 Today I'm going to discuss his lost Ece Homo, a title that comes from the Latin phrase attributed to Pontius Pilate in the passion narrative in the Gospel of John. Quote, then came Jesus fourth, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and Pilate said to them, Behold the man, or Ece Homo. He created this painting as a gift for his patron, Pope Paul III, for Nese, during his first and only stay in Rome in 1545-6. According to Giorgio Vasari, Titian's Roman version of this subject was not well received. He wrote, quote, whether it was the works of Michelangelo, of Raphael, of Pallidoro, and of the others which made him slip, or some other reason, this work did not appear to the painters, although it was a good work, of that level of excellence of many of his others, particularly his portraits, end quote. This Ece Homo subsequently disappeared, leaving only textual traces of itself. Today we'll explore what it means for Titian's painting to be tagged as a failure and argue against Vasari that we might better understand the lost Roman Ece Homo as Titian's early experiment with an innovative technique for painting. So let's begin with Vasari himself, our major source for this vanished picture. Often called the first art historian, Vasari published his Lives of the Artist in 1550 with a massively expanded second edition in 1568, and all Renaissance art historians are, in some respect, Vasari's ungrateful children. While we rely on his work as an indispensable source of information, we're equally aware that far from being a neutral reporter, he had an agenda and didn't hesitate to shape his work. For example, one of his goals was to valorize the central Italian artistic tradition in which he had been trained, one that was centered on the practice of drawing and design, or disegno. Those of us who study the art of Renaissance Venice are keenly aware that Vasari felt little sympathy for the competing Venetian artistic tradition, which placed greater emphasis on the manipulation of paint itself in pursuit of effects of color and light, or colorito. Now Vasari and Titian knew each other pretty well. They had already met in Venice by the time of Titian's trip to Rome when the Pope asked Vasari to be Titian's tour guide, and they'd meet once more in Venice in 1566 while Vasari was preparing his second edition in which Titian's biography... And although he referred to Titian on that occasion as Suo Amicissimo, his very good friend, Vasari was bluntly honest regarding what he saw as the Venetian artist's egregious lack of disegno, as well as his excessive naturalism. In his discussion of Titian's time in Rome, Vasari addresses just three works Titian painted there, one each from the genres of portraiture, mythology, and religious painting. It gives unequivocal praise to the portrait of Paul III and his grandsons calling it, quote, even though Titian actually left it unfinished, as we can see from the detail of the Pope's ghostly hand. As he finds later in his text, Vasari delivered a stinging critique to Titian's depiction of the myth of Danae, claiming that when he and Michaelangelo went to see it in Titian's studio, they praised it much to him in his presence. Later, Michaelangelo commended it, saying both the colorito and the manor pleased him, but that it was a sin that in Venice one didn't learn to draw well from the beginning, end quote. This is a famous anecdote, one that appears to set up a direct confrontation between two of the artistic giants of the Renaissance, Michaelangelo on the side of disegno, Titian on the side of colorito. It may also very well be mostly Vasari's invention, but what I'm particularly interested in today, however, is what happens literally between these lines, that is, between Vasari's praise of the triple portrait and his blame for the Danae. That's why I'm interested in his comments on the lost Ece Homo. Now, we might call this passage damning with faint praise, and it's actually very subtly done. For example, Vasari hints at a generally low opinion of the painting held by other anonymous Roman artists. He also casually provides a possible explanation for its lower quality, namely that Titian as a Venetian found himself overwhelmed by the artistic culture with which he was confronted in Rome. And finally, he reiterates his praise of Titian's skill in portraiture, which is actually something of a backhanded compliment, since portraiture was considered less significant than the nobler genres of mythology and religion. Now, while the modern viewer can at least compare their own observations of Titian's triple portrait or the Danae against Vasari's opinions, his Ece Homo is nowhere to be found. Evidently, it had already vanished by the time the Farnese collection was first inventoried in 1644. As I said above, art historians must learn to take Vasari with a grain of salt, but the question is always how big. In this case, we can be fairly certain that the painting did exist, that there was some sort of a problem with it, and that Titian further was aware of this problem. In fact, it seems that he was thinking about making a replacement picture for the Pope after he returned to Venice in the summer of 1546. That fall, he reached out to Eleonora Gonzaga, the Dowager Duchess of Rubino, to see if he could borrow a Christ he had previously painted for her so that he could make a copy of it for Paul III. The term Christ is a generic label that could include, for example, a Christ blessing or a Christ carrying the cross, but a subsequent letter from Eleonora's daughter-in-law, Giulia Verano, clarifies that the painting Titian had asked to borrow was, quote, Quello Estesso, that same one that he had made for the Pope. Rather than imply ownership of the same painting, I think she was describing it as being of the same type of Christ, i.e., an Ece Homo. But Titian would only have felt the need to provide the Pope with a new version of the same subject if there was some kind of problem with the painting he had just left home. Further, this problem must have developed within a rapid time frame after the painting's execution and its departure, something that suggests there may have been an issue with its physical condition. Sorry, what other early sources can tell us about this lost painting? We can find a description of it in the work of the 17th century Venetian art critic Carl Louis Dolfi, who wrote, quote, The same Pope he represented our Lord, depicted from the knees up in the form