Venetian Regrets

From the long marble steps in front of Venice's railway station, little King Vittorio Emmanuele stepped into a gaily beflagged launch and chuffed off down the serpentine Grand Canal to the Palazzo Pesaro. Behind the palace's mooring poles stood Signor Mario Alvera, Podesta (Mayor) of Venice, and Professor Nino Barbantini, director of The Modern Art Gallery. Together they led their King through the greatest collection ever assembled of the works of Venice's greatest painter, Tiziano Vecelli.

Venice's great Titian exhibition honored no anniversary. Recently the Italian Government acquired the Pesaro Palace from the Duchess Bevilacqua la Masa to use as a museum of modern art. Because Titian knew both the house and the Pesaro family well, once painted a famous view of the building, the palace was decided upon as the ideal place to have a loan exhibition of Titians. Professor Barbantini who wrote the letters, pulled the wires and did most of the spade work to make the exhibition possible, had another name for his show. He called it a Tribute of Regret, that so many of the works of Venice's greatest master had been allowed to leave the city where they were painted.

There are some 300 authenticated Titians in the world. Venice, which discovered him and made him rich, has only 28 and not one of them remains in private hands. Six are in the Academy or the Doge's Palace, the rest in parish churches and monasteries. Florence, Venice's ancient rival, has 31. So has Vienna, and there are 34 in Madrid. Chief distribution of remaining Titians:

London 26 Rome 18 Leningrad 11 (Minus one sold to Paris 19 A. W. Mellon) Berlin 11 New York 8 Philadelphia 4

Venice assembled 100 Titians last week, badly hampered by the fact that neither Madrid nor London would lend. Florence's pride, the lecherous Venus of Urbino* has been promised, but will not reach Venice until July.

No great artist ever lived so long as Tiziano Vecelli. Born high in the Alps, 70 miles from Venice, he lived to be 99, died enormously rich and honored, a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, of the plague in 1576. Titian never starved in a garret. Sent to Venice to study painting by his father, apparently a man of some means, Titian formed an early partnership with Giorgione, soon won profitable city contracts from the Council, who liked him for his frank sensuousness, his Oriental love of color and display, his shrewd business sense. Traveling to Ferrara to see the Duke, Titian would rent a barge and five servants. Going to Ferrara on his own business he used the cheapest cargo boats.

Titian made no pretense at the universal genius of such men as Michael Angelo or Leonardo da Vinci. He lacked entirely the religious instinct of a Giotto or El Greco. He worshipped fine food, rich brocades and women's bodies, alternated between harlots, duchesses and his daughter Lavinia for his models. Still painting at the age of 90. his trembling hands and failing eyes produced the technique that led to French Impressionism. The bargaining instinct never left him. Wanting to be buried in the swank Church of the Frari, he offered to swap the monks a new Pieta for a fine funeral. Death caught him before the picture was finished, but the monks burned extra candles for their part of the bargain.

* One of the earliest, most famed of composopraphs. the Venus of Urbino has the head of the wealthy, potent Duchess of Urbino attached to the body of a honey skinned Venetian strumpet. "The position of the left hand," wrote Mark Twain, "is one of the most brazen pieces of impudicity I have ever looked upon."

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