+ Expand

Artist or Maker: Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian (Pieve di Cadore c. 1488/90-1576 Venice)

+ Expand

Provenance: Presumably by descent from the artist to his son, Pomponio Vecellio, and sold by the latter, with the contents of the artist's house, on the Biri Grande, S. Canziano, to
Cristoforo Barbarigo (1544-1614), 1581 and then presumably by descent through his son, Andrea Barbarigo (1595-1640) and
Domenico Barbarigo (1616-1648) at Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza, S. Polo, Venice, where first securely recorded in 1758, to
Count Nicolò Antonio Giustinian Barbarigo, by whom sold, through Felice Binetti with 102 other pictures for a total of 562,000 Austrian lire, to Alessandro de Chwostoff, the Russian consul-general in Venice, 31 July 1850, on behalf of
Tsar Nicolas I of Russia; sold from the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, probably in 1854.
(Probably) Count Michael Tyszkiewicz (1828-1897), and by descent to Count Tyszkiewicz, St. Petersburg, by 1913.
with Luca Comerio & Co., Milan, by whom offered to Joseph, later Lord, Duveen, January 1920 (photograph in the Fototeca Berenson, I Tatti, Settignano).
with Wildenstein, New York, March 1927 (photograph in the Fototeca Berenson, I Tatti, Settignano).
M. Maner, St. Roque, France, before June 1936.
Purchased through August L. Mayer by René Gimpel (1881-1945), 12 January 1937 for 160,000 francs (plus 10,000 francs 'research' fee) (Gimpel archives: we are indebted to Diana Kostyrko for this information) and retained by the latter, by whom taken to London in 1939 and found by his heirs, November 1946.
Estate of René Gimpel; Sotheby's, 17 December 1947, lot 51 as Titian (bought in).
The Property of the late René Gimpel; Christie's, 24 May 1963, lot 51, as Titian (bought in).
Jean Gimpel, son of René Gimpel, by whom transferred to the present owners.

+ Expand

Exhibited: London, Grosvenor Gallery, IInd National Loan Exhibition: Woman and Child in Art, 1913-4, no. 49 (An Illustrated Catalogue of the Second National Loan Exhibition, 1913-1914, London [1913], p. 86).
London, Kenwood, Clerics and Connoisseurs, An Irish Collection through three Centuries, 19 October 2001-27 January 2002, no. 51 (catalogue entry by Jaynie Anderson).
Madrid, Museo del Prado, Tiziano, 10 June-7 September 2003, no. 29 (catalogue entry by Jaynie Anderson).

+ Expand

Literature: C.-N. Cochin, Voyage d'Italie ou recueil de Notes sur les ouvrages de Peinture & de Sculpture, qu'on voit dans les principales villes d'Italie, Paris, 1758, p. 140 ('L'Ange Gardien & Tobias, deux figures en buste. Les têtes ne sont pas peintes d'un pinceau si gras que les autres; elles ont même quelque chose de plat, & les ombres, qui sont presqu'égales aux demi-teintes, ne leur donnent pas de rondeur, & d'autant moins que les draperies ont beaucoup de vigueur, & ont encore noirci').
J.-J. le François de Lalande, Voyage d'un françois en Italie, fait dans les années 1765 & 1766, Venice, [1769], pp. 109-11 ('L'Ange Gardien qui conduit un jeune homme; la tête de l'Ange est belle, & le profil du jeune homme fin; mais les têtes sont peintes trop également du même ton').
G. C. Bevilacqua, Insigne Pinacoteca della nobile veneta famiglia Barbarigo della Terrazza, Venice, 1845, no. 17 ('17. L'Angelo col giovine Tobia di Tiziano. In tela, alt. 0.90, largh. m. 0.90. In mezza figura di grandezza naturale dipinse Tiziano l'Angelo alato, con veste di colore rosso-giallastro, cinta da una fascia, e con maniche di lino candido sino al gomito. Nella destra mano alzata, tiene un piccolo vaso col fiele del pesce preso da Tobia. La testa sembra un ritratto do bellissimo giovine, con capelli lunghi inanellati. Egli appoggia la sinistra mano sulla spalla sinistra del giovine Tobia che gli sta accanto, e che porta nella destra mano il raccolto pesce, mentre innalza lo sguardo verso l'Angelo, suo condottiere. Anche in quest'opera si ravvisa il grande maestro; ed il profile del giovine Tobia non può essere più perfettamente disegnato.').
E. Förster, 'Wanderungen durch einige Privatgalerien Italiens, Nr. I: Die Galerie Barbarigo in Venedig', Kunstblatt, 1 January 1846, p. 6 ('4. Tobias mit dem Engel, Kniestuck, sehr schadhaft. Der Engel scheint [ein] Bildniss eines vornehmen Knaben su sehn. Uebrigens verwahren wir uns gegen eine sichere Annahme der Aechtheit dieses Bildes -- um so mehr, da es einem etwas an steifheit gränzenden Charakter der Komposition trägt.').
A. Selvatigo and V. Lazari, Guido di Venezia e delle isole circonvicine, Venice, Milan and Verona, 1852, p. 232.
C. A. Levi, Le Collezione Veneziane d'Arte e d'Antichità del secolo XIV ai nostri giorni, Venice, 1900, pp. 281-9.
H. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, Complete Edition, I, The Religious Works, London, 1969, p. 163, no. 145, copy 3; III, The Mythological and Historical Paintings, London, 1975, pp. 263-4, pls. 219-20, Addenda I.
J. Anderson, 'Titian's unfinished 'portrait of a patrician woman and her daughter' from the Barbarigo collection, Venice', The Burlington Magazine, CXLIV, 1196, November 2002, pp. 671-9.
R. Rearick, review, Studi Tizianeschi, I, 2003, p. 26.
P. Joannides, 'Titian in London and Madrid', Paragone, V, no. 657, 3, 58, 2004, p. 5.

