The great Renaissance painters sensed in Marsyas an affinity to their own existence as artists… Marsyas suffers torture as a chosen one, and Apollo absorbs himself in the sacrificial process as an instrument of necessity. He wields the knife much as the engraver guides his burin over the plate… Marsyas is… a martyr for art. Art is meant to radiate through his agonizing death, as does the assurance of Christian salvation through Christ’s sacrifice. Marsyas has the pious, humble relentlessness of the Christian saint.[138]
Therefore, the flayed skin may signify a symbolic presence of the artist with allusions to his saintly nature.
Conclusion
EndNotes
[1] Philip Sohm. “Pittoresco: Marco Boschini, his Critics and their Critiques of Painterly Brushwork in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Italy. New York: Cambridge Uni. Press, 1965. P. 15-16.
[2] Kemp, Martin. “The ‘Super-Artist’ as Genius: The Sixteenth-Century View”, Genius: The History of an Idea. Oxford: Basil Blackwell ltd, 1989. P. 36.
[3] Baldesar Castiglione. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. George Bull. London: Penguin books, 1976. Bk.1, P.81-83.
[4] Marsilio Ficino. “Platonic Theology”, Journal of the History of Ideas. Trans. J. L. Burroughs. April, 1944: P. 87.
[5] Goffen, Rona. Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2002. P. 391. Emphasis mine.
[6] Titian took such license by sending uncommissioned paintings to King Philip II of Spain for which the painter hoped eventually to be paid for. The Only two patrons who apparently commissioned works by Michelangelo without specifying the subject were Alfonso d’Este, and Alfonso d’Avalos. It was once stated that it was Bellini’s custom “always to wander (vagare) at will in his paintings so that he may satisfy those who see them” Gaye, G., ed., Carteggo inedito d’artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI, Florence, 1839-40, vol. II, pp. 71-72.
[7] In Vittoria Colonna’s letters to Michelangelo the roles are reversed between creator and viewer. The creator was given an assumed authority, upon which it was the viewer’s responsibility to work to understand. Alexander Nagel. “Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna”, Art Bulletin. 4 (1997): 654; With the arrival of the painterly style a new stress was placed on the viewer’s internalization of the image in order to complete the work, a premise examined in Anton Francesco Doni’s Disegno (1549).
[8] See Rosand, David. Drawings Acts: Studies in Graphic Expression and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. P. 2. Vasari insists the audience of prints went beyond the purely professional audience to include amateurs who took particular delight in such graphic imagery. Ibid. 148.
[9] Both in his Dialogo della Pittura of 1557, and in various letters prior.
[10] Guidizio naturale was a concept heavily supported by Pietro Bembo and Baldesar Castiglione, and incorporated in Dolce’s Aretino (p 159). Dolce writes in a letter on Titian: “Without as yet having seen the antiquities of Rome, which were a source of enlightenment to all excellent painters, and purely by dint of that little spark which he had uncovered in the works of Giorgione, Titian discerned and apprehended the essence of perfect painting.” Mark W. Roskill. Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento. Ed. Margaret L. King, Albert Rabil Jr., and Erika Rummel. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. P. 189.; Similarly, in the biography by Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo’s talent are referred to as a gift of nature. Maria Ruvoldt. “Michelangelo’s Dream”, Art Bulletin. 2 (2003): 112. Michelangelo writes of his gifts as natural yet requiring discipline to be fully actualized: “(I was born) for that fine art which defeats nature of one bears it down from heaven with him, although one must exert oneself fully in every way.” Carl Frey, Die Dichtungen des Michelangelo Buonarroti, Berlin, 1897, P. 196.; Carlos Ridolfi insists Titian once said that “not everyone was suited for painting and that many artists remained mistaken in their approach to the difficulties in this art… painting with intensity and without the required talent could not give birth to anything but formless results” and that he sought in that faculty “unperturbed genius”. Carlo Ridolfi. The Life of Titian. Trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania UP, 1996. P. 135.
[11] Referring to the program of Titian’s proposed funeral, Phillip Fehl writes, “Government itself is made to appear virtuous because it is of service to the artist, rather than that the arts are ennobled because kings and popes and emperors, touched by the artist’s work and person, will deign to make use of him and accept him in their presence.” Phillip P. Fehl. Decorum and Wit: The Poetry of Venetian Painting: Essays in the History of the Classical Tradition. Vienna: Irsa, 1992. P. 314.
