Art: Visitors salute a Titian masterpiece

By T.J. McNAMARA Art critic

Venice is full of colour and warmth. But this month a church such as the famous Santa Maria della Salute on the Grand Canal is icy cold.

By comparison, the biggest church in Venice, Santa Maria dei Frari, is warmer - perhaps because it is made of more brick and less marble than the Salute and perhaps because of the many people inside.

Although the church is still attended by devout Venetians, nearly all of the people are tourists. The church is an outstanding example of the way churches that are filled with art have become as secularised as museums, parallel to the way museums have become like churches in attracting worshippers in an atmosphere of sanctity.

The church of the Frari is filled with art: St John the Baptist, by Donatello, in one chapel; an enchanting triptych by Giovanni Bellini in the sacristy; and, most spectacular of all, a huge altarpiece, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, by Titian, the greatest of all Venetian artists.

This great, glowing painting is the first work of Titian's maturity.

Tiziano Veccello, in English called Titian, was born in Cadore, near the alps, but lived most of his life in Venice and his fame echoed throughout Renaissance Europe. He was in his 90s when he died of the plague.

Along with the short-lived Giorgione, Titian was a pupil of Giovanni Bellini and worked in his manner until he was given the commission for the altarpiece.

Behind the altar is a huge, carved marble arch, 8m high and 4m wide. The painting fills the space in the arch, with the subject the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary. The Mother of God could not be subject to physical decay like an ordinary person, so the doctrine was that when she died God the Father took her body up to heaven.

The friars who commissioned the piece in 1516 got more than they expected and at first they didn't like the revolutionary work, drenched in colour. Instead of the usual depiction of Mary going quietly up to heaven against a landscape background, Titian had painted a breathtaking drama full of movement and power.

The Apostles around the deathbed are individually characterised in expression and gesture as they raise their heads and hands in amazement at the miracle.

Mary is in the middle of the painting against no other background than a deep, golden space. She is supported by clouds and a bubbling tribe of cherubs and young angels. She is not a remote, ethereal figure but a dignified and vigorous young woman raising her hands in a gesture of anticipation. The red and blue of her swirling garments carries on the sense of upward movement to where God the Father hovers.

There are large Gothic windows on either side of the painting. So much light would kill a lesser work, but Titian has judged his broad effects so well that in the light of day or the light of altar candles it always looks dramatic.

Also in the church is a painted Pieta to rank with Michelangelo's three great sculptures on the theme. Titian intended it to stand over his own tomb. He was buried in the Frari, but his memorial has ended up in the Academy on the other side of the Grand Canal.

The work has a tragic grandeur. In Titian's old age he painted with extraordinary freedom, drawing with his brushes, abandoning the use of line, plastering the paint on and frequently working it with his fingers. Everything is revealed as if by a burning, inner light.

In the painting Christ lies in his mother's lap. in an attitude similar to Michelangelos Pieta in St Peters. A distraught Mary Magdalene is on the left of the painting and, on the right, the aged Titian himself, clad in a simple garment, kneels in adoration. The work is profound where the Assumption is spectacular, but both pieces are the works of a painter of great intellect and insight.