Titian: A Painting Born of Raphael's Death | The Room the Great Masters Left Empty | S1 EP11

First, I want to show you this blue, and this is not just any blue. When it hung in the National Gallery in London, it caught your eye from the other side of the room. Many people who see it for the first time seem to have the same thought. Is this really a 500-year-old painting? Meet the old masters. Today, Titians, Bacchus and Ariadne. Later, we're going to meet the man who ordered this blue. When Raphael died in 1520, one of his commissions was left unfinished. The man who had ordered it was Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, who had an ambitious plan to fill a private room in his castle with mythological paintings by the greatest artists in Italy. Scholars now call the room the Camerino d'Alabastro, or the Alabaster Room, named after the white stone covering its walls. Raphael had been asked to paint a scene involving Bacchus, and letters about the commission still survive. He was not the only painter who failed to complete a picture for the room. The Duke approached four of the most famous artists of the age, Bellini, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Fra Bartolomeo. Only Bellini delivered the painting he had promised. Michelangelo exchanged letters with the Duke, but never painted a single picture for the room. One by one, the great names fell away. The Duke eventually handed the empty seat to Titian, the rising star of Venice. Titian had already been commissioned to paint another picture for the same room. In a sense, this painting began with Raphael's death. The setting is the island of Naxos. Ariadne, a princess abandoned by the Greek hero Theseus, watches as his ship disappears into the distance. Then Bacchus, the god of wine, arrives with his followers. The moment he sees Ariadne, he falls in love. The group is returning from a military campaign in India. A god coming home from a triumphal march suddenly finds himself running straight into love. Now look at Bacchus. He is caught halfway through a leap from his chariot. One foot is still on board while the rest of his body hangs in the air. His cloak flies behind him. The dog barks. A cymbal crashes. The animal pulling the chariot looks bewildered. The right half of the painting holds more than anyone can take in. Right beside it, the left half falls almost completely silent. There is only Ariadne, the sea and the sky. Movement and stillness. Noise and silence. Titian has divided the picture cleanly in two. Ovid describes the animal as a tiger, but on the canvas it looks much more like a cheetah. Chariots in scenes like this were usually pulled by tigers or leopards, while Alfonso d'Este was known to keep a cheetah, or at least a similar-looking animal, in the zoo at his palace. Perhaps the Duke's own exotic pet has wandered into the myth. Some of Bacchus' companions carry disturbing things. A satyr holds a calf's leg above his head. A child satyr drags a calf's head along the ground. In the distance, Silenus, completely drunk, slumps on a donkey. This is a celebration, but it is not a particularly tidy one. Titian's leaping Bacchus may have been influenced by Raphael. In his Expulsion of Heliodorus, painted on a wall in the Vatican, An angel charges through the air. A curator at the National Gallery has suggested that nothing this close to the pose can be found in any earlier painting. The painting also shows signs of change during its making. An X-ray of Ariadne reveals thick layers of lead white. Titian seems to have struggled to settle her pose. The young faun in the centre foreground, the child satyr, was probably added later. And then there is the small ring of stars in the upper left corner. It represents the Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. Later in the story, Bacchus gives Ariadne a crown, which becomes a constellation. At the exact moment when love starts, the picture tells us how the story will end. The crown belongs to myth. The stars, at least, are still there in the night sky, if you know where to look. The abandoned Ariadne and Bacchus' wild companions come from the Roman poet Catullus. The meeting between the two lovers comes from Ovid. Both poems contain anger and grief, but they do not emphasize the same thing. Catullus gives us more anger. Ovid, in The Art of Love, gives us more grief. Does Ariadne look angry here or heartbroken? Titian gives us no answer. That decision belongs to whoever stands in front of the painting. The blue I showed you at the beginning was in its day the most expensive paint an artist could use. The pigment is ultramarine. The name means from beyond the sea because it was made from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone imported from the mountains of what is now Afghanistan It travelled a very long way before reaching Venice. Ultramarine is said