Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll.

  • Jameson, Mrs. (Anna), 1794-1860.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that hour of terror and anguish, was made in favor of Titian: his remains were borne with honor to the tomb and deposited in the church of Santa Maria de’ Frari, for which he had painted his famous Assumption. [His monument is an object of unique interest to the traveller in Venice. It was erected in 1852 by Emperor Ferdinand I. The three most celebrated compositions of Titian are reproduced in the bas-reliefs of which it is composed : the Assumption, the Death of St. Peter Martyr, and the Martyrdom of St. Laurence. Above are re- liefs representing his first and last works, the Visitation and the Descent from the Cross.] This was the life and death of the famous Titian. He was preeminently the painter of nature ; but to him nature was clothed in a perpetual garb of beauty, or rather, to him nature and beauty were one. In historical compositions and sacred subjects he has been rivalled and surpassed, but as a portrait painter never; and his portraits of celebrated persons have at once the truth and the dignity of history. It would be in vain to attempt to give any account of his works; numerous as they are, not all that are attributed to him in various galleries are his: many are by Palma, Bonifazio, and others his contem- poraries, who imitated his manner with more or less success. As almost every gallery in Europe, public and private, contains pictures attributed to him, I shall not attempt to enumerate even the acknowledged chefs-cVoeuvre. It will be interesting, however, to give some account of those of his works contained in our national and royal galleries. In our National Gallery there are five, of which the Bacchus and Ariadne and the Venus and Adonis are fair examples of his power in the poet- ical department of his art. The lovely little picture of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene, which belonged to Mr. Rogers, and used to hang in the poet’s drawing-room, he bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1855 ; but we still want one of his inestimable portraits. In the gallery at Hampton Court there are seven or eight pictures attributed to him, most of them in a miserably ruined condition.1 The finest of these is a portrait of a man in black, with a white shirt seen above his vest up to his throat; in his right hand a red book, his forefinger be- 1 [Although there are several pictures attributed to Titian in Ernest Law’s catalogue, Mary Logan’s Guide gives only two as authentic.]