DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0332
3i2 Painting Old and New part hi
works,’1 while Venetian practice is well enough illustrated
on the sufficiently numerous unfinished canvases of these
prolific but sometimes over-hasty artists. Mr. Ruskin pos-
sesses such a canvas, the forms outlined and boldly laid in
with little more than black and red. In the Uffizi Gallery
at Florence hangs a small unfinished sketch of the Madonna
and Child of the ‘ Pesaro ’ altarpiece by Titian, in which the
forms seem first indicated with thin cool rubbings, and then
modelled up with pale flesh tints and a sparing impasto,
the characteristic Venetian ripeness and juiciness being at
this stage conspicuously absent.
We are fortunate in possessing a technical description of
Titian’s method of work during the later period of his life,
which is doubly valuable as coming from a practical painter
and pupil of the master—Palma Giovine. What is
described is Veccellio’s method of painting very solidly,
perhaps over a sketch in thin colour like that last men-
tioned, and then finishing with delicate glazes. Palma told
our informant 2 that he was wont to lay in his pictures with
a great mass of pigment, which served—so to say—as a
bed or foundation for all that he was going to express in
the upper painting. ‘ I remember,’ he said, ‘ seeing his
resolute strokes with brushes heavily charged with colour ;
sometimes he would use a dash of red earth, so to say, for
middle tint, and at other times with a brushful of white
and the same pencil filled with red with black and with
yellow, he would model up the relief of a prominent form,
with such science that with four strokes of the brush he
would give the promise of a beautiful figure.’ These
1 Materials for a History of Oil-Painting, ii. p. 254.
2 Boschini. The description occurs in that writer’s treatise Le
ricche Miniere della Pittura Veneziana, 2nded., Venezia, 1674, p. 16.
There is a partial translation of it in Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s Life of
Titian, 2nd. ed. London, 1881, i. p. 218.
works,’1 while Venetian practice is well enough illustrated
on the sufficiently numerous unfinished canvases of these
prolific but sometimes over-hasty artists. Mr. Ruskin pos-
sesses such a canvas, the forms outlined and boldly laid in
with little more than black and red. In the Uffizi Gallery
at Florence hangs a small unfinished sketch of the Madonna
and Child of the ‘ Pesaro ’ altarpiece by Titian, in which the
forms seem first indicated with thin cool rubbings, and then
modelled up with pale flesh tints and a sparing impasto,
the characteristic Venetian ripeness and juiciness being at
this stage conspicuously absent.
We are fortunate in possessing a technical description of
Titian’s method of work during the later period of his life,
which is doubly valuable as coming from a practical painter
and pupil of the master—Palma Giovine. What is
described is Veccellio’s method of painting very solidly,
perhaps over a sketch in thin colour like that last men-
tioned, and then finishing with delicate glazes. Palma told
our informant 2 that he was wont to lay in his pictures with
a great mass of pigment, which served—so to say—as a
bed or foundation for all that he was going to express in
the upper painting. ‘ I remember,’ he said, ‘ seeing his
resolute strokes with brushes heavily charged with colour ;
sometimes he would use a dash of red earth, so to say, for
middle tint, and at other times with a brushful of white
and the same pencil filled with red with black and with
yellow, he would model up the relief of a prominent form,
with such science that with four strokes of the brush he
would give the promise of a beautiful figure.’ These
1 Materials for a History of Oil-Painting, ii. p. 254.
2 Boschini. The description occurs in that writer’s treatise Le
ricche Miniere della Pittura Veneziana, 2nded., Venezia, 1674, p. 16.
There is a partial translation of it in Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s Life of
Titian, 2nd. ed. London, 1881, i. p. 218.