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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    Sansovino, the famous Venetian architect.1 [Uffizi, Flor- ence.] The Cornaro family, in the possession of the Duke of Nor- thumberland. [Alnwick Castle.] Fracastaro, a famous Latin poet. Irene da Spilemborgo, a young girl who had distinguished herself as a musician, a poetess, and to whom Titian himself had given, lessons in painting. She died at the age of eighteen. Andrea Vesalio, who has been called the father of anatomi- cal science — the particular friend of Titian, and his instructor in anatomy. He was accused falsely of having put a man to death for anatomical purposes, and condemned. Philip II., unwilling to sacrifice so accomplished a man to mere popular prejudice, commuted his punishment to a forced pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He obeyed the sentence; but on his return he was wrecked on the island of Zante, and died there of hun- ger in 1564. (This magnificent portrait, which Titian seems to have painted with enthusiasm, is in the Pitti Palace at Florence.) Titian painted several portraits of himself, but none which represent him young. In the fine portrait at Florence he is about fifty, and in the other known representations he is an old man, with an aquiline nose and long flowing beard. Of his daughter Lavinia there are many portraits. She was her father’s favorite model, being very beautiful in face and form. In a famous picture, now at Berlin, she is represented lifting with both hands a dish filled with fruits. There are four repetitions of this subject: in one the fruits are changed into a casket of jewels, in the collection of [Lord Cowper], in another she becomes the daughter of Herodias, and the dish bears the head of John the Baptist. All are striking, graceful, full of animation. [There are two portraits of Lavinia in the Dresden Gallery. In one, she holds a fan such as was only carried by the newly married. The other shows her some fifteen years older, a woman of about forty.] The only exalted personage of his time and country whom 1 [The so-called portrait of Sansovino differs so much from that, of the same personage by Tintoretto that it would seem that one or the other must be mis- named. The Titian portrait has been repainted.]