+ Expand

Notes: This remarkable unfinished double portrait by the greatest of Venetian Renaissance portraitists was masked at an early date by repaint, transforming it into a Tobias and the Angel. This transformation was evidently the work of a pupil or assistant of Titian, of the calibre of Leonardo Corona. Although an x-ray radiograph taken in 1948 established that a double portrait underlay the Tobias, it was not until 1975 that H. E. Wethey implied that the underlying composition recorded in the radiograph was by Titian. An exemplary restoration undertaken between 1983 and 2003 by Alec Cobbe revealed that Titian had in fact resolved his initial double portrait far more fully than had been surmised from the x-ray. The picture was the outstanding rediscovery of the great exhibition consecrated to the later work of Titian held at the Prado in Madrid in 2003. In that exhibition the picture was considered in a catalogue entry by Professor Jaynie Anderson, to whose full account of the picture, published in The Burlington Magazine in November 2002, the compiler is indebted.

The unfinished picture -- as abandoned for whatever reason by Titian -- which emerged on restoration affords a unique insight into the artist's working methods. The canvas was prepared 'with a thin coating of gesso' (Catherine Hassel). Both heads are very fully realised and imply a probing direct observation. The mother's right hand, which had not been obviously discernible in the radiograph, is also substantially resolved: initially it held a rose -- the stalk bends with the weight of the flower head: but subsequently, as the wonderfully impulsive touches of white indicate, Titian must have decided to substitute a large ostrich-feather fan. This stage of the composition may already have been reached when the profile of the daughter was realised -- for she looks upwards, her eyes in a position that would have made little sense had there not been the fan for these to rest on. The mother's golden hair is carefully dressed, and a flower is tucked behind her left ear: at her neck are three strands of pearls. The daughter, whose brown hair is dressed with seed pearls, has an earring of an amethyst: as Keith Christiansen observes (email of 29 September 2005) her portrait 'really conveys Titian's mastery' in 'the way the chin is drawn' and the 'highlights are laid on the face, neck and earring'. The mother's dress is of deep golden yellow with full sleeves that contrast with the tight bodice. Titian has already established its volume, but only the form of the underlying bodice, with mere suggestions of buttons, and part of the hexagonal lozenge pattern of her chemise were realised.

Titian's female portraits are very much less numerous than those of men. Of the 117 portraits catalogued as certain works of Titian by Wethey, only fifteen are of women. These are considered in a fuller context by Rona Goffen (Titian's Women, New Haven, 1997). No other portrait of a mother and child by the artist is known or recorded; but that of Laura dei Dianti (Kreuzlingen, Kisters Foundation; Wethey, II, no. 24) does show the sitter attended by a servant.

