Titian ✦ Tintoretto ✦ Veronese rivals in renaissance venice Frederick Ilchman with contributions by Linda Borean,Patricia Fortini Brown,Vincent Delieuvin, Robert Echols, John Garton,Rhona MacBeth, John Marciari, David Rosand, Jonathan Unglaub,and Robert Wald MFA P Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MFA PUBLICATIONS For a complete listing of MFA publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston please contact the publisher at the above Huntington Avenue address, or call . Boston, Massachusetts www.mfa.org/publications Front cover: Titian, Venus with a Mirror, about (detail, cat. ) This book was published in conjunction with Back cover: Tintoretto, Tarquin and Lucretia, the exhibition “Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: ‒ (detail, cat. ) Rivals in Renaissance Venice,” organized by Pages ‒: Giovanni Merlo, Map of Venice, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the , published by Stefano Scolari. Courtesy Musée du Louvre, Paris. of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz— Max-Planck-Institut. Site numbers and key Museum of Fine Arts, Boston added by Mary Reilly and MFA Publications, March , –August , with permission. Musée du Louvre, Paris September , –January , Research assistance by Martha Clawson Linda Borean’s essay translated by Martha The exhibition is sponsored by Clawson and Frederick Ilchman Pioneer Investments and UniCredit Group. Vincent Delieuvin’s contribution to “Late Styles” translated by Mark Polizzotti Edited by Matthew Battles, Mark Polizzotti, and Sarah McGaughey Tremblay Copyedited by Dalia Geffen and Jodi M. Simpson Designed by Cynthia Rockwell Randall Produced by Cynthia Rockwell Randall and Jodi M. Simpson Printed and bound at Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Verona, Italy Generous support for the catalogue is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Publications Fund Available through and by Scott and Isabelle Black. 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CONTENTS ࣍ Directors’ Foreword Curator’s Introduction and Acknowledgments Contributors Map of Venice with Selected Major Public Commissions of the Three Painters essays Venetian Painting in an Age of Rivals Where the Money Flows: Art Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Venice Collecting in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Venice: Originals, Copies, and “Maniera di” Materials and Techniques of Painters in Sixteenth-Century Venice Catalogue Prologue: The Transformation of Venetian Painting around Titian to New Rivals Sacred Themes Beneath the Surface: Revelations from Three Works by Veronese, Titian, and Tintoretto Tactile Vision: The Female Nude Portraiture Late Styles Appendices Boston Collects Venetian Paintings Notes Checklist Figure Illustrations Chronology Selected Bibliography Index ࣍ Collecting in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Venice: Originals, Copies, and “Maniera di” linda borean In a famous letter sent to Jean-Pierre Mariette from Potsdam on February , , the Venetian writer and art dealer Francesco Algarotti affirmed that “when acquiring old paintings I would always proceed, as I have done, with the greatest caution. It is not enough that a painting be a Titian; it should be well preserved, beautiful, and demonstrating his most bella maniera. Otherwise one runs the risk of admiring only names.” Algarotti’s reaction reveals an attitude common among art collectors of the era, that is, appreciation for works of art based solely on the artist’s name rather than on the quality of execution. In this context originals by the great masters of the Renaissance, including Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, were truly rare and for the most part lacked signatures. This last point encouraged connoisseurs to consider not only style and manner, but also—under the pressure of new collecting patterns and the business of art dealing, forces in rapid expansion by the middle of the sixteenth century—to practice a certain nonchalance regarding attribution, which caused paintings from the workshop or from able copyists to be identified as autograph works. It is possible to consider the rivalry between Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese by reexamining the critical fortunes of their works in precisely this context of early collections and the art market through a purely quantitative approach to the popularity of replicas and copies—naturally taking into consideration the different trajectories and conclusions of the careers of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese and their respective workshops as they sought to meet the demands of a growing client base. Sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century writers on art from Marcantonio Michiel and Francesco Sansovino to Vincenzo Scamozzi noted the expansion of art collections in Venice, above all the shift from heterogeneous “cabinet” collections to galleries often dedicated exclu- sively to paintings, some with a preference for a single artist. One famous example was the group of Veronese canvases owned by the ducal secretary Simone Lando and donated by him in to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, including an Agony in the Garden, the painting now housed in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan (fig. ). The collection owned by Gabriele Vendramin, on the other hand, renowned for its Titians, was appraised by Tintoretto during the compilation of the inventory of the collection in . At the end of the century, Cristoforo Barbarigo, who in had bought Titian’s house in the neighborhood of Biri grande from Titian’s son Pomponio Vecellio, boasted that he possessed at least four autograph works by Titian, diligently enumerated in his will of . Literary sources, however helpful, only offer a starting point: the cited sources, Michiel, Sansovino, and Scamozzi, followed in the mid-seventeenth century by Carlo Ridolfi and Marco Boschini, constitute precious guides to Venetian collecting practices. Their objective, however, was not to offer a systematic summary or to detail the ways in which collectors judged the works of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, but to demon- cratic patrons (particularly non-Venetians) who wished strate these artists’ fame through examples, thus placing to be immortalized through proud portraits; it is clear them at the top of the aesthetic canon while simultane- that for an owner or heirs, the value of a painting ously promoting the value of good taste. Regarding increased if it could be attributed to Titian by school or Veronese, Ridolfi remarked that “important princes and manner. Such clients would also permit Titian to experi- gentlemen . through excessive spending” were pur- ment with sensual mythological subjects with minimal chasing many paintings by the artist, and furthermore, interference. The Spanish monarchy monopolized this that a palazzo was not considered properly adorned aspect of the artist’s production, deeming only Veronese “without a work by his hand.” Particularly desirable a worthy substitute after Titian’s death. For the were his Last Suppers and other paintings of religious Venetian market, however, Titian generally preferred to feasts (upon which, according to Ridolfi, Paolo’s fame make available canvases produced by his workshop from was based), with their sumptuous settings “in the man- prototypes, now and then adding finishing touches of ner of royal banquets.” Titian, on the other hand, was his own. Yet Venetian collectors continued to seek acclaimed by Boschini as the unsurpassable “Dio dela paintings by Titian (and his workshop) with tenacity, a Pitura” (God of Painting), to whom every artist must process that began to accelerate at midcentury. These subordinate himself as a “servant” and an admirer. collectors included fellow artists and competitors; it As a juicy anecdote reported by Ridolfi suggests, seems that Jacopo Tintoretto owned several paintings by however, Tintoretto would not have agreed with that Titian, including the Crowning with Thorns (fig. ), a view. The enfant terrible of the trio, Tintoretto was dis- masterpiece either unfinished or in Titian’s least fin- turbed by the praise bestowed upon Titian’s portrait of a ished style. The mosaicist Valerio Zuccato, a member woman by many artists and connoisseurs who were gath- of Titian’s circle, had to be content with copying or ered in the house of Giacomo Contarini (the influential reworking a “Christ in the garden which came from nobleman responsible for the selection of painters for Titian,” probably based on a replica of that subject kept the redecoration of the Palazzo Ducale after the fires of in Titian’s studio following the shipment to Spain of and ). One of these connoisseurs declared in two versions of the Agony in the Garden prior