to have cost around a hundred times more than any other pigment and more than gold of the same weight. Florentine painters pushed form to its limits through line and drawing. Venetian painters often approached the world through colour. Why colour? One answer may be geography. Venice was the gateway to trade with the East, so pigments from distant parts of the world arrived there first. The city even had specialist dealers who sold nothing but pigments. The painters of Venice were well placed to obtain good colour. Look at the painting again. The sky is nearly all blue. The same blue appears in the sea and in Ariadne's robe. Towards the top of the painting the sky becomes darker, just as a real sky deepens overhead. A commentator at the National Gallery has pointed out that Titian also uses strongly saturated colours in the shadows. Just behind Bacchus's red cloak, the lapis lazuli sky remains intense. Using ultramarine was enough to make a painting expensive. One study of pigments suggests that patrons paid for it in much the same way they paid for gold leaf. Some contracts even specified how much per ounce the ultramarine should cost. The amount of blue in a painting could reveal the size of a patron's purse, and perhaps how visibly devout that patron wished to appear. Looking at this sky, I find it easy to imagine that Alfonso d'Este was serious about making an impression. The man whose purse stood behind all that blue also had to wait a very long time for the painting. His name has already come up, but he is quite a character. He succeeded his father, Ercole I, in 1505 and became Duke of Ferrara. He ruled for nearly 30 years until his death in 1534. Alfonso is also said to have cast cannon with his own hands. In Italy, he became known as the Artillery Duke. The nickname came from the Battle of Pollicella in 1509. Alfonso hid his guns along the banks of the Po and used them to destroy much of the Venetian fleet. A land army had managed to defeat the great maritime power of Venice. Why was Alfonso so interested in cannon? Ferrara was a small state squeezed between two powerful neighbors, Venice and the Papal States. It was too small to survive on size. The Duke needed diplomacy and firepower. For Ferrara, cannon were not a hobby. They were a matter of survival. In the portrait now on screen, the river behind Alfonso burns in that same battle of Pollicella. The Duke stands in armour with one hand resting on a cannon. Later, when he broke with Pope Julius II, Alfonso was excommunicated, and the seizure of his lands was formally declared. His diplomats were an unusual group as well. One of his court officials was the poet Ludovico Ariosto, author of Orlando Furioso. Alfonso even sent Ariosto as an envoy to an angry pope, a mission that could have cost The poet, his life. A court willing to send its poet into danger was probably not a court that treated its painters with unlimited patience. Michelangelo's statue of Pope Julius II was pulled down in Bologna and recast as a cannon called La Giulia. Vasari says that only the head escaped being melted down and that Alfonso kept it. The Pope's bronze was now the Duke's gun. The Alabaster Room was built by this same artillery duke. Fra Bartolomeo died in 1517, and his picture stopped at the drawing stage. In 1520, Raphael died, leaving his Bacchus as a preliminary sketch. Then Titian, probably still in his thirties, stepped into the seat the two masters had left empty. At last the duke had his painter. He must have felt relieved. Even before this, though, things had not gone smoothly. Alfonso's agent in Venice, Tebaldi, regularly sent reports back to Ferrara about what was happening in Titian's studio. In the spring of 1518, Tebaldi reported that Titian wanted to know where the new canvas would hang and promised to begin work that very morning. The reports continued to sound encouraging. A year and a half later, when the duke himself took up the pen, the tone had changed. We are amazed that our painting is not yet finished. Whatever the circumstances, it must be finished, or you will incur our great displeasure. That particular warning referred to another painting for the room, the Worship of Venus. I have not yet found a surviving letter that names Bacchus and Ariadne specifically. What we do know is that the Duke supplied the canvas and the stretcher himself. The painting took roughly three years and finally reached Ferrara in 1523. I have not been able to find a reliable record of its price. Reminder letters for the room survive, but no receipt has turned up. The completed room contained paintings by Bellini and Titian. After Alfonso died in 1534, the works remained with the Este family until 1598. That year, Ferrara was absorbed into the Papal States. Cardinal Aldobrandini entered the castle on behalf of the Pope, and ordered the paintings from the Alabaster Room to be seized. The city that Alfonso had defended with cannon passed into Papal hands through paperwork. Paperwork against which cannon were no use. Today, Bellini's painting is in Washington. Two of Titian's paintings are in the Prado in Madrid. Only Bacchus and Ariadne is in London, and has been since 1826. To Alfonso, Titian may have seemed like a man who made promises and moved slowly. The Duke waited. Gunpowder protected Ferrara in Alfonso's lifetime. Paintings carried his name into the future. 