There is a
splendid energy of invention in the drawing of the tree stems, but the
effect is clear and simple with nothing of Sargent's dazzle and
confusion. As for the lion, he is a mere necessary mark of
identification, and Titian has taken no interest in him.
[Illustration: Plate 22.--Titian. "St. Jerome in the Desert."
In the Brera Gallery, Milan.]
Now, it is evident that there is not nearly so much literal truth to the
appearance of nature in this picture as in Sargent's. It is not only
that it would never have occurred to Titian to try to paint the
glittering spottiness of sunlight splashing through leafage, or to
attempt to raise his key of light to something like that of nature, at
the cost of fulness of color. It is not merely that he translates and
simplifies and neglects certain truths that the world had not yet
learned to see. He deliberately and intentionally falsifies. He knew as
well as we do that a natural landscape would not arrange itself in such
lines and masses for the purpose of throwing out the figure and of
enhancing its emotion. But to him natural facts were but so much
material, to be treated as he pleased for the carrying out of his
purpose. He was a colorist and a chiaroscurist; and he had a great deal
more interest in light and in landscape than most of the painters of his
time.
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