by Sheila Hale
While the younger virtuoso continued to produce his gorgeous tributes to an idealized Venice – and Tintoretto to reflect his agonized spirituality in his magnificent fresco cycle for the Scuola di San Rocco15 – Titian was engaged by very different projects. While working on the Allegory of Lepanto that Philip had ordered after the great victory and a St Jerome that he would send with it in September 1575, he continued to explore the new way of painting that he knew would be unacceptable to the king as, indeed, to most paying patrons. The earlier more accessible works were still sought after, and the workshop continued to turn out copies and variants. But his assistants could not follow him to the place where his painterly imagination was taking him. Weakened by age, jealous of his painting time, he leaned more than ever before on Orazio to collaborate in the studio as well as to perform practical tasks, such as the selection and purchase for over 130 ducats from a Venetian vendecolore of an array of colours requested by Phillip II in May 1572 for the decoration of the Escorial, where work was beginning on the King’s House.
Personal and family problems weighed more heavily in the extreme old age that he unfailingly cited as a reason for having his way. When in the winter of 1572 there was trouble in Cadore involving his relatives who served on the council Titian sprang ardently to the defence of his nephew, his sister Dorotea’s son Odorico Soldano, a notary and prefectural chancellor of the communal government of Cadore. Odorico was at the centre of a heated row that had split the Vecellio clan. He had aroused the resentment of the other notaries in the communal government, and when the centuria, or administrative district, of Domegge wished to elect him as their official representative the council insisted that such an appointment would be incompatible with his office as chancellor. Led by Vecello Vecellio and his son Tiziano, the council decided to send to Venice four orators and twenty representatives of the centurie to put the case against Odorico to the doge. On 26 December Titian reacted with a furious letter to the Magnifica Comunità di Cadore. The council, he wrote, was putting itself in danger of losing the good faith of the Most Serene Republic, and its behaviour was judged very bad indeed by all intelligent people. ‘This, I say with great passion from my heart because each one of you knows how many benefits I have extended to you … whether sought after or not.’ He went on:
… I love my dear homeland and try always to honour it to favour you. But I would never have believed that I would receive in recompense for those loving and good deeds a persecution like that you are making against the person of the Chancellor, knowing that he is my nephew the son of one of my sisters and a person in his own right of valour and repute, and a good son of your dear country, which I cannot fail, nor will I ever fail to favour with all my power in matters of honesty and justice … It saddens me however that although my nephew has wanted to give every kind of satisfaction to your envoys they, having no inclination to make peace, have not wished to listen. And so I exhort you in the name of that true love that I have borne and bear for the Magnifica Comunità that each one of you will put lovingly aside petty interests and private hatreds, and direct your attention to peace, quiet and the public good.
Unfortunately, the gravitas and past generosity of Cadore’s most famous citizen were not persuasive. The dispute raged on, as petty provincial quarrels do. Odorico Soldano was condemned by the council in May 1573 but appealed with the support of three of the centurie. He also managed to have the accounts of the council examined by an external judge, the podestà of Treviso, to the evident embarrassment of the Vecellio. After further manoeuvres the matter was finally settled in 1574. Soldano remained chancellor and was appointed official of one of the centurie. But Titian was sufficiently disgusted by the behaviour of his relatives to question a lifelong assumption that he would be buried in his birthplace, near his parents and his brother Francesco.
The continuing row with Pomponio over the management of the church benefices was another festering wound, one that he knew would never be healed. Although the two never met again after their exchange of angry letters in 1568 the dispute dragged on and on. In 1573 they were once again engaged in litigation, with Pomponio claiming as before that his father was mismanaging the benefices and Titian denying the charge. Then in September of the same year Titian was further insulted by a tax demand on properties he had transferred to Orazio. He appealed, successfully, with a querulous letter to the Serenissma insisting that he, an old man who could no longer work or earn, had been ‘unjustly condemned’ to pay taxes.
