for immortal youth for him. He became a hideous old man; Eos then shut him up in a chamber; his voice “flowed on unceasingly,” but his limbs were helpless. A later development is the change of Tithonus into a grasshopper, after Eos had been obliged to wrap him like a child in swaddling-clothes and to put him to sleep in a kind of cradle. He was probably associated with the Trojan royal house, since the inhabitants of the original home of the legend (probably central or northern Greece) looked upon the East, the land of the morning, as the home of Eos. In some versions she is said to have carried him away still farther East, to the land of Ethiopia near the ocean streams; this is euhemeristically referred by Diodorus Siculus to an expedition undertaken against Ethiopia by Tithonus, son of Laomedon.
It is probable that Tithonus was originally a sun-god; the scholiast on Iliad, xi. 5, who calls him Titan, identifies him with Apollo, and there are many points of resemblance between him and the sun-god Helios. The story is generally regarded as an allegorical representation of the fresh morning sun dried up by the heat of the advancing day. Possibly it is merely intended as a warning to mortals not to unite with immortals, lest they incur the jealousy and wrath of the gods.
See Homer, Iliad, xi. I, xix. 237; Hymn in Venerem, 219 sqq., with Allen and Sikes’s notes; Apollodorus iii. 12, 4; Diod. Siculus iv. 75; Horace, Odes, ii. 16, 30; Propertius iii. 10 (18); O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, i. 313, n. 16, who attributes a Milesian origin to the story; articles “Eos” by Rapp in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie and by Escher in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie.
TITIAN (c. 1477–1576). Tiziano Vecellio, or Vecelli, one of
the greatest painters of the world, and in especial the typical
representative of the Venetian school, was commonly called
during his lifetime “Da Cadore,” from the place of his birth,
and has also been designated “Il Divino.” The country of
Cadore, in the Friuli, barren and poor, is watered by the Piave
torrent poured forth from the Carnic Alps, and is at no great
distance from Tirol. Titian, therefore, was not in any sense a
Venetian of the lagoons and Adriatic, but was native to a country,
and a range of association, perception and observation, of a
directly different kind. Venice conquered Friuli at a date not
very remote from the birth of Titian; and Cadore, having to
choose between Venetian and imperial allegiance, declared for
the former. Approaching the castle of Cadore from the village
Sotto Castello, one passes on the right a cottage of humble
pretensions, inscribed as Titian’s birthplace; the precise locality
is named Arsenale. The near mountain—all this range of hills
being of dolomite formation—is called Marmarolo. At the
neighbouring village of Valle was fought in Titian’s lifetime the
battle of Cadore, a Venetian victory which he recorded in a
painting. In the 12th century the count of Camino became
count also of Cadore. He was called Guecello; and this name
descended in 1321 to the podestà (or mayor) of Cadore, of the
same stock to which the painter belonged. Titian, one of a
family of four, and son of Gregorio Vecelli, a distinguished
councillor and soldier, and of his wife Lucia, was born in 1477.
So it has very generally been stated; but of late years a
subsequent date, 1489–1490, has been suggested, so as to make
Titian, at the time of his death, not so singularly long-lived
a man. As to this interesting point one should remember that
Vasari in one passage (at variance with some others) says that
Titian was born in 1480; while Titian himself, writing to
Philip II. in 1571, professed to be ninety-five years old.