Proposals for the identification of the sitters in this canvas are clearly affected by views as to dating. Wethey observed a resemblance in the hair, known to him from the x-ray, to that in the Empress Isabella of 1548 in the Prado, but although both portraits show elaborately dressed hair, the details of this differ. Professor Anderson noted that the dating of the portrait is a 'complex' issue, arguing that while the highly finished heads are 'characteristic [of] the late 1540s' the 'highly unfinished areas resemble Titian's late style in the 1560s': it should, however, be borne in mind that with the exception of the Harewood François I -- which like this picture comes from the Barbarigo collection (see below) -- no other demonstrably unfinished work which is not of the very late period would seem to survive. Professor Paul Joannides, who characterised this portrait as 'vivacious' (2004), considers it to be of the 1540s: while Professor Peter Humfrey notes that the costume 'looks about 1550'. Others favour a date in the 1550s, Professor Mauro Lucco suggesting that the picture may be the close contemporary of Veronese's full-length portrait of a lady with her daughter at Baltimore (Walters Art Museum), which is dated 1556. Jennifer Fletcher proposes the late 1550s or early 1560s, while Professor Roger Rearick (2003) suggested that the picture was begun soon after 1568, agreeing with Anderson's comparison with the head of Lucretia in the Fitzwilliam Tarquin, which is mentioned in Titian's letter of 1 August 1571 to Philip II. Professor Charles Hope who believes that the picture 'came from Titian's studio and has some of the Master's hand in it', considers, on the basis of an identification of the mother as Titian's daughter Emilia, a date as late as 1576 possible. If, however, an assistant had been working on the picture at the date in question, it would seem rather strange that he did not complete the job. If the picture was, as the evidence seems to suggest, at the Biri Grande at the time of Barbarigo's purchase, the overpainting was presumably undertaken before the sale of 1581. The fact that the picture required minor repairs before it was altered and that a layer of ingrained dirt had built up in some areas (see below) suggests that some time had elapsed before the alteration took place. This may be a further reason for not considering a date significantly after the 1550s.

Professor Anderson proposed that the sitters were patrician; Jennifer Fletcher considers that this is unlikely to have been the case. Professor Rearick (2003) believed that they were of the artist's family. Indeed the intimacy of the portrait would be difficult to parallel in any formal portrait of a patrician -- in what was one of the most stratified societies in Europe. The evident affection which animates the sitters suggests that they were of personal importance to the artist himself, and so it seems reasonable to assume that they belonged to Titian's immediate entourage.

Among the women most closely associated with the artist who might, as Professor Hope points out, be hypothetically identified with the mother were his natural daughter, Emilia, and his cousin Livia Balbi. Hope considers the portrait in Dresden (Wethey, II, no. 59) to be of Emilia rather than, as has generally been believed, her sister Lavinia, who was born in 1529-30 and died between 1574 and 1576, and who was indubitably the subject of a second picture at Dresden (Wethey, II, no. 58). He considers the Berlin 'Lavinia' with a Tray of Fruit (Pomona?) and the Prado Salome (Wethey, II, nos. 60 and 60, variant I) to be of the same sitter. The face of the mother in this picture is not dissimilar, but the Dresden Emilia reveals less pronounced cheekbones and, apparently, a slightly larger head. Professor Hope, however, considers that 'given a difference of some fifteen years' the possibility that this picture is of the same sitter 'does not seem altogether to be excluded'. Emilia married Andrea di Giovanni Dossena, a grain merchant, in 1568 and died by June 1582. She had, in addition to two sons, a daughter Celia, but such an identification would imply a date of the mid-1570s, which is later than that advanced by most scholars.

As Professor Hope points out 'among the property left in Titian's house was a portrait of a cousin named Livia Tinto she married Gasparo Balbi, had a grown up daughter by 1574, and died by 1581'. That picture was, however, presumably finished, as the document in which it is mentioned -- a legal settlement between Pomponio Vecellio and Livia's widower Gasparo Balbi of 1581 -- specifies that this was framed. This might fit with a date in the 1550s, but Professor Hope doubts that the Barbarigo picture is of Livia Balbi.

An alternative identification may be considered. A dating of the picture to the late 1550s might suggest that the girl -- who as Jennifer Fletcher suggests seems to be aged between eight and ten -- was Emilia, who is thought to have been born in 1548. It would follow that the lady was her mother. Professor Anderson agrees with this proposal (email of 2 October 2005). Emilia was illegitimate -- for as recent evidence advanced by Lionello Puppi (L. Puppi, Su Tiziano, Milan, 2004, pp 42-4) establishes the artist did not remarry as has been supposed. Her mother must have been the artist's mistress. As Puppi argues (op. cit., p. 43), she appears to have been a servant in his household. Extraordinary as it may seem -- although of course Titian had supplied King Philip II with some of the most overtly sensual masterpieces of the cinquecento -- in a letter of 27 September 1559, he offered the king a portrait which may, as Jennifer Fletcher proposes, have represented the woman in question:

le mande oltra gli altri quadri anchora il ritratto di quella che è patrona assoluta dell'anima mia et che è la vestita di giallo, della quale nel vero benchè sia dipinta, non potrei mandarlo più cara et pretiosa cosa ('I, send beside the other pictures, the portrait of her who is absolute patroness of my soul, and that is her who is dressed in yellow, who, though in truth only painted, is the dearest and most precious thing I could send away') (J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, Tiziano, Florence, 1878, II, p. 247; Titian, His Life and Times, London, 1881, II, p. 279: we are indebted to Jennifer Fletcher for these references).