[12] On the vertical flexibility of humanist self-fashioning see Thomas Greene. “Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature”, Disciplines of Criticisms: Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation and History. Ed. Peter Demetz et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. P. 250; notable mentions of their divinity: both Michelangelo and Titian in Pino’s Lauro (“questi duo li tengo come dei”) and Aretino’s letters; Titian in Dolce’s Aretino (In Dolce’s letter to Ballini, Titian is not just “divinio, ma divinissimo.”
[13] There is no consensus on when old age begins; see both Erin J. Campbell. “The Art of Aging Gracefully: The Elderly Artist as Courtier in Early Modern Art Theory and Criticism”. Sixteenth Century Journal 33 (2002): 321-331; Creighton Gilbert. “When Did a Man in the Renaissance Grow Old?” Studies in the Renaissance 14 (1967): 7-32. Gilbert believes Titian lived into his eighties. Ibid P. 24;
Michelangelo 89 (1564); Titian 89 (1576) in Thomas Dormandy. Old Masters: Great Artists in Old Age. London: Thomas Dormandy, 2000. P. 3.
[14] Gabriele Zerbi. Gerontocomia: On the Care of the Aged and Maximianus, Elegies of Old Age and Love. Trans. L.R. Lind. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988. P. 20. Zerbi relates these changes of attitude to the physical changes of the body as he understood them within humoral theory.
[15] Castiglione, B. Il Libro . P. 107-108, 122.
[16] Quentin Massys “Ill-Matched Pair” (c. 1520) is a popular example.
[17] Ibid. P. 123.
[18] Dolce, L. Aretino. P. 141.
[19] See Campbell, E. Sixteenth Century Journal. P. 327.
[20] Ibid. P. 323. For Vasari, the problematic works of Titian’s were the S. Salvatore Annunciation and the Transfiguration and those of later date. Vasari’s Vite 1568 edition, in particular the life of Pontormo, Titian, Lotto, Bandinelli. On Vasari’s ageism see Gilbert, C. Studies in the Renaissance. P. 8.
[21] David Summers. Michelangelo and the Language of Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. P. 8.
[22]The historian David Herlihy, ( Medieval Households. Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1985) notes that the fifteenth-century priest Bernardino de Fettue complained of Joseph’s usual portrayal as a powerless old man; he held that Joseph was in his mid-thirties when he married Mary. On some popular depictions of Joseph old: Giorgione’s Holy Family (c.1500), Michelangelo’s (1504), Pontormo’s (1525), Jacopo da Ponte’s Flight into Egypt (1540), and Tintoretto’s Flight into Egypt (1525).
[23] Herbert C. Covey. Images of Older People in Western Art and Society. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991. P. 26.
[24] Jonathan Sawday. The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture. London: Routledge, 1995. P. 110.
[25] Kemp, M. Genius: The History of an Idea. P. 38. “With respect to the fifteenth century usage of ingenium in the visual arts is that it is invariably conjoined, implicitly or explicitly, with the concept of manual skill (arte) and with the mastery of those rational rules (known collectively as dottrina or disciplina) which govern such matters as imitation, composition and decorum.”
[26] Ibid. P. 38.
[27]Plato, Phaedrus Trans, Harold North Fowler. Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 1977. P. 465.
[28] Castiglione, B. Il Libro P. 123
[29] See Aretino’s letters, but also in the character of Aretino in Dolce, L. Aretino. P. 165. Both Challenged the decorum of his Last Judgment; also in Dolce’s Aretino criticisms of his lack of variety in figural types, his hard stony colour and his tendency to be too obscure in his inventions.
[30] Kemp, M. Genius: the History of an Idea. P. 48.
[31] Taken from lecture in FAH341F taught by Professor Philip Sohm.
[32] Dolce, L. Aretino. P. 175.
[33] i.e. Vincenzo Danti’s Trattato (1567). Dolce, in his Aretino, spoke of images function to awaken devotion in the viewer and the painter’s d’ingegno e di animo, and the importance of their ability to “surpass the rest of humanity in intellect and spirit, daring as they do to imitate with their art the things which God has created…” P. 113.