500 years later, it is not the cannon people remember most. It is the blue. Rome, 1546. Michelangelo, with Vasari, visited Titian at the Belvedere, where Titian was staying, and saw his painting of Danae. In his Lives of the Artists, published in 1568, Vasari recorded what Michelangelo supposedly said once he and Vasari had left. Michelangelo admired Titian's colour and his way of painting. Then came the criticism. What a pity, he said, that artists in Venice did not learn to draw properly from the beginning, that is, the discipline of line. There was no room for much flattery in Michelangelo's vocabulary. Another story concerns the young Jacopo Robusti, who later became known as Tintoretto. According to Carlo Ridolfi's biography of Tintoretto, the boy was placed in Titian's workshop. A few days later, Titian returned and noticed some drawings sticking out from beneath a stool. He asked who had made them. I did, the boy replied. Titian, the story goes, realised that this talented child might one day become a rival. He ordered his pupil, Girolamo, to throw Jacopo out of the house immediately. Ridolfi says that a small worm of jealous pride can have great power over the human heart. It is a memorable story, but it cannot be treated as a contemporary record. Ridolfi's book was published in 1648, while Tintoretto had died in 1594. No document from the time confirms the story. The jealousy is Ridolfi's interpretation, not the testimony of someone who witnessed it. Vasari, who wrote earlier, says only that Titian did not teach very much. There is another story in Marco Boschini's Brief Instruction, published in 1674. Boschini claimed to have heard it from the painter Palma il Giovane. According to the story, Titian would turn the paintings he had begun towards the wall and leave them hidden, sometimes for months. When he returned to them, he examined them as though they were mortal enemies. In the final stages, he supposedly used his fingers more than his brushes. He is also said to have remarked that a man who sings spontaneously cannot produce learned poetry. Boschini's book appeared 98 years after Titian's death. Palma was about 26 when Titian died, and scholars now question whether Palma was actually Titian's pupil. The story moved from Titian to Palma, then through the young Boschini, and eventually into a book. Vasari's account is different. His book appeared in 1568, while Titian was still alive. Vasari had met him in person. Ridolfi wrote in 1648. Boschini wrote in 1674. Titian died in 1576. The further a story travels from its subject, the more carefully we have to handle it. We also have documents issued in Titian's own name. On the 31st of May 1513, he submitted a petition to the Council of Ten in Venice. He was asking for permission to paint on a wall of the Great Council Hall in the Doge's Palace. In the petition, Titian said that he wanted fame rather than profit. In the very same document, he asked for the position of broker at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. The house of the German merchants, to be granted to him for life. He also asked for the wages of two assistants. As for the invitation to Rome, that story comes from Vasari. Titian was invited to Rome, but kept postponing his departure. Today became tomorrow, and tomorrow became the day after that. In the meantime, Pope Leo X and Raphael died. On that occasion, Titian did not make the journey. The Duke of Ferrara may not have been the only powerful man left waiting for him. Then there is a letter to King Philip II of Spain, dated the 1st of August 1571. Titian complained that he had not received a penny for 18 years. He asked the king to remember a servant of 95 years of age. That servant was Titian himself. As far as I have been able to establish, this is the only letter from the period between 1545 and 1576 in which Titian gives his age as a number. So how old was he really? The surviving documents do not settle the question. Even the National Gallery's own entry for him says only Titian, active about 1506, died 1576. No year of birth is supplied. Bacchus and Ariadne normally hangs in the National Gallery's rooms devoted to 16th century Venetian painting. Admission is free. In 2026, however, the painting went into conservation. Its 1960s lining is being replaced with new fabric. So for now, it is off display. When I first saw this painting, the