As Jennifer Fletcher has suggested, these expressions might seem more appropriate to a mistress rather than a daughter, though Professor Hope points out that the words may be those of the individual who wrote on Titian's behalf, rather than of the artist himself, and considers that these could have been used of a daughter, citing Titian's friend Pietro Aretino's reference in correspondence to his own daughters. Rona Goffen (Titian's Women, New Haven, 1997, pp. 262-3) observes that yellow, the colour specified in the letter, was assigned under Venetian law to prostitutes -- and Jews (according to Anderson, this referred to yellow scarves); and the fact that the costume of the mother in the present portrait is yellow may thus be significant. In any case, it would seem unlikely that the picture Titian proposed sending to King Philip II could have been as unfinished as the present portrait at the time he wrote his letter, but there must be a possibility in view of the use of yellow in both the portrait documented and the present canvas that these represented the same woman, presumably the mistress who was the mother of Emilia. It would not be difficult to understand why Pomponio Vecellio wanted to suppress an image of the kind.

HISTORY:

In 1531 Titian moved to a new house on the Campo Rotto, S. Canziano. Behind the later Palazzo Donà delle Rose, this was on the opposite side of the Rio dei Gesuiti from the church of the Gesuiti for which he would later supply his prodigious Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. The area, the Biri Grande, was only partly built up. The house, some of the structure of which survives, is the study of a recent article, from which the following information is drawn, by Juergen Schulz ('The House of Titian, Aretino and Sansovino', in Titian, His World and His Legacy, ed. D. Rosand, New York, 1982, pp. 73-82). It had been built in 1527. Titian took a lease, and subsequently also leased additional ground. His residence was on the upper floor and there were two further apartments below, initially tenanted. Annexed to the house was a substantial building -- which Titian enlarged -- referred to a tezza (shed) or bottega (workshop): this, as Schulz observes, was presumably Titian's studio. A letter of 1540 from Francesco Priscianese gives a graphic description of an entertainment Titian held in the house during which 'we spent the time in looking at the life-like figures in the excellent pictures, of which the house was full' (Schulz, p. 82).

Titian died on 27 August 1576. The house in the Biri Grande was inherited by his son Pomponio. He also inherited the pictures Titian had owned: the evidence as to their history has been explored in detail by Jaynie Anderson (loc. cit., 2002), whose researches are summarised in the following paragraphs. In 1581 the house was sold -- there is no reference to moveable goods in the contract (information from Amanda Bradley, but see C. Hope, Titian, London, 1980, p. 167) -- for 510 ducats to Cristoforo Barbarigo, from whom it was rented by Francesco Bassano, who had used it from 1578 as his studio: the painter Leonardo Corona was also in occupation, until he died in 1606. The sale of the house was one sign of Pomponio's dissipation of his inheritance: some 'unfinished' pictures are stated by Carlo Ridolfi (1594-1658), Tintoretto's first authoritative biographer, to have been acquired by the latter (C. Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'Arte, Venice, 1648, 1914 edition, I, p 206-7), but the fate of whatever pictures remained in the house is not specifically documented.

Barbarigo in his will of 1600 left four Titians ('quattro famossissimi quadri'), a Christ carrying the Cross, a Magdalen, a Madonna and a Venus, to his infant son Andrea to pass to his successive male representatives. The document does not specify other pictures, but because some unfinished late works were later in the Barbarigo collection, it is widely assumed (Professor Hope dissents from this view) that these also passed, in some way, to Andrea, but presumably were not considered significant enough to be treated as heirlooms. When the remaining pictures left the Biri Grande for Ca' Barbarigo della Terrazza, S. Polo, on the Grand Canal remains uncertain (for the palazzo, see H. Siebenhüner, Der Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza in Venedig seine Tiziano Sammlung, Munich, 1981). Access for foreigners to Venetian private houses was discouraged by the State. But, as Gregorio Barbarigo -- later the Venetian ambassador to England -- escorted the connoisseur Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, and his formidable wife, on their Venetian visit of 1613, it seems plausible that the Ca' Barbarigo was one of the 'diverse palaces' they saw. A note in van Dyck's Italian Sketchbook (British Museum) -- opposite a study of a Venus similar to the Barbarigo picture -- establishes that he knew of the collection in 1623.