Titian’s great age and physical infirmities were the subject of increasing comment in these years. Guidobaldo della Rovere, who had come to believe that Titian ‘no longer works with his own hand’, was not alone in thinking that he was too old and enfeebled to do more than participate in the paintings that came out of his workshop. Even Philip II was not sure that his favourite painter would be up to the Allegory of Lepanto, which he had ordered after the victory. When ordering the painting he let it be known, as he had a few years earlier about his Martyrdom of St Lawrence, that if Titian couldn’t do it he would find someone else. In 1573–4 Prospero Visconti, a painter who acted as agent to the Duke of Bavaria, William V, proposed the acquisition of a ‘Judith or Herodias’ painted by the ‘disciples’ and ‘corrected’ by Titian. And when the English poet Sir Philip Sidney was in Venice in 1574 he chose Veronese to paint his portrait (lost) rather than Titian, who would doubtless have been his first choice a decade earlier.
But if some were put off by rumours of Titian’s failing health and of the strange new paintings that looked to conventional eyes like mere blotches, Titian was still the most famous painter in Europe, and the people who came to Venice to marvel, as Ridolfi would have it, at its beauty, wealth and good government, ‘also came to see Titian, unique among painters, just as Venice is unique in the universe’. One of these visitors was no less a personage than Henry III, the elected King of Poland, who stopped in Venice for ten days in July 1574 on his way from Poland to assume the throne of France after the death of his brother Charles IX. The Serenissma, which was trying to establish closer ties with France, received Henry with the most elaborate and magnificent spectacles ever mounted in the lagoon city. A triumphal arch, fifteen metres wide, designed by Palladio and painted by Veronese and Tintoretto with scenes of Henry’s achievements, was erected for the occasion in Piazza San Marco. There were masques, music and banquets at which napkins, plates and even the tables were made of sugar. Each of the 200 Scuole decorated a boat. A wooden float on the Grand Canal let off explosions of flames and fireworks that Francesco Sansovino likened to an eruption of Mount Etna. Henry, who conducted a liaison with the poet and courtesan Veronica Franco, also, according to Ridolfi, made a point of paying a visit to Titian’s studio where the master regaled the king with an account of all the great rulers he had served and offered to make a present to him of all the pictures of which he asked the price. It was also said that Henry made an offer to Paolo d’Anna of 800 scudi for the great Ecce Homo that Titian had painted for Paolo’s father Giovanni, and that Paolo turned it down.
Although the story about Henry’s visit to the studio and Titian’s uncharacteristic offer to make a gift of paintings to the king may well be one of Ridolfi’s inventions, Titian still had important patrons, and his international prestige was such, and his core of assistants so highly skilled, that anything bearing the imprimatur of the greatest living painter was still valued. And Titian was still confident enough of his abilities and the products of his studio to claim valuable rewards.16 In 1572 he supplied the Duke of Alba, whose portrait he had painted at Augsburg and who was now Philip II’s governor of the Netherlands, with two paintings, a copy of the Penitent Magdalen, of which he had kept the template (St Petersburg, Hermitage) in his studio, and, appropriately for a professional soldier, a Bellona, goddess of war (lost). His fee was to be a set of tapestry wall hangings, the spalliere hung over furniture, which, as he wrote to the duke on 31 October 1573 reminding him of his promise, were ‘so dear
to me that it could not be more so if you had given me two thousand scudi, because scudi you spend and these serve in the house for ever, and after I have enjoyed them they will be left to my descendants as a testimony of my grateful service to a prince as great as Your Most Illustrious Excellency’. The tapestries, he wrote tactfully, seemed to have gone astray, but when they reached him he would inform the duke in Spain and would send a devotional picture for him along with the next lot of paintings for His Most Catholic Majesty.
Titian would have heard from the Spanish ambassador in Venice, Diego Guzmán de Silva, that Alba was about to be relieved of his post and was preparing to return to Spain. The duke’s campaign to bring the heretical Netherlanders to heel – his Council of Blood, the threatening presence of Spanish troops, the hated tax known as the Tenth Penny, the never to be forgotten execution of Counts Egmont and Hoorn – had had disastrous consequences for the reputation and finances of Spain. In the six years of Alba’s rule the Netherlands had become the biggest single drain on the Spanish treasury, the debt alone consuming two-thirds of available income. After the failure of a siege of Haarlem led by Alba’s son Fadrique, which was repelled when the citizens threatened to wash away the Spaniards by opening the dykes, the Iron Duke, now a sick and weary man, admitted defeat and offered his resignation. When Titian wrote to him about the wall hangings Alba was eagerly waiting for the arrival of his replacement, Luis de Requesens, so that he could be relieved of his post and return to Spain.
