The Wonder of Titian's Late Paintings

Before I post any photos of my own work, here is what I have been inspired by lately: Titian's late masterpiece The Death of Actaeon.

It was painted sometime in the 1560s, when Titian was an old man. It was one of the paintings that was in his studio at the time of his death. There are a few such paintings, which he may have been working on right up until his last days. Technically, these painting are distinguished by their lack of finish, meaning that compared to his earlier paintings they look rougher, the edges less sharp, the different areas of the picture merging and blending into one another.

Another thing about them: Titian's initial "lay in" (blocking in the main shapes and some light-shadow contrasts) was done with a brush, but much of the build-up of the pigment was done using rags, dipped into the paint and then dabbed and smeared onto the canvas. The Google Arts and Culture site has some extreme high-definition images of the painting, and when you zoom right in you can see this process right in front of your eyes. Here is a close-up of Diana's midriff:

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Here is one of the hounds' back legs:

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And here is one of the trees at the top of the painting:

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Particularly in that last one, you can see how the dabbing and the smearing looks almost like a contemporary abstract painting, or at least like a version of the Impressionists' discovery, three hundred years later, that applications of dabbed colour that are imprecise when seen close-up magically seem to resolve themselves into forms and shapes when seen from further away.

There is direct testimony of Titian's working methods from Palma Giovane, who was one of Titian's assistants towards the end of the great painter's life:

First of all Titian blocked in his composition in broad masses, which served, as one might say, as a bed or base for the compositions which he then had to construct. Vasari noted that at this stage Titian used brushes as big as brooms. He formed the objects of the composition with bold strokes made with brushes laden with colors, sometimes of a pure red earth, which he used, for a middle tone, and at other times of white lead.

After sketching the paintings out in this manner, he used to turn his pictures to the wall and leave them there without looking at them, sometimes for several months. When he wanted to apply his brush again he would examine them with the utmost rigor, as if they were his mortal enemies, to see if he could find any faults; and if he discovered anything that did not fully conform to his intentions he would treat his picture like a good surgeon would his patient; reducing if necessary some swelling or excess of flesh, straightening an arm if the bone structure was not exactly right, and if a foot had been initially misplaced correcting it without thinking of the pain it might cost him, and so on. In this way, he brought the painting to the most perfect symmetry that the beauty of art and nature can reveal; and after he had done this, while the picture was drying he would turn his hand to another and work on it in the same way.

Thus he gradually covered those quintessential forms with living flesh, bringing them by many stages to a state in which they lacked only the breath of life. He never painted a figure all at once. And in the last stages he painted more with his fingers than his brushes.

A close examination of Titian's surface brings you right into the beauty of oil painting -- not merely to describe the surfaces of the world, but to become the world through paint, to let paint be the picture as much as the ostensible subject matter attempts to represent the world.