The whole
superstructure raised by modern writers on this uncertain foundation is
full of flaws and incongruities, and I am fully persuaded the future
historian will have to begin _de novo_ in any attempt at a chronological
reconstruction of Titian's career. The gap of thirty-five years down to
1511 may prove after all less by twelve or thirteen years than people
think, so that the young Titian naturally enough first emerges into view
at the age of twenty-two and not thirty-five.
But we must not anticipate results, for there is still the evidence of
the later writers of the seventeenth century to consider. Two of these
declare that Titian was born in 1477. The first of these, Tizianello, a
collateral descendant of the great painter, published his little
_Compendio_ in 1622, wherein he gives a sketchy and imperfect biography;
the other, Ridolfi, repeats the date in his _Meraviglie dell' Arte_,
published in 1648. The latter writer is notoriously unreliable in other
respects, and it is quite likely this is merely an instance of copying
from Tizianello, whose unsupported statement is chiefly of value as
showing that the "centenarian" theory had started within fifty years of
Titian's death. But again we ask: Why should the evidence of a
seventeenth-century writer be preferred to the personal testimony of
those who actually knew Titian himself, especially when Vasari gives us
precise information with which Dolce's independent account is in perfect
agreement? No doubt the great age to which Titian certainly attained was
exaggerated in the next generation after his death, but it is a
remarkable fact that the contemporary eulogies, mostly in poetic form,
which appeared on the occasion of his decease, do not allude to any such
phenomenal longevity.
Pages:
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162