Pietà

In 1576 the plague was moving through Venice, and Titian, by then an old man, was painting this partly as an offering against it. He meant it for his own tomb in the Frari church. Look at the bearded figure kneeling and reaching toward the dead Christ, cast as Saint Jerome. That is widely read as Titian himself, and beside a small votive panel he added he and his son Orazio kneel in prayer to be spared. They were not. Both died that year, Orazio of the same plague. The paint here is loose and smoky, colours dragged on in thick fast strokes that seem to flicker in the half-light, the manner of his very last years. He left it unfinished, and it was the painter Palma Giovane who completed it after his death.