The Earlier Work of Titian by Claude Phillips
page 28 of 100 (28%)
page 28 of 100 (28%)
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writer fancies that there is--underlying that expression of serenity and
humiliation accepted which is proper to the subject, a sinister, disquieting look, almost a threat. Crowe and Cavalcaselle have called attention to a certain disproportion in the size of the head, as compared with that of the surrounding actors in the scene. A similar disproportion is to be observed in another early Titian, the _Christ between St. Andrew and St. Catherine_ in the Church of SS. Ermagora and Fortunato (commonly called S. Marcuola) at Venice. Here the head of the infant Christ, who stands on a pedestal holding the Orb, between the two saints above mentioned, is strangely out of proportion to the rest. Crowe and Cavalcaselle had refused to accept this picture as a genuine Titian (vol. ii. p. 432), but Morelli restored it to its rightful place among the early works. Next to these paintings, and certainly several years before the _Three Ages_ and the _Sacred and Profane Love_, the writer is inclined to place the _Bishop of Paphos (Baffo) recommended by Alexander VI. to St. Peter_, once in the collection of Charles I.[11] and now in the Antwerp Gallery. The main elements of Titian's art may be seen here, in imperfect fusion, as in very few even of his early productions. The not very dignified St. Peter, enthroned on a kind of pedestal adorned with a high relief of classic design, of the type which we shall find again in the _Sacred and Profane Love_, recalls Giovanni Bellini, or rather his immediate followers; the magnificently robed Alexander VI. (Rodrigo Borgia), wearing the triple tiara, gives back the style in portraiture of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio; while the kneeling Jacopo Pesaro--an ecclesiastic in tonsure and vesture, but none the less a commander of fleets, as the background suggests--is one of the most characteristic portraits of the Giorgionesque school. Its pathos, its intensity, contrast curiously with the less passionate absorption of the same |
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