[34] Anton Francesco Doni, “A Michelangelo Buonarotti,” Jan 12, 1543, in Doni, Lettere (Venice, 1546), fols. 20v-21.
[35] Erwin Panofsky. Idea: A Concept in Art Theory. Trans. Joseph J. S. Peake. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969. P. 67.
[36] Summers, D. Michelangelo and the Language of Art. P. 211, 332-79.
[37] i.e. Milanese artist Giampaolo Lomazzo theoretical writing late-sixteenth century, such as in L’Idea del tempio della pittura (1590). Qtd in Campbell, E. Sixteenth Century Journal. P. 325.
[38] Ibid. P.322.
[39] Ibid. P. 330.
[40] Letter dated March 17th, 1562. qtd in James Esq. Northcote. The Life of Titian: With Anecdotes of the Distinguished Persons of his Time. 2 vol. London: C. & W. Reynell, 1830. P. 361.
[41] Philip Jacks, ed. Vasari’s Florence: Artists and Literati at the
Medicean Court
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. P. 20.
[42] Qtd. in Lisa Pon. “Michelangelo’s Lives: Sixteenth-Century books by Vasari, Condivi and others”, Sixteenth-Century Journal. 4 (1996): 1016-1036.
[43] Ibid. P. 1023.
[44] Letter dated November, 1545. Pietro Aretino. The Letters of Pietro Aretino. Trans Thomas Caldecot Chubb. Baskerville, New Hampshire: Archon Books, 1967. P. 597. Aretino had a personal grudge towards Michelangelo prior to this letter when his persistent requests for a sketch from the master’s hand were silently refused, yet the sentiment of the fresco’s impiety was palpable during this period.
[45] Letter dated c. 1537. Northcote, J. The Life of Titian. V.1, P. 204.
[46] Nagel, A. Art Bulletin. P. 652. In his poetry Michelangelo reveals his strong sympathy for Savonarola and his own disdain for the decadence and corruption of Rome; however he was a devout Christian and never questioned the ritual practices and teaching of the Roman church. See Konrad Eisenbichler. “The Religious Poetry of Michelangelo: The Mystical Sublimation”, Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship in English. Vol 5. ed. William E. Wallace. New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1995. P. 196.
[47] Nagel, A. Art Bulletin. P. 652.
[48] Ibid. P. 654.
[49] Eisenbichler, K. Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship. P. 195.
[50](Michelangelo was directly associated with Saturn, and hence Ficinian melancholy, in Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Idea del tempio della pittura. (1590).
[51] Letter dated March 17th, 1562. Northcote, J. Life of Titian. P. 365. Emphasis mine.
[52] In a letter dated June 11, 1564, Daniele da Volterra wrote that Michelangelo was still working on Feb 12, 1564. in Tolnay, Charles de. Michelangelo, V, (Princeton, 1947-60): pg 154-57.
[53] Alexander Nagel. “Observations on Michelangelo’s late Pieta drawings and sculptures”, Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte. 59 (1996): P. 566.
[54] Robert J. Clements. Michelangelo: A Self-Portrait. New Jersey : Prentice-Hall Inc, 1963. P. 28.
[55] See biographies by Vasari and Ridolfi especially.
[56] David Rosand. “Titian and the Critical Tradition”, Titian: His World and His Legacy. Ed. David Rosand. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. P. 24.
[57] Northcote, J. The Life of Titian. V.2, P. 259.
[58] Emphasis of Titian’s funerary program more secular, from accounts of Francesco Sansovino in 1581: he claims Titian was buried beneath the venerated Altar of the Crucifix in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frai (the site he had been negotiating to place his Pieta). Qtd in David Rosand. Titian: His World and his Legacy. P. 1.
[59] Phillip P. Fehl. Decorum and Wit: The Poetry of Venetian Painting: Essays in the History of the Classical Tradition. Vienna: Irsa, 1992. P. 314.
[60] Accounts of Titian’s portrait in Veronese, see Frederick Hartt. History of Italian Renaissance. Fourth ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1994. P. 620; for his portrait in Bassano see Richard Cocke. “Titian the Second Apelles: The Death of Actaeon”, Renaissance Studies. 13 (1999): P. 303.
