Titian: 400 years slip past

Press, 3 August 1976, Page 22

Titian: 400 years slip past

Times being what they are. Italy is letting the four-hundredth anniversary of Titian’s death pass without a major exhibition of paintings by the Renaissance master.

But the occasion will not go unmarked, and the first event — a show of drawings by Titian and his Venetian contemporaries at the Uffizi Museum — promises to touch off some fireworks among art historians. The show was mounted by Dr William Rearick, professor of Renaissance art at the University of Maryland, who selected 128 drawings from the Uffizi’s vast collection of more than 100,000 prints and drawings. The Uffizi has 14 out of about 50 Titian drawings known to exist today.

“These days, with the danger of thefts, very high insurance, and unwillingness of museums to lend, it seemed clear that there would be no major show of Titian paintings, so I suggested a show of drawings," Dr Rearick said. In the process of selection, Dr Rearick took issue with long established attributions, and camd to some interesting conclusions.

Examining two drawings attributed to Romanino, Dr Rearick agreed they were indeed by Romanino. But he went a step further, deciding they were preparatory sketches for two paintings not at present attributed to Romanino.

If Dr Rearick is right, the Titian Portrait of a Man in Mrs Edsel Ford’s collection in Detroit actually is a Romanino, and the Madonna con il Bambino in the church of San Rocco and San Sebastiano in Titian’s birthplace, Pieve di Cadore, also would be the work of Romanino rather than of Titian’s brother, Francesco Vecellio. Dr Rearick admits that decisions of this sort are likely to produce “lively discussion, not to say controversy” in the art world.

But setting the record straight is part of an art historian’s business; and Dr Rearick is well armed with academic credentials to defend his views.

The earded and bespectacled Dr Rearick. aged 45, a native of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has a masters degree from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, and a Doctorate from Harvard. Dr Rearick attacks his subject with great gusto and relies not only on his academic training but on intuition, a near photographic memory for visual motifs, and the doggedness of a detective. Take the case of the Titian ox, which Dr Rearick now presents as the work of Giovanni Bellini, Titian’s elder by 60 years and his teacher.

“I sat and looked at the drawings for a few minutes." Dr Rearick said. "It seemed a little earlier than Titian. It reminded me of some late Bellini drawings. I ran through my memory of late Bellini drawings, and then I trotted down to the library for a volume on late Bellini paintings, and. sure enough, there they were.'

The painting Rearick had spotted was the Madonna of the Meadow, which hangs in the National Gallery in London. In one corner there are three oxen about an inch high, one sitting and two standing. One of the standing oxen looks exactly like the drawings, and the other could be a mirror image.

In another case, Dr Rearick was able to confirm that a drawing of a young woman originally throught to be the work of Titian, but attributed for the last three decades to Romanino, really was b.v Titian.

Dr Rearick found his proof by turning over the piece of thick blue paper with its black chalk drawing. “Nobody ever noticed that there is a drawing on

the back,” he satd "It s a giant drawing of a threequarters woman wh <(j clearly is a study for an attendant in Titian s earlier documented painting.' the Miracle of the Speaking Babe, done in 1511 in Padua.”

But handling a piece ofpaper more than 400 years’ old is something even art; historians do not do vem often.

“The paper is faulty brittle. You don’t want tr touch it unless you hav®; to,” Dr Rearick said. "But' when doing the catalogue? for the show, I wanted to; be damn sure of what ft was saying. It would hav# 1 gone into the catalogue a< a Titian, anyway, but it ifvery comforting to hav»: proof." Dr Rearick took the risk again, and discovered that he had found what may; be the only existing drawing by Titian's son’'. Orazio. who died with the.master in the Venice plague of 1576. The Uffizi show will close for August because close for August because of the danger of bright summer light to the perishable drawings, and reopen from September 1 to October 9. -