Titian: The Fulfilment of the Venetian Promise

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) stands as the complementary genius to Giorgione. In him is summed up all that the Venetian school promised and ultimately achieved. If he lacked something of the sunny radiance of Giorgione’s temperament, his deeper experience of life and his strong, passionate nature endowed him with a profound insight into the tragedy as well as the beauty of existence—an insight characteristic of the greatest artists and poets.

To judge Titian’s life work in its entirety, one must travel across much of Western Europe, above all to Madrid. Venice itself possesses only around twenty of his paintings, and not the very greatest among them. Some early works, attributed by certain critics to Giorgione, include the Ecce Homo in the Scuola and the Christ Bearing the Cross in the church of San Rocco.

A slightly later painting, St Mark Enthroned (1512), in the sacristy of Santa Maria della Salute—originally painted for San Spirito—still bears traces of Giorgione’s influence. The celebrated Assumption in the Accademia, painted in 1518, is the first of the grand compositions of the later Venetian school and is generally regarded as a masterpiece.

An even finer work, executed in 1526 at the height of Titian’s powers, is the Pesaro Madonna in the Frari. The beautiful Annunciation in the Scuola di San Rocco dates from 1525, while the Presentation in the Accademia, now restored to its original position, belongs to 1538. The charming Tobias and the Angel, painted around 1537 and now in San Marziale, is remarkable for its simplicity and warmth. Here we see the great master in one of his happiest moods, like a strong man stooping to play with his children.

Titian continued to paint sacred subjects well into old age. In San Salvatore are an Annunciation and a Transfiguration, both conceived when he was nearing ninety. He quite literally died in harness. The Deposition, now in the Accademia and completed by Palma Giovane, was left unfinished at his death in 1576—just one year short of his hundredth birthday.

With Titian, Venetian painting reached its meridian glory. Inspiration and technical mastery moved forward hand in hand. He has often been described as the painter par excellence, as distinct from the draughtsman who merely colours. In his new manner, painting became absolute—what in Bellini and Carpaccio had still been coloured drawing.

Palma Vecchio and the Ideal of Venetian Beauty

Palma Vecchio (Jacopo Negretti, 1480–1528), Titian’s contemporary, ranks as the third of the dominant Venetian painters of the sixteenth century. Though lacking the finely endowed nature of Titian or Giorgione, he worked with great energy and freshness. His mastery of colour and the breadth and serenity of his style secure his place as a great, if not paramount, artist.

His famous St Barbara in Santa Maria Formosa remains the most grandiose and majestic female figure in Venetian art. The Santa Conversazione (No. 147) in the Accademia exemplifies the compositional mode Palma brought to perfection. He was the creator of that opulent type of female beauty—full-necked and luxuriant—which became so characteristic of Venetian painting.

Sebastiano del Piombo and Roman Influence

Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Luciani, 1485–1547), a pupil of Giorgione, was a competent though not especially gifted interpreter of the prevailing sensuous ideal. His painting on the high altar of San Giovanni Crisostomo is a fine example of his early style and was once attributed to Giorgione.

Early in his career he moved to Rome, where he gained the friendship of Raphael and Michelangelo. Their influence profoundly shaped his later work, which belongs more properly to Roman than to Venetian art.

Lorenzo Lotto: Psychology and Portraiture

Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556), a pupil of Alvise Vivarini, was a highly gifted but uneven painter active in Venice in the early sixteenth century. Among Titian’s contemporaries, he stands out for his originality. Modern criticism—particularly that of Bernard Berenson—has drawn renewed attention to Lotto’s portraits, praising him as the first painter to explore the shifting moods of the individual human soul.

His finest works, however, are found outside Venice. In the city itself, the St Nicholas in Glory in the Carmine and the Apotheosis of St Antonino in San Zanipolo reveal genuine poetic feeling. A later Virgin and Child with Saints hangs in San Giacomo dall’Orio.

The Friulian School and Pordenone

The Accademia devotes a room to the Friulian school, painters active in Udine and surrounding towns during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Of Martino da Udine (Pellegrino da San Daniele), the gallery holds three works, including an Annunciation that echoes his finest frescoes at San Daniele.

A greater figure was Giovanni Antonio Sacchiense, known as Pordenone. Bold and technically daring, he displayed an almost ostentatious pride in anatomical knowledge and foreshortening—recalling Michelangelo’s audacity without his genius. Though most of his works lie on the mainland, Venice preserves several characteristic examples, including frescoes at Santo Stefano and paintings in San Rocco.

Bonifazio da Verona: Clarifying an Artistic Identity

The name Bonifazio long perplexed art historians. Nineteenth-century critics divided his oeuvre among three hypothetical painters. More recent research, however, has vindicated Vasari’s original account. Bonifazio di Pitati of Verona (1487–1553) emerges as the sole significant master: a prolific and successful painter who trained in Palma Vecchio’s workshop, rose to prominence in Venice, and maintained a large atelier.

Bonifazio was an eminently naturalistic artist. With refined artistry, he portrayed the sensuous magnificence of Venetian patrician life—its luxurious interiors, sumptuous costumes, cultivated intellect, and ideal of beauty.

Paris Bordone and the Ceremonial Image of Venice

Paris Bordone (1495–1571), a talented pupil of Titian influenced by Michelangelo, produced the finest Venetian ceremonial painting: The Presentation of St Mark’s Ring to the Doge (No. 320, Accademia). No other image evokes more powerfully the unique charm of Venice—its architecture, pageantry, legend, and golden atmosphere.

Tintoretto: Power, Passion, and Excess

Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti, 1518–1594), a pupil of Bonifazio deeply influenced by Titian and Michelangelo, can truly be understood only in Venice. His Adam and Eve in the Accademia reflects his early debt to Titian, while the dramatic Miracle of St Mark (1553) reveals his mature genius: grand conception, virile drawing, and overwhelming energy.

Yet Tintoretto’s brilliance often tipped into excess. His restless compositions, daring foreshortenings, and relentless drive for effect led critics such as Reynolds to complain of “bustle and tumult.” Nowhere is his art more fully displayed than in the Scuola di San Rocco, where sixty-two vast compositions reveal both his astonishing power and his weaknesses—haste, irreverence, and a lack of the patient diligence that distinguished Titian.

Tintoretto was a passionate, impatient worker. His rapid, muscular execution made painting seem almost a form of physical exertion. He left many followers who imitated his “splendid negligence” without sharing his depth or grandeur, hastening the final decadence of Venetian painting.

Conclusion

From Titian’s serene mastery to Tintoretto’s tempestuous energy, Venetian painting of the sixteenth century represents one of the supreme achievements in Western art. At its height, it united technical brilliance with a profound vision of human life—sensuous, tragic, and magnificent.