Titian Quotes (1488-1576)

“He [Titian] told me he remembered that there were [already] three pictures in the fazata (wall facing the light ?) in Your Excellency's Studio; and that your Excellency had arranged that this one should be hung on the same fazata. He wishes to know whether the new canvas is to be in the middle of the others, or at one side, either towards the chapel or towards the Castello; and he promised to begin work this morning, proceeding without interruption to the close.”

“We thought, that Titian, the painter, would some day finish our picture; but he seems to take no account of us whatever. We therefore instruct you to tell him instantly, that we are surprised that he should not have finished our picture; that he must finish it under all circumstances or incur our great displeasure; and he may be made to feel that he is doing an ill turn to one who can resent it. We are determined that he shall complete the work he promised : if he does not, we shall see to his doing it, and you are to advise us instantly of his resolution.”

“Before Christmas, Tebaldi [Titian's agent in Venice] received a letter from the Duke Alfonso, with orders to communicate the contents to Titian. "Let him know," says Alfonso, "that we have thought over the matter of the 'St. Sebastian'.. ..Let him think on the other hand of serving us well in the work which he has on hand for us, as we do not mean to burthen him with more for the present, and we have to remind him of the head which he began at our bidding before he left Ferrara." A canvas and a present of twenty-five scudi preceded the dispatch of this letter, and from a reply subsequently made by Tebaldi, we ascertain that "the head" was a half length on panel which Titian had promised to enlarge so as to include "an elbow and a part of a left hand."”

“The body [of St. Sebastian ] is bound with one arm high up, the other low down, to a column ; the whole frame writhes in such a way as to display almost all of the back. In all parts of the person there is evidence of suffering, and all from one arrow that sticks in the middle of the body. I am no judge, because I do not understand drawing, but looking at the limbs and muscles the figure seems to me to be as natural as a corpse.”

“Most Illustrious and best Lord Uncle, — Having asked Titian, the bearer of these presents, to execute certain work for me, he declared himself unable to serve me at present, because of a promise to do certain things for your Excellency which require time. For this reason I send him to attend your Excellency. But I beg he may be sent back at once to expedite the work I have on hand for him, which will take but a few days. As soon as he shall have done he can return to the service of your Excellency, and in this your Excellency will do me a singular pleasure to whom I stand greatly recommended.”

“The canvas of the naked Venus sleeping in a landscape with a small Cupid, was by the hand of Zorzo da Castelfranco, but the landscape and the Cupid were finished by Titian.”

“Our master Titian is quite disconsolate at the loss of his wife, who was buried yesterday. He told me that in the troubled time of her sickness he was unable to work at the portrait of the lady Cornelia or at the picture of the 'i Nude' which he is doing for our most illustrious Lord; but he thinks the latter will be a fine thing, and he hopes to finish it before the month is out. Meanwhile he desires to know how his Lordship likes the 'St. Sebastian' lately sent to him, which he admits is but an ordinary performance as compared with the nudes, and one which he only produced as an entertainment in token of the devotion which he feels for his Excellency.”

“It is a custom of this city [Venice] that the Prince [The Doge] when in office should do three things: procure his own likeness of life size, to be placed in a certain lunette beneath the ceiling of the Hall of Great Council, and for this Titian had a salary..”

“If I were a painter I should die of despair.. ..but certain it is that Titian's pencil has waited on Titian's old age to perform its miracles.”

“Your Titian, or rather our Titian is here [from Venice to Rome] and he tells me that he is under great obligation to you for having been the main cause of his coming hither.. ..he has already seen so many fine antiques [of Rome] that he is filled with wonder, and glad that he came.”

“..if this man [Titian] had been in any way assisted by art and design, as he is by nature, and above all in counterfeiting the life, no one could do more or work better, for he has a fine spirit and a very beautiful and lively manner.”

“There had been a time, as Vasari truly said, when the master [Titian] finished his works with such care and minuteness that they bore inspection at any distance. At a later period his touches and brush strokes were ill suited for a close inspection, but at the focus they were perfectly effective, and so stupendously clever that the scenes appeared to be real. Three lives has Titian, one natural, one artificial, the third eternal.”

“Titian is alive and well, and not a little pleased to know that your Majesty was inquiring for him. He took me to see [the painting] the 'Trinity' [also called La Gloria] which he promised to finish towards the end of September. It seems to me to be a fine work. Equally so a 'Christ appearing to the Magdalen' in the garden for the Serenissima Queen Mary. The other painting he says will be a 'Grieving Virgin', companion to the 'Ecce Homo', already in possession of your Majesty, which he has not done because the size was not given, but which he will execute so soon as the particulars are sent to him.”

