Su Tiziano (review)

You have to appreciate a book on Titian that opens and continues throughout with quotations from Edgar Allen Poe (Erwin Panofsky's use of Simenon is given as a justification — or provocation [115]). This audacious new offering from noted scholar Lionello Puppi begins with a preface that reads like a giallo, unfortunately one whose subject habitués of archives will find all too familiar: the dispersal of holdings, the identification of irretrievable losses, and precious victories of partial recuperations (recounted in appendix C on the vicissitudes of the local collections of documents from Titian's birthplace of Pieve di Cadore pertaining to him and the Vecellio family). The problematics of documentary evidence are illustrated by the case of competing "autograph" versions for Titian's celebrated Pala Pesaro in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice.

Su Tiziano takes a novel approach, signaled by its dual titles (Per Tiziano actually appears on the title page, explained on 113), merging investigations of fame, fortune, and family of this extraordinary artist of the Venetian Cinquecento. The result is anything but a typical monographic biography, providing, however, new insights into the working life of Titian and the familial enterprise that produced persona as well as painting. Such reputation maintained an afterlife as a cultural industry in Cadore as "Titian's country," which becomes the subject of chapter 1, in which the projects of nineteenth-century biographers and city fathers merge. These took material form in the Monument to Titian in the Piazza of Pieve di Cadore, and in the collections of prized documents whose perilous history is traced.

The crucial nature of one such document in the construction of Titian's fama, Charles V's 10 May 1533 Imperial bull creating Titian "Count Palatine and Knight of the Holy Roman Empire," forms a transition to chapter 2, on the mythic figure of the "divine" artist. Puppi subjects the mysterious itinerary of the document to scrutiny, wary of the privileges evidently conferred in perpetuity to his descendants since these conveniently allow the creation of notaries and judges, and legitimization of children, an issue relevant to the heredity of the artist and of his Cadorin legacy.

The author's investigation of this "familial hegemony" enlarges our understanding of the relations that Titian surrounded himself with — his "staff" or "entourage" — as well as disciples (Emanuele Amburger) and better-known members of his family (Marco, Orazio, Lavinia), and strengthens ties between Pieve and the Biri Grande studio in Venice. Concrete connections are tied to artistic production, including the facilitation of commissions, and more secure identifications of family likenesses (e.g. pl. 5, Madonna della Misericordia, Florence, Galleria Palatina), which continues in chapter 3.

Chapter 4 expands on the painter's children, their lives, and role in Titian's household and studio, as well as the darker side of family life represented by his nearly invisible "natural" daughter Emilia and the "black sheep" Pomponio. Puppi reevaluates the role of second-born Orazio and grants him increased authority on behalf of the family enterprise. Titian's eldest son, the recalcitrant ecclesiastic Pomponio, proves more difficult to recuperate, although his behavior is situated in the context of a restrictive patriarchal structure.

Pomponio's "dissipation" of the studio and family goods on the deaths of Titian and Orazio, and subsequently of that contested patrimony, continues in chapter 5. A useful list of the paintings sold by Pomponio (1579–81) from those left in Titian's house at his death in 1576 is provided.

Puppi recounts in the postscript how this project emerged as an unforeseen byproduct of a systematic investigation of Venetian notaries of the 1580s when documents regarding the Vecelli came to his attention (113). A selected number appear in appendices A (sixteenth-century correspondence between Titian and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Titian and Pomponio Vecellio, Pomponio and his brother-in-law, Cornelio Sarcinelli) and B (regarding Cadore's monumentalizing of its native son in the nineteenth century). No bibliography is provided, so an index...