Even Cardinal Granvelle, who had himself advocated a tough line and continued to express his admiration for Alba as a person, let it be known that he believed the Netherlands had been ruined under his governance. But it was not only that failure that would be Alba’s undoing. The Castilian aristocracy had long been split into two rival factions, each linked by ties of family and clientage, which were jostling for power through influence on their indecisive king. Alba was the leader of the hawks, who continued to lobby for a hard line in the Netherlands. Those who opposed him and his policy were led by Ruy Gómez de Silva, Prince of Eboli, whom Philip on his accession had appointed a councillor of state. When the Prince of Eboli died soon after Alba’s retirement and return to Spain, Philip’s secretary Antonio Pérez stepped into his shoes and was joined three years later by Eboli’s widow, Doña Aña de Mendoza, a volatile and ambitious intriguer at court whose celebrated beauty was all the more fascinating for the black patch she wore to cover a lost eye. The Ebolist manipulation of Philip brought about a U-turn in Spanish policy in the Netherlands. Luis de Requesens, a member of a distinguished Catalonian family, was sent there as governor charged with negotiating a settlement with the rebels. Philip was persuaded to exile Alba to his estates in Portugal. After the duke’s disgrace we hear nothing more about Titian’s wall hangings.
Antonio Pérez, despite his support for a policy of conciliation in the Netherlands, was a nastier piece of work than the Iron Duke. It was later discovered that he had been selling state secrets, and that he and the Princess of Eboli had conspired in the murder of an enemy who had discovered incriminating evidence against him. But that was after Titian’s death. In the 1570s Pérez was still the most powerful influence on the king, and Titian continued to seek his favour by sending him paintings while reminding him of the moneys he had not yet received from the king, including the pension from Milan, which the Spanish ambassador in Venice Guzmán de Silva had assured him was forthcoming, as well as payment for the pictures sent to His Catholic Majesty in recent years. In a letter to Pérez of 22 December 1574 he prays ‘that your courteous wishes might have effect, as, being in want of money in these calamitous times, this will probably be the greatest favour that I can hope to obtain from Your Lordship …’.
He enclosed with this letter a ‘Memorial to His Catholic Majesty by Titian and his son Orazio’ with a list of the paintings for which he had not been paid:
First, that the pension in Milan of my son Orazio may be put in balance, in order that he may without trouble, fatigue, or interest enjoy the favour done him by His Majesty.
Item, the pictures sent to His Majesty at diverse times in the last twenty-five years are these, but only in part, and it is desired that Signor Alons [Alonso Sánchez Coello], painter to His Majesty, should add to the list such pieces as have been forgotten here:
Venus and Adonis
Calisto pregnant by Jove
Actaeon arriving unexpectedly at the bath
Andromeda tied to a rock
Europa carried away by the bull
The Jews tempting Christ with the coin
Christ in the tomb
The Saint Mary Magdalen
The Three magi of the east
Venus with cupid holding a mirror
The supper of Our Lord
The martyrdom of St Lawrence
with many others that I do not remember, etc.
Philip, who was deeply in debt and sliding rapidly towards a second bankruptcy,17 would never find the money to reward Titian for those masterpieces. He had, however, been demanding that his officials must pay the overdue pensions from Spain and Milan, and had indeed already ordered his governor in Milan, Antonio de Guzmán y Zúñiga, third Marquis of Ayamonte, to pay the arrears of the pension and see to it that it was paid regularly henceforth:
I have been informed that 600 ducats from the pension he receives from us are owing to Master Titian, painter living in Venice, and that as he is a person towards whom we are well disposed for the skill he possesses as an artist, and since he has served and continues to serve us I charge you to give order that he is to be paid whatever may be owing from the said pension and that this payment should be continued whenever necessary.