[61] Rosand challenges the view that Palma played a decisive role in the functioning of the master’s late shop, based solely on the documentation that he completed the Pieta in the Accademia in Venice. Rosand says this view is based in a fundamental misunderstanding of the working procedures of Titian’s studio as well as a radical over-estimation of Palma’s artistic powers. Also none of the biographers make note of this connection. David Rosand. “Palma il Giovane as Draughtsman: The Early Career and Related Observations”, Master Drawings. 8 (1970): P. 155.
[62] Ridolfi, C. Life of Titian.
[63] E. Tietze-Conrat. “Titian’s Workshop in his Late years”, Art Bulletin. 28 (1946): P. 79.
[64] Bruce Cole lists examples where patron’s requests encroach on Titian’s ability to be original, i.e. Philip II’s specific design for Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto, also his commission from the city of Brescia, three allegories for the ceiling of the Palazzo Communale there (Allegory of Brescia, a Vulcan with the Cyclops, and an Allegory of Ceres and Bacchus) detailed instructions with colours and figures specified. Bruce Cole. “Titian and the Idea of Originality”, The Craft of Art: Originality and Industry in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque Workshop. Ed. Andrew Ladis. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Pg. 89, 108.
[65] Joanna, Woods-Marsden. Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and Social Status of the Artist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. p. 229.
[66] Erwin Panofsky. “Titian’s Allegory of Prudence: a Postscript”, Meaning in the Visual Arts. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970. p. 149. Panofsky translates the motto to read: “From the [experience of the] past, the present acts prudently, lest it spoil future action.”
[67] Between 1500-1600 average age of Doge was 75, also there was the assumption that a politician was still young in his mid-40’s. Robert Finlay. “The Venetian Republic as a gerontocracy: age and politics in the Renaissance”. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8 (1978): 157-178.
[68] Northcote, J. Life of Titian. V.2, P. 218.
[69] Cocke, R. Renaissance Studies. P. 303; Characterizing the aged as stingy was symptomatic of the limited civic resources available during this period. Shulamith Shahar. Growing Old in the Middle Ages. Trans. Yael Lotan. New York: Routledge, 1997. P. 9.
[70] Cocke, R. Renaissance Studies. P. 303.
[71] R. Paluchini. Tiziano, 2 volumes (Florence, 1969), ii, p. 342. Qtd in Dormandy, T. Old Masters. P. 183.
[72] Francesco Valcanover. Titian: Prince of Painters. ed. Susanna Biadene. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1990. P. 415.
[73] See Bert Meijer, “Titian and the North”, Renaissance Venice and the North Crosscurrents in the time of Bellini, Durer, and Titian. Ed. Bernard Aikema. New York: Bompiani, 1999; Charles Hope. Titian. P. 152; Hans Tietze. “Earliest and Latest Works of Great Artists”, Gazette Des Beaux-Arts. 26 (1944): 273-84.
[74] The three paintings of this commission included The Furnace of the Cyclops, Brescia with Minerva and Mars and Ceres and Bacchus, finished in 1567; as to the panel’s decision see Cole, B. The Craft of Art. P. 108.
[75] The painting is believed to be Mater Misercordiae in the Pitti Palace. Notably, Titian made this without relying on an older version (that we know of), the composition was completely new. E. Tietze-Conrat. Gazette des Beaux-Arts. P. 87.
[76] T. Dormandy. Old Masters. P. 183.
[77] Ibid. 212; for examples of Phillip’s enthusiasm for new works, see J. Northcote. Life of Titian P. 324.
[78] C. Hope. Titian. P. 119.
[79] Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Trans. Gaston du C. de Vere. London: David Campbell Publishers Ltd, 1996. P. 797.
[80] B. Castiglione. Il Libro. P. 67.
[81] F. Baldinucci, Notizie, III. P.264 originally published in 1702, Zibaldone baldinucciano, ed. B. Santi, Florence, 1981. Qtd in P. Sohm. Pittoresco. P. 13.
[82] Ibid. P. 36.