blue struck me as too vivid. I thought it must have been repainted during a recent restoration. When I looked into the picture's history, I discovered that I had been half right. The painting underwent a major cleaning between 1967 and 1969. It removed old varnish and later additions of paint. The blue itself had not been added recently. It had been hidden under layers of darkened varnish. The landscape is said to be the best preserved part of the painting. The distant sky and hills have retained the original paint more successfully than the figure's skin. When the picture returns, take a moment to look towards the landscape at the back. For now, while Bacchus is away, there are other Titians to see in the same building. The first is a portrait from around 1510 in room 15. Titian was probably still in his early 20s when he painted it. The sitter appears to have been a friend. For many years people believed he was the poet Ariosto. The man turns towards us over his shoulder and rests his large sleeve on the parapet in front of him. This twist of the body was a new pose and it had a major influence on European portraiture. Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Reynolds all used the same pose in self-portraits. The diarist Samuel Pepys tried it when he sat for a portrait and wrote I sit to have it full of shadows and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by. Rembrandt's self-portrait hangs nearby in the same room. The second painting, An Allegory of Prudence, is in room 14. There is a lot going on in this one. Three faces overlap on a single canvas. An old man, a man in his prime, and a young man. Beneath them are the heads of a wolf, a lion and a dog. There is also an inscription painted into the picture. The National Gallery translates it as Learning from yesterday, today acts prudently, lest by his action he spoil tomorrow. One theory proposes that the three faces represent Titian himself, his son Orazio, and a relative named Marco. The art historian Erwin Panofsky suggested this interpretation. The National Gallery says that the three heads match the relative ages of the three men fairly well, but that they don't especially look like them. Titian's workshop also appears to have had a large hand in it. Its meaning and purpose remain uncertain. Even so, I find myself stopping in front of this painting. Place the portrait from Titian's youth beside the painting from his maturity, and you can follow one man's path without leaving the National Gallery. There is also a small detour worth making in Italy. The painting is no longer in Ferrara, but the Duke's castle, the Castello Estense, still has its moat and drawbridge. It looks built for war. Visiting the room where those paintings once hung would make for a quiet, slightly melancholy trip. Ferrara itself has plenty to see. In 1492, Alfonso's father, Ercole I, asked the architect Biagio Rossetti to design a new quarter north of the castle. The streets are broad and straight, and the city is still surrounded by a ring of brick walls about nine kilometers long. You can walk along the top of them. The entire city is a World Heritage Site. The new quarter also contains the Palazzo dei Diamanti, A palace covered in diamond-shaped stonework that now houses a gallery devoted to the Ferraresi school. If you continue to the Palazzo Schifanoia, you can see a cycle of wall paintings from about 1470. The 12 months unfold around the room. Of course, the main destination is Venice. Above the high altar of the Frari church hangs Titian's breakthrough painting, The Assumption of the Virgin In the 19th century it was removed and taken to a museum. Around a hundred years later it returned to the church for which it had been commissioned. For anyone who has spent time following scattered paintings from place to place, there is something quietly moving about a picture coming home. That brings the journey through the Italian painters to a natural stopping point. From Giotto giving feeling to the cheek of a Madonna, to Titian spreading this blue across the sky. Around 200 years have passed. In the first episode, I spoke about 700 years of painting becoming real. We have now travelled through the heart of that transformation. But season one has one more episode. Next time, the clock will jump forward three centuries and more. The setting returns to London. In 1848, at a Victorian art school, a group of young students will say something outrageous. Go back to before Raphael. At the end of the last episode, I introduced the phrase, after Raphael. In the finale, we finally tie up that thread. If you have travelled with me through these 11 episodes, you should understand why those young men felt the way they did. If this episode was useful to you, please subscribe and leave a like. It really helps me make the next one. Meet the Old Masters. See you at the finale.