Ridolfi, writing in or before 1648 (op.cit., p. 200), records that the Barbarigo ('gli Signori Barbarighi') owned the four pictures specified in the will of 1600, as well as seven others, the Saint Sebastian, the Pan and Syrinx, and the portraits of Pope Paul III, François I of France, Philip II of Spain and the Doges Antonio Grimani and Andrea Gritti which all came from the Biri Grande ('quale pitture si conservarono nella casa di Titiano in fino al suo morire;'): the omission of the Tobias could mean no more than that Ridolfi considered it too insignificant to mention; he may indeed have considered that it was not by Titian. A Mars and Venus owned by the Barbarigo is mentioned in a poem published by Marco Boschini (La Carta del Navegar pitoresco, 1660), while the Magdalen and the Venus are specified as the property of Luigi Barbarigo in Francesco Sansovino's Venetia città nobilissima et singolare of 1663 (3rd ed.).

The first foreigner to comment on the collection was apparently Edward Wright, who travelled with Viscount Parker in 1720-2: in his Some Observations made in Travelling through France, Italy &c (London, 1730, I, p. 76) he mentions, as Titian's last work, 'a S. Sebastian left unfinished by him.' By the mid-eighteenth century, Ca' Barbarigo was clearly well-established on the tourist circuit. The present canvas is first referred to by Charles-Nicholas Cochin II (1715-1770), whose account of his visit to Italy in 1749-51 was published in 1758. He notes that the Palazzo had the sobriquet the 'Scola del Tiziano' and describes in considerable detail ten pictures by Titian. His list was not exhaustive -- other collections are surveyed in an equally discriminating way -- but it is interesting to note that his choice has to some extent stood the test of time. Cochin's Voyage d'Italie quickly became established as a standard source. With the addition of a 'mediocre' portrait, his list was followed by J.-J. le François de Lalande in his publication of 1765, but other writers were more selective and the Tobias (as it then was) was overlooked by de Brosses, Bettinelli, and by Gianjacopo Fontana, who was particularly interested in the portraits in the collections.

By March 1797 Count Giovanni Barbarigo was served, whether as chaplin, secretary or librarian, by the Abbate Luigi -- or Alvise -- Celotti (c.1768-c.1846). Celotti is a significant figure in the pattern of early nineteenth-century collecting, not least of illuminated cuttings, and his career has recently been summarized by Nicholas Penny (National Gallery Catalogues, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, I, London, 2004, pp. 363-4). He evidently was involved in the sale of a number of pictures from the Palazzo Barbarigo and his activities may explain the later rumour (see Anderson, 2003, p. 671) that pictures were introduced to the collection to facilitate their sale. Celotti's reputation as a connoisseur must in any case have encouraged interest in the collection.

Like the Manfrin Gallery, the Palazzo Barbarigo is mentioned in all the early nineteenth-century guidebooks to Venice. Anderson understandably qualifies as 'clichéd' the one visual record of the so-called 'Studio of Titian' in the Palazzo, the view in Lake Price's Interiors and Exteriors in Venice: lithographed by Joseph Nash from the original drawings (London, 1843, pl. XIX). The composition is akin to those Nash himself drew of interiors of early English houses such as Knole. It certainly gives an idea of the density of the picture hang in the main room of the palace, and of the exceptionally grand frames which would be specifically excluded from the sale of the collection. Some of the pictures correspond with those then at Ca' Barbarigo, although Titian's Entombment (Paris, Louvre) -- which the painter is showing to his richly dressed audience -- was never owned by the family.

The Barbarigo were clearly proud of their inheritance. But like many Italian families their financial position was affected by the fall of the Republic and the imposition of the Code Napoleon. Gian Carlo Bevilacqua's catalogue of 1845 in which the pictures, including sixteen given to Titian, are priced, was, as Anderson observes, clearly prepared with a view to sale. A pattern of sales from the Manfrin collection shows that the Barbarigo were not alone in their wish to sell. Any plans they had would have been delayed by the Venetian uprising of 1848. The Austrian authorities were not irresponsible in their attitude to the artistic patrimony of their dominions; but in the aftermath of the suppression of the short-lived Venetian Republic it is not surprising that no steps seem to have been made to stop the sale of the entire collection to the Emperor Franz Josef's powerful ally, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, in 1850. On 23 September of that year, the archivist Conte Emanuel Cicogna recorded that he had been to see the collection being packed up for dispatch to Russia. The Tsar's advisors evidently rejected five 'less finished' portraits. These remained with Count Niccolò Giustiniani Barbarigo and were taken to his palace at Padua (Anderson, 2003, p. 671): these were the François I, now at Harewood (Wethey, II, no. 36), the Cincinnati Philip II (Wethey, II, no. 81), the workshop version of the Doge Andrea Gritti (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Wethey, II, no. 51), the ex-Rothermere Doge Antonio Grimani (Wethey, II, no. x-61, copy 1) and a portrait of Doge Marcantonio Barbarigo, based evidently on an earlier prototype (Mannheim, Pontow collection; Hans Ost, Tizian Studien, 1992, pp. 100-11: we are indebted to Jan May, who is preparing a thesis on the Barbarigo collection, for this reference): the portraits of François I and Philip II were subsequently noted at Padua by Otto Mündler.