[83] Ibid. P. 2. Boschini enhanced the idea of the painterly style a regional style of Venice, Vasari also indicated that there were many imitators of Titian’s late style, though we have very few identifiable examples. Jill Dunkerton “Late Titian”, Titian. London: National Gallery company ltd., 2003.
[84] Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Trans. H. Rackham. London: William Heinmann Ltd., 1938. Bk. XXXV. P. 367.
[85] T. Dormandy. Old Masters. P. 314-15.
[86] W. R. Rearick. “Titian’s Later Mythologies”, Artibus et Historiae. 33 (1996) : P. 62.
[87] According to Ridolfi (1648) Titian planned this painting for the Capella del Cristo at the Frari, but was for some reason never accepted. C. Ridolfi. Life of Titian. P. 206.
[88] Giovanni Nepi Scire. “The Catalogue”, Titian: Prince of Painters. ed. Susanna Biadene. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1990. P. 374.
[89] P. Fehl. Decorum and Wit. P. 327.
[90] Ibid. P. 327.
[91] Erwin Panofsky. Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic. Phaidon, 1969. P. 91.
[92] See Aretino’s letters for evidence of Titian’s problems with his younger son. P. 295.
[93] Simona Cohen. “Titian’s London Allegory and the Three Beasts of his Selva Oscura”,Renaissance Studies. 14 (2000): P. 61.
[94] Cohen notes that the somber chromatic effect built up of multi-coloured brushstrokes comparable to his Flaying of Marsyas and Pieta. Ibid. P. 61.
[95] Titian’s high esteem for the Franciscan order may be gleaned by his desire to be buried in the Capella del Cristo at the Frari , as Ridolfi mentioned.
[96] S. Cohen. Renaissance Studies. P. 66.
[97] As Rearick notes, the fact that it was acquired by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, during the first half of the Seicento suggests that it had been in a Venetian private collection and was earlier among the unfinished pictures left in Titian’s studio at his death. W. R. Rearick. Artibus et Historiae P. 62.
[98] Titian took such license by sending uncommissioned paintings to King Philip II of Spain for which the painter hoped eventually to be paid for. Rona Goffen. Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2002. P. 391. As previously mentioned, Phillip II was Titian’s primary patron, yet even by this late date there seems to have been a falling out, with insistent letters by Titian to Antonio Perez, secretary to the King, for compensation of sent paintings. The other evidence to suggest the painting was uncommissioned was its presence in the artist’s studio upon his death.
[99] B. Cole. The Craft of Art. P. 93.
[100] W. R. Rearick. Artibus et Historiae. P. 62.
[101] See footnote 98.
[102] J. Woods-Marsden. Renaissance Self-Portraiture. P. 229.
[103] Luba Freedman. Titian’s Independent Self-Portraits. Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1990. P. 22.
[104] L. Matthew. “The Painter’s Presence: Signatures in Venetian Renaissance Pictures”, Art Bulletin. 80 (1998): P. 648.
[105] J. Northcote. Life of Titian. P. 309.
[106] L. Matthew. Art Bulletin. P. 641.
[107] R. Cocke. Renaissance Studies. P. 310.
[108] Ibid.
[109] Pliny. Natural History P. 321.
[110] Pliny mentioned Apelles used red, yellow, black and white, Ibid. P. 329. Boschini tells us that these were the customary hues of Titian’s underpainting. Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy. “Apelles Redivivus”, Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann. Ed. Lucy Freeman Sandler. New York: J. J. Augustin, 1964. P. 167-8. Kennedy makes an interesting case that Titian’s knowledge of ancient painting may not of been restricted to literary sources, having visited Rome in 1545, prior accounts of now destroyed Roman wall paintings (paolo Pino in 1534) and Titian’s use of red ochre in the contours of his Farnese Danae, similar technique used in Roman painting, Ibid. P. 169.
[111] Pliny. Natural History. P. 367.
[112] K. Eisenbichler. Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship. P. 198.
[113] D. Rosand. Drawing Acts. P. 209-10.
[114] Pietà museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, (with self-portrait as Nicodemus); Palestrina Pietà, Galleria dell’Accademia Florence (designed by him); Rondanini Pietà, in Castello Sforesco Milan. (c. 1560).
