Leseprobe

10 Ill. 2 Peter Paul Rubens after Titian “Girl with a Fan” 1628/29, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum more than half her face; she looks delightful with a fan in her hand.” 4 Scannelli, who saw the portrait in the Ducal Gallery in Modena after the Este Collection had been moved there following the loss of Ferrara in 1598, described it as a “completely truthful picture of Titian’s lover”. 5 Titian had already used a similar formulation two years before this letter Scannelli passed on to poster- ity. Accompanied by the words that it showed the “absolute mistress of my soul”, the artist sent a por- trait to the Spanish King Philipp II on September 22, 1559. He also made the following comment on the portrayal: “Dressed in yellow: in truth, although it is only painted, I could not send you anything more charming and valuable”. 6 The portrait that Titian sent along with this letter has been lost. It was possibly destroyed in the blaze at the Alcázar in Madrid in 1734. Although an envoy of the Spanish regent as- sumed that it was a depiction of a Turkish or Persian woman, 7 it was probably identical with the portrait of a woman with a fan in her hand that the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens copied – in all likelihood, in Madrid in 1628/29 (ill. 2). 8 It shows the same person as the work in Dresden although there are some differences in the decoration of the dress and accessories. Rubens also did not show a “Lady in Yellow”, as one would suspect from Titian’s letter, but also a person dressed in white. It seems likely that the tern “in giallo” did not refer to the color of the clothing but the embroidery. An entry in the in- ventory of the Alcázar from 1636 describing Titian’s painting as a “Venetian woman in white satin with golden embroidery, a palm-leaf fan in her right hand, the tip of a green leaf on her breast [...]” seems to substantiate this. 9 Speculations on the identity of the portrayed person The formulations Titian used in his letters – such as “absolute mistress of my soul” and “most valuable being on earth” – quite obviously demanded that speculations on the identity of the person shown be made. The “Lady in White” is listed as Titian’s lover in the Modena inventory of 1663 as it also is in the description of this collection of paintings made by Pietro Ercole Gherardi in 1744. 10 In contrast, the list of the one hundred masterworks from Modena sold to August III mentions it neutrally as “Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan”. 11 The formulation in the first inventorying of the painting in Dresden is more cautious where it is stated that the woman portrayed with the fan in her hand is “known as” Titian’s lover. 12 However, the Gallery Inspector Pietro Maria Gua- rienti, who was responsible for the hanging of the paintings in the so-called Inner Gallery of the Royal Painting Collection in the former stables at Jüdenhof that had been specially adapted for the purpose, states in the handwritten “catalogo” he sent to Frie- drich August II in 1750 that Titian had painted the work for his lover. 13 The entry in the first catalog of the Picture Collection mentioned previously that identified the portrayed woman as “Maitresse du Tit- ien” 14 adhered to this description, as did other gallery catalogs. It was not until 1826 that this classification was questioned and the reference was done away with completely twelve years later. 15 Julius Hübner, Director of the Picture Gallery at the Zwinger that was built following plans by the archi- tect Gottfried Semper, cataloged the artworks with new historical understanding. The entries were ex- tended to include information on provenience and restoration. In the case of the “Lady in White”, Hüb- ner not only made reference to the immediate source of the painting in Modena and the canvas doubling carried out by Palmaroli in 1827, but also to the first owner “Painted for Alphons I [sic!] of Ferrara as Tit- ian’s lover”. 16 With art history’s growing establish- ment and recognition as a historical (auxiliary) sci- ence in the second half of the 19 th century, documents took on a major role in argumentation. Karl Woer- mann, the first art historian to head the Dresden Pic- ture Gallery, discussed Titian’s portrait in the light of the most recent research. In this way, he did away with the myth of the painting that was “formerly, er- roneously described as Titian’s lover”. 17 Instead, Wo- ermann followed the newest findings of a number of specialists in the field who had concluded that this was actually a portrait of Titian’s daughter Lavinia. The basis for the identification with Lavinia was a referencemade by Carlo Ridolfi who recognized Titian’s daughter in two paintings – including one in Berlin today (ill. 1) – in 1648. 18 Crowe and Cavalcaselle promptly correlated this with the “Lady in White” and were the first to place this in the context of Titian’s letters to Philipp II and the Duke of Ferrara. 19 When Giovanni Morelli published the marriage contract drawn up between Lavinia and Cornelio Sarcinelli on March 20, 1555 20 in 1880, the Dresden painting be- came encumbered with another burden: From then on, the wedding not only came to be authoritative for the dating of the picture, but also for specifying the subject of the painting; namely, “Titians Daughter Lavinia as a recently Married Woman”. 21 Morelli and Woermann then identified the small flag fan as a type