After the rejection of the portraits, the Tsar's acquisition still included no fewer than sixteen works believed by Bevilacqua to be by Titian. The pictures that were sent to Russia, listed in the order of Cochin's descriptions with Bevilacqua's numbers in parentheses, were: 1 (80), the now lost Pan and Syrinx; 2 (54), a Prometheus, also lost; 3 (17), the Tobias and the Angel, under discussion; 4 (15), Christ carrying the Cross (Hermitage; Wethey, I, no. 25); 5 (78), the Toilet of Venus (Washington, National Gallery of Art; Wethey, III, no. 51); 6 (71), a bust of Christ (presumably Hermitage; Wethey, I, no. 28, version); 7 (48), a now lost version of Venus and Adonis; 8 (76), The Madonna and Child with the Magdalen (Hermitage; Wethey, I, no. 68); 9 (16), the Magdalen (Hermitage; Wethey, I, no. 123); 10 (40), Saint Sebastian (Hermitage; Wethey, I, no. 134); 11 (79), Christ Blessing (Hermitage; Wethey, I, no. 18); and 12 (41), a lost Saint Jerome; and four pictures which Cochin had not described: (38), a portrait of Doge Agostino Barbarigo; (72), listed as 'un Artigiano'; (86), a Madonna and Child; and (92), Christ with the Cross encountering Saint Veronica. Of these the Christ carrying the Cross, the Magdalen, the Venus and the Madonna evidently corresponded with the four pictures specifically bequeathed to Domenico Barbarigo in 1600. It is not difficult to see why these had then been singled out. They were the most fully resolved of the canvasses. The rather smaller Christ blessing and the Christ mocked, which were also highly finished, may well have been retained by the artist as objects of devotion rather than components of the studio. The remarkable late whole-length Sebastian by contrast had been brought to a less high degree of resolution. Assuming that the Barbarigo pictures did come from the Biri Grande house, the selection of pictures remaining in Pomponio's possession there in 1581 must have been determined in part by what the artist himself had failed to complete or sell, in part by what had evidently been sold to Tintoretto. That Titian had retained his unfinished portrait of François I, and a picture of his outstanding patron, Philip II, along with those of one, and perhaps three, doges and Pope Paul III is understandable. Were the double portrait to have begun as a private portrait commission, it would apparently have been the only such work to be retained by the artist.

It is clear that Titian's working practices were more complex than has sometimes been understood, not least in his later years. Partly finished canvasses were left on one side, sometimes for considerable periods, and then taken up again; replicas laid in by assistants were worked up by the master. There is moreover a wide difference in the degree of finish among the late works. While, for example, the Fitzwilliam Tarquin is very carefully resolved, the Kremsier Flaying of Marsyas is much less fully wrought -- and indeed fascinates posterity precisely for that reason. While the double portrait may have been put aside for personal reasons, the Saint Sebastian -- which we now recognise as a masterpiece -- may also not have been deemed ready for sale by Titian himself. The Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter, like the François I, was clearly unfinished and it may prove that this was also true of some of the other portraits, which may hypothetically have been tidied up by assistants. In the case of this picture it is significant that although a pupil, hypothetically Leonardo Corona, endeavoured to put it in saleable order, its presence at Ca' Barbarigo indicates that no individual sale in fact took place. Assuming that the lost pictures dispersed as a result of the Hermitage purge of 1853 (see below) were indeed by Titian, the fact that there are no obvious copies of, for example, the Pan and Syrinx, may mean that work had not progressed sufficiently for the design of these to be circulated and thus copied. In short Pomponio seems, in addition to a handful of completed masterpieces, to have inherited canvasses left by his father in varying stages of resolution.

What is evident, however, is that before the Barbarigo collection was sold, this represented the full range of the painter's repertoire. For the portraits of key sitters were balanced by mythological works and by seven religious pictures.