[115] Paul Joannides. “’Primitivism’ in the Late Drawings of Michelangelo: the Master’s Construction of an Old-age Style”, Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship in English. Vol 5. ed. William E. Wallace. New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1995. P. 85.
[116] Ibid. P. 83; A. Nagel. Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte. P. 563.
[117] P. Joannides. Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship. P. 84.
[118] Paul Barolsky. Michelangelo’s Nose: A Myth and its Maker. London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990. Vasari claims the Florence Pietà was intended to sit at the foot of his tomb.
[119] A. Nagel. Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte. P. 571.
[120] D. Summers: “In his late years [Michelangelo] seems to have repented of the pridefulness of his youth, and Condivi seems especially at pains to identify Michelangelo’s ‘bizarre, fantastic’ ways with his youth, in contrast to the respectability- even the nobility- of his old age.” Summers. Michelangelo and the Language of Art. P. 8, 452. More on this in cultural aspects of the Italian ren, essays in honour of paul kristeller. Pg 406-424.
[121] Thomas Greene. “Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature”, Disciplines of Criticisms: Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation and History. Ed. Peter Demetz et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. P. 256.
[122] Ibid. P. 252.
[123] In condivi :“non ebbe quest’arte da natura, ma per lungio studio”. P. 63.
[124] Robert J. Clements. “Michelangelo on Effort and Rapidity in Art”, Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship in English. Vol 5. ed. William E. Wallace. New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1995. P. 328.
[125] Composed 1531-32. Stephen J. Campbell. “’Fare una Cosa Morta Parer Viva’: Michelangelo, Rosso and the (Un)Divinity of Art”, Art Bulletin. 4 (2002): P. 614.
[126] R. Clements. Michelangelo: A Self-Portrait. P. 67.
[127] A. Nagel. Art Bulletin. P. 656.
[128] Michelangelo had some remote knowledge of the Aristotelian concept “Entelechia Psyche” when he praised the “belta divina” of Cecchin Bracci in his poetic epitaph of 1544, referring to the soul as the life and the form of the body.” Matthias Winner. “Michelangelo’s Il Sogno as an Example of an Artist’s Visual Reflection in His Drawings”, Michelangelo’s Drawings. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1988. P. 239. The author suggests the artist’s buon-disegno known as Il Sogno demonstrates this concept in its portrayal of divine inspiration.
[129] Summers was the first to make the connection between this sonnet with Il Sogno, Michelangelo and the Language of Art. P. 215-17. Emphasis mine.
[130] M. Winner. Michelangelo’s Drawings P. 239.
[131] Ruvoldt writes: “The unusual placement of the trumpet further advances the Sogno’s affiliation with melancholy and the theme of divine inspiration. As he descends, the angel/genius blows his trumpet not at the youth’s ears, as we might expect, but instead at the center of his forehead. This is the very spot indicated for the cauterization of melancholics in a medieval medical text.” Art Bulletin P. 89.
[132] Paul Barolsky. The Faun and the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Origins of Italian Renaissance Art. University Park, 1994. P. 125-8.
[133] F. Hartt. A History of Italian Renaissance Art. P. 633.
[134] M. Kemp: “the recorded effect of the creations of Michelangelo’s transcendent talent upon spectators was to overcome their minds with wonder.” Genius: the History of an Idea. P. 45. As David Summers has shown, terms such as stupendo, stupore, and meraviglia began to be used in connection with his works in order to suggest that their effects lay beyond the realm to which only the most sublime works of literature had previously been admitted, most notably Dante’s divina commedia.” Michelangelo and the Language of Art. Associations between Michelangelo and Dante were repeatedly made in the catafalque of Michelangelo’s funerary program, see Rudolf and Margot Wittkower. The Divine Michelangelo: the florentine academy’s homage on his death in 1564 London: Phaidon Press, 1964. P. 108-9.
[135] P. Barolsky. Michelangelo’s Nose. P. xvii.
[136] Ibid. P. 84; F. Hartt. A History of Italian Renaissance Art. P. 633.
[137] P. Barolsky. Michelangelo’s Nose. P. 84.
[138] Beat Wyss. “The Last Judgment as Artistic Process: The Flaying of Marsyas in the Sistine Chapel”, RES 28 (1995): 65.
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