It used to be said that Titian, when a child, painted upon the wall of the Casa Sampieri, with flower-juice, a Madonna and Infant with a boy-angel; but modern connoisseurs say that the picture is a common work, of a date later than Titian’s decease. He was still a child when sent by his parents to Venice, to an uncle’s house. There he was placed under an art teacher, who may perhaps have been Sebastiano Zuccato, a mosaicist and painter now forgotten. He next became a pupil of Gentile Bellini, whom he left after a while, because the master considered him too offhand in work. Here he had the opportunity of studying many fine antiques. His last instructor was Giovanni Bellini; but Titian was not altogether satisfied with his tutoring. The youth was a contemporary of Giorgione and Palma Vecchio; when his period of pupilage expired, he is surmised to have entered into a sort of partnership with Giorgione. A fresco of “Hercules” on the Morosini Palace is said to have been one of his earliest works; others were the “Virgin and Child,” in the Vienna Belvedere, and the “Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth ” (from the convent of S. Andrea), now in the Venetian Academy. In 1507–1508 Giorgione was commissioned by the state to execute frescoes on the re-erected Fondaco de' Tedeschi. Titian and Morto da Feltre worked along with him, and some fragments of Titian’s paintings, which are reputed to have surpassed Giorgione’s, are still discernible. According to one account, Giorgione was nettled at this superiority, and denied Titian admittance to his house thenceforth. Stories of jealousies between painters are rife in all regions, and in none more than in the Venetian—various statements of this kind applying to Titian himself. One should neither accept nor reject them uninquiringly; counter-evidence of some weight can be cited for Vecelli’s vindication in relation to Moroni, Correggio, Lotto and Coello. Towards 1511, after the cessation of the League of Cambrai—which had endeavoured to shatter the power of the Venetian republic, and had at any rate succeeded in clipping the wings of the lion of St Mark—Vecelli went to Padua, and painted in the Scuola di S. Antonio a series of frescoes, which continue to be an object of high curiosity to the students of his genius, although they cannot be matched against his finest achievements in oil painting. Another fresco, dated 1523, is “St Christopher carrying the Infant Christ,” at the foot of the doge’s steps in the ducal palace of Venice. From Padua Titian in 1512 returned to Venice; and in 1513 he obtained a broker’s patent in the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi (state-warehouse for the German merchants), termed “La Sanseria” or “Senseria” (a privilege much coveted by rising or risen artists), and became superintendent of the government works, being especially charged to complete the paintings left unfinished by Giovanni Bellini in the hall of the great council in the ducal palace. He set up an atelier on the Grand Canal, at S. Samuele—the precise site being now unknown. It was not until 1516, upon the death of Bellini, that he came into actual enjoyment of his patent, at the same date an arrangement for painting was entered into with Titian alone, to the exclusion of other artists who had heretofore been associated with him. The patent yielded him a good annuity—120 crowns—and exempted him from certain taxes—he being bound in return to paint likenesses of the successive doges of his time at the fixed price of eight crowns each. The actual number which he executed was five. Titian it may be well to note as a landmark in this all but centenarian life of incessant artistic labour and productiveness, was now (if we adopt 1477 as the birth-date) in the fortieth year of his age. The same year, 1516, witnessed his first journey to Ferrara. Two years later was produced, for the high altar of the church of the Frari, one of his most world-renowned masterpieces, the “Assumption of the Madonna,” now in the Venetian Academy. It excited a vast sensation, being indeed the most extraordinary piece of colourist execution on a great scale which Italy had yet seen. The signoria took note of the facts and did not fail to observe that Titian was neglecting his work in the hall of the great council.
Vecelli was now at the height of his fame; and towards 1521, following the production of a figure of “St Sebastian” for the papal legate in Brescia (a work of which there are numerous replicas), purchasers became extremely urgent for his productions. In 1525, after some irregular living and a consequent fever, he married a lady of whom only the Christian name, Cecilia, has come down to us; he hereby legitimized their first child, Pomponio, and two (or perhaps three) others followed. Towards 1526 he became acquainted, and soon exceedingly intimate, with Pietro Aretino, the literary bravo, of influence and audacity hitherto unexampled, who figures so strangely in the chronicles of the time. Titian sent a portrait of him to Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. A great affliction befell him in August 1530 in the death of his wife. He then, with his three children—one of them being the infant Lavinia, whose birth had been fatal to the mother—removed to a new home and got his sister Orsa to