The Tsar's predecessors had habitually amalgamated the collections they obtained en bloc, and in 1850 it wouldn't have occurred to anyone to display the Barbarigo pictures together. The scale of the imperial collection was already intimidating and the installation of this in redecorated galleries in 1853 led to a decision to review this as a whole. The evidence is summarised by Anderson (op. cit., p. 5). Eventually it was decided to sell 1,219 pictures. These included three of the Barbarigo Titians, the Prometheus, the Pan and Syrinx and the Saint Jerome: the Tobias is not identifiable on the list, which, however, is not always explicit. If the picture was not in the planned auction of 1854, it may have been sold separately at the same time. The presumed father of the owner in 1913, Count Tyszkiewicz (1828-1897), who was of Polish descent, was a collector of some note.

The picture was exhibited in London in 1913-4 and may not have returned to St. Petersburg. As Professor Anderson established, it was offered to Joseph, later Lord, Duveen in 1920 and he evidently consulted Bernhard Berenson, with whom he had a long-standing financial arrangement. By May 1927, when Berenson was approached again, the picture was owned by Wildenstein. It was acquired by the dealer and connoisseur, René Gimpel in 1937.

René Gimpel was one of the greatest of inter-war period dealers. His father had been an art dealer in Paris, and he continued in the family tradition. He did so with immense charm, flair and intelligence; he became the friend of artists, collectors and critics alike, buying and selling a range of works that displayed his openness of mind, his connoisseurship and his faultless eye. Gimpel was an advocate of many modern artists, including Picasso, Braque and Soutine, but it was with the Old Masters that his heart and expertise lay.

Gimpel married Florence Duveen, the youngest sister of Joseph, later Lord, Duveen. They had three sons: the Gimpel Fils gallery, named in tribute to René, was founded by his sons, Peter and Charles. His youngest son, Jean, combined his family's love of art with an interest in science. He set up a laboratory in Paris that applied scientific testing and resources to the study of art. This interest in science later came to eclipse any interest in art, as was best demonstrated in his numerous philanthropic projects, introducing simple pre-industrial techniques to rural areas in the Third World in order to increase their self-sufficiency.

At the outbreak of war Jean, like his father and his brother Charles (originally Ernest), joined the French resistance, while Peter (or Pierre) joined the Free French and then the British Army. While the three sons survived, René was arrested first in 1942 by the Vichy authorities and then a second time by the Germans. On this second occasion, he was sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp, where until his death in 1944, he continued to act as a beacon of hope to his fellow inmates, even teaching them English in preparation for their liberation. It was thus all too ominous that his published diaries ended with a connoisseur's appreciation of the looming threat in 1939 when he was in Geneva:

The conflagration is not far from bursting upon us. We have been here for forty-eight hours to see the Prado Exhibition. We shall be staying a week. Death hangs over our heads, and if it must take us, this last vision of Velàzquez, Greco, Goya, Roger Van der Weyden, will have made a fine curtain (R. Gimpel, Diary of an Art Dealer, New York, 1966, p. 446).

Before the war Gimpel took many of his pictures to London, where the Titian was recovered in a garage in Bayswater in November 1946. The sequel is described by Anderson (2003, p. 677):

[In] 1948, the picture was restored by Helmut Ruhemann and x-rayed by the Courtauld Institute (fig. 34). The x-radiograph revealed for the first time an underlying composition of a remarkable double portrait of a patrician woman and her daughter which was vigorously drawn in a way that was characteristic of Titian. Intrigued by the discovery, Ruhemann partially revealed the woman's pearl necklace, as shown by a photograph taken during the restoration, and then covered it up again. Ruhemann's assistant, Stephen Rees-Jones noted a striking affinity between the radiographs of the child's head in the underlying double portrait and the head of Lucretia in Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia in the Fitzwilliam Museum (fig. 35 and 36).
Fn the first volume of his Titian monograph, issued in 1969, Wethey considered the Tobias to be a 'free partial copy' of the sixteenth to seventeenth-century of Titian's Tobias and the Angel in the sacristy of the church of S. Marziale, Venice. The painter who reworked the double portrait will no doubt have had that picture in mind -- and the profile of Tobias in Titian's composition is also in upturned profile -- but was presumably unaware that by leaving the hand of the Lady turned Angel on the shoulder of the girl who subsequently became Tobias, he was setting an iconographical precedent! Subsequently Wethey saw the x-ray, and in the third volume of his catalogue published in 1975, he wrote that these 'prove the canvas to have been re-used in Titian's workshop (...). A portrait of a lady with her hair arranged with braids similar to those of the Empress Isabella (......)F appears underneath' (op.cit., 1976).