“On the 3rd of July 1518 Titian was called to the Salt Office [of Venice], and there curtly informed: — "that unless he [Titian] began at once or within a week to work at the canvas in the Hall of Great Council which had been neglected for so many years, and unless he should proceed to labour at it continuously till its completion, 'their magnificences ' would cause it to be painted and finished at Titian's expense". But: Awful as the threat appeared, it failed to move the painter in any way. He had orders for great altar-pieces at Ancona and Brescia, commissions from the Duke of Ferrara, etc..”

“I recollect hearing Messer Titian say when I visited his house in my childhood to learn something of painting that he had greatly improved his works after having been in Rome [in 1545-46].”

“Titian was visited on a certain occasion by a company of German travelers.. ..these gentlemen declared that they only knew of one master capable of finishing as they thought paintings ought to be finished, and that was Dürer.. ..To these observations Titian smilingly replied, that if he had thought extreme finish to be the end and aim of art, he too would have fallen into the excesses of Dürer. But though long experience had taught him to prefer a broad and even track to a narrow and intricate path, yet he would still take occasion to show that the subtlest detail might be compassed without sacrifice of breadth, and so produced the 'Christ of the Tribute Money'.”

“In every thing Titian's art was similar to nature. Milk feeds his babes; he weaves the stuffs; by him the arms are wrought. He transfers the trees, the hills, and plains to his picture; his animals have but just issued from the ark; and his joy or grief are alike infectious. So long as Nature lives Titian will also live. He was the very mirror of nature, only that the mirror reflects whilst Titian creates.”

“Titian prepared his pictures with a solid stratum of pigment, which served as a bed or fundament upon which to return frequently. Some of these preparations were made with resolute strokes of a brush heavily laden with colour, the half tints struck in with pure red earth, the lights with white, modeled into relief by touches of the same brush dipped into red, black, and yellow. In this way he would give the promise of a figure in four strokes. After laying this [first] foundation he would turn the picture to the wall, and leave it there perhaps for months, turning it round again after a time to look at it carefully, and scan the parts as he would the face of his greatest enemy. If at this time any portion of it should appear to him to have been defective, he would set to work to correct it, applying remedies as a surgeon might apply them, cutting off excrescences here, superabundant flesh there, redressing an arm, adjusting or setting a limb, regardless of the pain which it might cause. In this way he would reduce the whole to a certain symmetry, put it aside, and return again a third or more times, till the first quintessence had been covered over with its padding of flesh.”

“Titian was characterized by this, that he painted flesh in which the blood appeared to mantle, whilst the art of the painter was merged in the power of a creator. He imagined forms of grander proportions, of more shiny impast[o], of more harmonious hues than his competitors. With incomparable skill he gave tenderness to flesh by transitions of half tone and broken contrasted colours. He moderated the fire of Giorgione, whose strength lay in resolute action, fanciful movement, and a mysterious artifice in disposing shadows contrasting darkly with hot red lights, blended, strengthened, or blurred so as to produce the semblance of exuberant life.”

“Raphael and Titian are two names which stand the highest in our art, — one for drawing, the other for painting. It is to Titian we must turn our eyes to find excellence with regard to color, and light and shade, in the highest degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art. By a few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of whatever object he attempted; and produced, by this alone, a truer representation than his master Giovanni Bellini, or any of his predecessors, who finished every hair. His great care was to express the general color, to preserve the masses of light and shade, and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable from natural objects. When those are preserved, though the work should possess no other merit, it will have in a proper place its complete effect; but where any of these are wanting, however minutely labored the picture may be in detail, the whole will have a false' and even an unfinished appearance, at whatever distance, or in whatever light, it can be shown.. ..This manner was then new to the world, but that unshaken truth on which it is founded has fixed it as a model to all succeeding painters; and those who will examine into the artifice will find it to consist in the power of generalizing, and in the shortness and simplicity of the means employed.”

“Titian by a few strokes knew how to mark the general image and character of whatever objects he attempted. His great care was to preserve the masses of light and shade, and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable from natural objects.”

“It is the intense personal character which, I think, gives the superiority to Titian's portraits over all others, and stamps them with a living and permanent interest. Of other pictures you tire, if you have them constantly before you; of his, never. For other pictures have either an abstracted look, and you dismiss them, when you have made up your mind on the subject as a matter of criticism; or an heroic look, and you cannot be always straining your enthusiasm; or an insipid look, and you sicken of it. But whenever you turn to look at Titian's portraits, they appear to be looking at you; there seems to be some question pending between you, as though an intimate friend or inveterate foe were in the room with you; they exert a kind of fascinating power; and there is that exact resemblance of individual nature which is always new and always interesting, because you cannot carry away a mental abstraction of it, and you must recur to the object to revive it in its full force and integrity. I would as soon have Raphael's, or most other pictures, hanging up in a collection, that I might pay an occasional visit to them: Titian's are the only ones that I should wish to have hanging in the same room with me for company!”