Payment of the pension on the chamber of Milan – granted to Titian by Charles V many years earlier, doubled when they met at Augsburg and now transferred to Orazio – had often been stalled by previous governors, whose treasury was chronically overstretched and whose officials saw no reason to divert scarce resources to some foreign painter. Ayamonte and Guzmán de Silva, however, had particular motives of their own to withhold the pension for the time being. Ayamonte, for political reasons, urgently wanted to acquire paintings by Titian at the lowest possible price; and he and de Silva had agreed that the pension should be used as an inducement to get work out of the ageing painter. So Ayamonte replied to Philip that he would be delighted to pay Titian but had more pressing financial obligations regarding the king’s business in Milan. Privately he complained to de Silva that the king was putting Titian’s interests ahead of those of his own governor. He made sure nevertheless that de Silva, a fellow nobleman and crony, was paid promptly and assured him of his continuing service, for which, he joked, the ambassador should pay him ‘though I do not paint as well as Titian’.
The Marquis of Ayamonte was forty-nine when he took up his post as governor of Milan in September 1573, replacing Luis de Requesens, who had been sent to govern the Netherlands. There was at that time a power struggle between the Church and Spanish civil authorities in Italy, which was particularly acute in Milan where the archbishop was the saintly, extremely able Carlo Borromeo. Borromeo, one of the most influential voices at the Council of Trent, had returned to his native Milan in 1565 as its archbishop with a mission to create a new mood of popular devotion that would unite the city in a passionate search for salvation. He practised the ascetic life he preached, living within the sumptuous surroundings of the archbishop’s palace in only two small, sparsely furnished rooms with pictures of scenes from the Passion of Christ on the walls. He disapproved of the Spanish regime, continually interfered with its business, and after a clash with Requesens had excommunicated him and the president of the secretariat of the Milan Senate. Requesens had retaliated by occupying a fortress belonging to the archbishopric. The excommunication was quickly rescinded by order of the Holy See. But the tension in Milan was palpable when Ayamonte took over as governor. Unlike Requesens, who prided himself on being independent of the factionalism that
split Philip’s Council of State, Ayamonte was affiliated with the pacifist Pérez–Ebolist faction, which had stolen the ear of the king. It was therefore all the more important to retain Philip’s trust by finding ways of coping with and even discrediting Borromeo. He decided to use subtler means than his predecessor; and it was part of his strategy to bolster his authority and demonstrate his piety by acquiring religious pictures by the hand of the great Titian, who had been befriended by the emperor Charles V, and was the favourite of the Spanish king, as well as of the king’s secretary and leader of the Ebolist faction Antonio Pérez.
On 1 October 1573, two weeks after he took up his appointment, and six days before his first interview with Carlo Borromeo, Ayamonte wrote to Guzmán de Silva, also an Ebolist through his family connection with the Prince of Eboli, that he would like to possess an unfinished image of ‘Our Lady and her Son’ – it is tempting to speculate that it might have been the late Virgin Suckling the Infant Christ now in the London National Gallery – that the two men had seen in Titian’s studio the previous July, and would de Silva negotiate a price for it. Busy though he was with his new official responsibilities he continued to nag the ambassador about delivery of the painting: please ensure that he obtained it; it must be dry before the packing, which should be done with care. When it arrived in November it was in fact slightly damaged where the paint had not completely dried. Ayamonte advised de Silva not to tell Titian, but please would he find out the price, because the devotion the picture aroused in him would be moderated if it were to prove too expensive. By 30 December, however, he had changed his mind about the price. The image was very fine, although he confessed that he ‘would have to be better’ to dare to stay in front of it; and Titian should be well rewarded so as to give him the opportunity of acquiring further paintings by his hand. But for all his fussing Ayamonte had failed to notice that his painting was not the one he had seen in Titian’s studio. It was a copy by Orazio, to whom in February 1574 de Silva ordered that a credit of twenty scudi should be made on account for a painting by his hand of Our Lady and her Son as sent to the Marquis of Ayamonte.