RESTORATION HISTORY:

The original canvas is lined and mounted on a wooden stretcher; both the lining canvas and the stretcher date from at least 1850-53, when the picture was in the Hermitage. The stretcher bears Bevilacqua's Barbarigo catalogue number in Russian, presumably applied at the time of its acquisition for Czar Nicholas I. It has been suggested that the present lining is a sturgeon glue lining carried out during the period when the painting was in Russia.
1913-14: The picture was possibly restored by Luigi Cavenaghi for eFhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, London.

1947-8: Jean Gimpel took the picture to Helmut Ruhemann (then Director of Conservation at the National Gallery) at the Courtauld Institute of Art (Technology Department), London, where an x-ray was prepared by Stephen (later Professor) Rees-Jones, which revealed the underlying composition for the first time. Helmut Ruhemann cleaned and restored the picture and carried out an exploratory trial in the neck of the angel, presumably in order to assess the feasibility of removing the overpainted composition. This trial revealed much of the upper strand of pearls of the lady's necklaces and part of the lace ruff under her chin. This was recorded at the time in a colour photograph. Ruhemann apparently decided not to proceed and covered over the trial with retouching.

1983-2003: In 1983, the late Jean Gimpel brought the picture to the studio of Alec Cobbe to examine anew the feasibility of removing the overpainted composition. In the first instance, the relined painting was removed from its stretcher, in order that the weakened edges of both original and lining canvasses could be further reinforced by strip-lining. Whilst on the loom for this operation, a further x-ray was made by Christopher Hurst at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge, in order to obtain a radiograph mosaic of the full extent of the original canvas and without interference from stretcher members (which had been included in the 1948 x-ray). The canvas was then restretched on its existing stretcher.

The decision to remove the composition of Tobias and the Angel was carefully considered and taken in the light of discussions with art historians in regard to its intrinsic historical and artistic merit. Initial cleaning removed the varnish and retouchings applied by Ruhemann and revealed his exploratory tests in the neck of the lady. In further cleaning the overpainting of the lady's and child's hair was found to yield to solvents and reagents. The original hair of both the lady and the child was then uncovered, together with the pearls and ornaments on the head of the child. The robes of the angel and Tobias, the right arm, hand and wings of the angel, the cup and the fish were painted in a thicker, impastoed technique. These paint layers remained virtually unaffected by either solvents or reagents. Removal proceeded, therefore, by a dry method, namely by picking off minute areas of the overpaint with a scalpel.

Analysis carried out by Catherine Hassel showed that the canvas was originally prepared by a very thin coating of gesso (as is usual in the paintings of Titian). The dress was painted in solid layers without glazes -- 'Titian applied glazes in the traditional manner as a final wash to enrich and intensify the colour of draperies'; the dress is clearly unfinished and 'the glazing stage would not have been reached'. There was no varnish between the original painting and the repainted composition, which was executed in at least three stages. 'The set of pigments of the repainting and the way they were combined is more appropriate for a 16th century than for a 17th century work' suggesting that the alteration took place at an early date.

During the removal process it became apparent that in many areas there was a layer of dirt which acted as a barrier between the original paint and the reworking: this in the event, facilitated the partition of overpaint from original. The greater part of the period of restoration was spent on this process. It became apparent during the removal of overpaint that the picture had been subject to minor restorations and repairs prior to the re-painting, and that the first alteration to the picture by a hand other than Titian's had been a crude repainting of the band of flesh in the bust of the lady, covering over two of the three necklaces. The wings in the altered composition, as completed, were found to have been revisions of earlier, differently sited, first attempts (confirming the conclusions in Catherine Hassel's analytical report).

The heads survive in an exceptionally good state of preservation. Some other areas have suffered from flaking resulting in mostly tiny losses. A number of these were found to have been filled in with putty prior to the repainting, showing that flaking had already occurred while the picture remained in Titian's studio in its unfinished state. Following removal of overpaint and revarnishing, all that remained was to carry out spot retouchings, these occurring mostly on the dresses of the lady and the child.

The compiler is indebted to Professor Jaynie Anderson -- whose article of 2003 has been cited, to Keith Christiansen, Everett Fahy, Jennifer Fletcher, Professor Charles Hope, Professor Peter Humfrey, Professor Paul Joannides and Professore Mauro Lucco, as well as the scholars specifically acknowledged above.

The loan of this picture has been requested for the forthcoming exhibition Tiziano Ritrattista, Paris, Palais de Luxembourg, and Naples, Museo di Capodimonte (2006).

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.