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TITIAN

tithes, small tithes. Natural substances having no annual increase are not tithable, nor are wild animals. When property is inherited or donated, it is not sub- ject to the law of tithes, but its natural increase is. There are many exempted from the paying of tithes: spiritual corporations, the owners of uncultivated lands, those who have acquired lawful prescription, or have obtained a legal renunciation, or received a priv- ilege from the pope.

At first, the tithe was payable to the bishop, but later the right passed by common law to parish priests. Abuses soon crept in. The right to receive tithes was granted to princes and nobles, even hereditarily, by ecclesiastics in return for protection or eminent ser- vices, and this species of impropriation became so in- tolerable that the Third Council of the Lateran (1179) decreed that no alienation of tithes to laymen was per- missible without the consent of the pope. In the time of Gregory VIII, a so-called Saladin tithe was instituted, which was payable by all who did not take part personally in the crusade to recover the Holy Land. At the present time, in most countries where some species of tithes still exist, as in England (for the Established Church), in Austria, and Germany, the payment has been changed into a rent-charge. In English-speaking countries generally, as far as Catho- lics are concerned, the clergy receive no tithes. As a consequence, other means have had to be adopted to support the clergy and maintain the ecclesiastical in- stitutions (see Church Maintenance), and to substi- tute other equivalent payments in lieu of tithes. Soglia (Institut. Canon., II, 12) says: "The law of tithes can never be abrogated by prescription or cus- tom, if the ministers of the Church have no suitable and sufficient provision from other sources; because then the natural and divine law, which can neither be abrogated nor antiquated, commands that the tithe be paid." In some parts of Canada, the tithe is still recognized by civil law, and the Fourth Coimcil of Quebec (1S68) declared that its payment is binding in conscience on the faithful.

Ferraris, Bibliotkeca canonica, III (Rome, 1886), s. v., Decimce; Addis and Arnold, The Catholic Dictionary (6th ed., New York, 1889), s. v.; .Selden, History of Tithes (London. 1018); Spelman, Of Tythea (London, 1723).

William H. W. Fanning.

Titian (Tiziano Vecelli, called Titian), the greatest of Venetian painters, b. at Pieve di Cadore (Friuh); d. at Venice, 27 Aug., 1577. It has always been believed that at the time of his death he was a centenarian, and he himself wrote to Philip II in 1571 that he was more than ninety-five, which would make 1477 the year of his birth. But there are good reasons for believing that he made himself out to be older than he was and that he was born about 1487, that is ten years later than the generally accepted date. Vasari makes him seventy-seven in 1566. Titian would therefore have died when he was between 85 and 90 years old, which would render more cred- ible the marvellous freshness of his later works (cf. Herbert Cook, in the "Nineteenth Century", J.an., 1902, and "Repertorium fUr Kunstwissenschaft", XXV). The vigorous health which the .artist inher- ited from his mountain race together with a habit of order, balance, and labour determined the predom- inant characteristic of his art. No painter better expressed, if not the highest beauty, at least that kind of beauty which springs from the deep joy of life, adorning it with an impression of calm, har- mony, and serenity. The first Venetian School had alrea<ly proved itself capable of expressing these sentiments. Titian was to give them a still freer and fuller expression with an external charm and a magic of colouring which hiis sometimes raised the question whether he is not the greatest and most complete of all painters.

At the age of ten Titian was brought to Venice

and placed by his brother with the celebrated mosai- cist, Sebastian Zuccato, but at the end of four or five years he entered the studio of the aged painter Gio- vanni BeUini, at that time the most noted artist in the city. There he found a group of young men about his own age, among them Giovanni PaLtna da Serinalta, Lorenzo Lotto, and Sebastiano Luciani, who were all to become renowned. The foremost of these innovators and their ma.ster was Giorgio da Castelfranco, nicknamed Giorgione. With him Titian formed a friendship of which all his early works bore traces, so much so that at this period it is difficult to distinguish the young master of Cadore from him of Castelfranco. The earliest known work of Titian, the little "Ecce Homo" of the Scuola di San Rocco, was long regarded as the work of Giorgione. And the same confusion or uncertainty is connected with more than one of the "Sacred Conversations", in which several holy persons (generally three or four) appear at half length in sweet and famiUar associa- tion with the Blessed Virgin. The two young masters were likewise recognized as the two leaders of their new school of Arte moderna, that is of painting made more flexible, freed from symmetry and the remnants of hieratic conventions still to be found in the works of Giovanni Bellini. Together they executed in 1508 the frescoes of the Fondaco dei Tcdeschi, which have unfortunately disappeared and which were to Venice what the cartoons of Leonardo and Michel- angelo at the Signiory were to the Florentine School. That of Giorgione and Titian is known to us in part through the engraving of Fontana. An idea of Titian's talent in fr&sco may be gained from those he painted, inlSll, at Padua in the Carmelite church and in the Scuola del Santo, some of which have been pre- served, among them the "Meeting at the Golden Gate", and three scenes from t lie life of St. Anthony of Padua, the "Murder of a Young Woman by Her Husband", "A Child Testifying to Its Mother's Innocence", and "The Saint Healing the Young Man with a Broken Limb." The arrangement and feeling are not the chief merits of these last-named works, but the beauty of the types, the gi'ace of the female figures, the charm of the landscapes, and particularly the enchantment of the colouring must forever rank these frescoes with the most valuable works of Titian's youth.

Among the religious paintings of this period may be mentioned that of Antwerp, "The Doge Pesaro pre- sented to St. Peter by Alexander VI" (1508), and the beautiful "St. Mark surrounded by Sts. Cosmas and Damian, Sebastian and Rocco" (Venice, S. Maria della Salute, c. 1511). Already the young master was in possession of his type of Virgins with powerful shoulders and somewhat rounded countenances, and in particular he had elaborated an extremely refined type of Christ, the most beautiful example of which is the wonderful Christ of "The Tribute Money", at Dresden, a face whose delicacy, spirituaUty, and moral charm have never been suqiassed by any other School. From the same period seems to date the "Triumph of Faith", a subject borrowed from Savonarola's famous treatise, "The Triumph of the Cross", and treated with a magnificent fire in the spirit of Mantegna's cartoons and Diirer's prints of the "Triumph of Maximilian" (cf. Male, "L'art re'-ligieux en France a la fin du moyen Age", 1908, 206 s(|q.). These prints were executed by Andreani. But what may be called the most enduring works of Titian's youth are the lirofane and indeterminately allegorical ones, whose unmatched poetry of form and colouring breathe so deep a joy of living that it borders on melancholy. Such for example is the charming picture of the "Three Ages", in the Ellesmere (lallery; such espe- ciiilly is the masterpiece in the Cassino Borghese, "Profane and .Sacred Love", whose meaning has never been successfully jicnet rated (cf. Olga von