of an Ece Homo, in whose face, though surrounded by painful emotions, shown the light of divine clemency, suffering with so much humility the torments inflicted on him by our miserable state that it brings tears to the eyes and sympathy to the heart, end quote. Admittedly, we have to treat Dolfi with the same caution as we do Vasari. Not only was he likely relying on hearsay, he wrote his book to respond to what he saw as Vasari's insult to Venetian painting. However, his description of Titian's lost painting is at least plausible, as it fits with another version of the same subject that Titian would paint just a year or so later, a painting he brought to Augsburg in Germany in 1548 and presented to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The second Ece Homo, now in the Prado in Madrid, represents Titian's only surviving example of a painting on slate. It's an intimate picture, small in scale and sorrowful in atmosphere. Christ, wearing the crown of thorns, turned slightly away from the viewer, his body bearing subtle but unmistakable signs of violence. Downcast eyes reddened, the lid drooping with exhaustion and pain. As with so many Titian's paintings, the viewer feels compelled to step forward and trace with their eyes the way his brushstrokes conjured the warmth of real flesh, but Christ's wounded flesh evokes compassion rather than sensual delight. Rain composition, combined with Christ's inward gaze, makes this a marvelously affective picture, one that carries no accusation of the viewer, but rather only an invitation to compassion and prayer. The Madrid Ece Homo fits very well with what we might expect from Titian in this period, a moment when he was beginning to further develop the open brushwork that became his signature, as he had done in the Naples Danae, but there's a key distinction in that that Danae is painted on canvas, whereas the Madrid Ece Homo is on the much less forgiving surface of stone. Why is that significant? By the 1540s, Titian not only preferred to paint on canvas rather than on panel, he also tended to choose a coarse weave of canvas that could interact with the paint surface. Applying only a minimal preparatory layer, let him take further advantage of canvas's slightly absorbent nature. Slight and contrast has very different properties, it's smoother, rigid and less absorbent. So even though the Madrid Ece Homo appears to fit very neatly into Titian's body of work, the brand new technique he was using was one that was also fairly alien to what we know about his working practice in this period of his career. So where are the flaws? Where are the missteps? Might our lost Roman Ece Homo offer a missing link? Scholars have always agreed that Titian had to have learned the technique of painting on slate in Rome, where it had been invented some 15 years earlier by his friend and fellow Venetian Sebastiano del Piombo, who had discovered a way to apply a coating of resin to a stone surface that made it suitable for painting. Gael Falimir, the new director of the Prado, has argued that the Madrid Ece Homo must have been painted in Rome alongside the lost version for Paul III. Making two simultaneous versions of a painting wasn't unheard of for Titian, but let me point out two issues with Falimir's suggestion. First, we've established that Titian seems to have been aware of a problem with the Roman Ece Homo in 1546. Why would he then try to borrow another version of the same subject from the Duchess of Urbino to copy if he had a perfectly good alternative on hand? Second, we know that paintings on slate were notoriously fragile in transit. Sebastiano, for example, demanded a personal escort for a slate painting he sent into Spain in 1540. We know that when Titian left Rome in 1546, he sent his baggage with a mule driver while he and his son Orazio traveled light by horseback, hardly a sensible form of transportation if there was a delicate slate painting bundled into the luggage. It seems more likely that Titian painted the Madrid Ece Homo after his return to Venice in 1546 and before his trip to Augsburg in 1548. On that latter journey, I should point out, Titian was accompanied by no fewer than seven assistants and servants, one of whom might have been tasked with safeguarding a slate painting. So far, I've established the Madrid Ece Homo seems unlikely to represent Titian's first effort with the slate technique and that it was likely painted after the artist's departure from Rome. That leads us to the possibility that our lost Roman Ece Homo may in fact have been Titian's first experiment with slate. In that case, Vazzari's lower opinion of it might reflect technical issues in the execution, such as a problem with the resin preparation, and such issues might also explain the painting's subsequent disappearance due to instability or decay. There were a number of reasons why Titian would have been interested in undertaking this kind of experiment in Rome itself. Aside from the risk of breakage in transit, slate paintings were actually extremely durable upon delivery. Vazzari himself noted that neither fire nor bugs could affect slate paintings, but only if prepared correctly, of course. Titian had already faced an issue of conservation the year before his trip to Rome. He'd been forced to sue the friars of a local monastery in Venice, who were refusing to pay him after one of his altarpieces had begun to deteriorate and develop mold. Eventually, he was forced to supply a new altarpiece at his own cost, so the prospect of a nigh indestructible form of painting might well have piqued his interest. Painting on stone was also linked to another prominent theoretical debate of the Renaissance, the Paragone, or competition between painting and sculpture. One of the barbs that sculptors flung at painters was that paintings were easily damaged while their own work lasted forever. Slate paintings could offer some competition in this regard. Titian himself was no stranger to the Paragone, having, for example, jousted with Michelangelo in a number of his paintings over the years. But before his trip to Rome in 1545, their engagement had always been at a distance. Perhaps he'd even heard about the insult Michelangelo had levied against oil painting in general, and his friend Sebastiano in particular, saying, according to Vazzari, quote, the painting in oils was an art for women and lazy people like Sebastiano, end quote. Choosing to execute his own slate painting in Rome would have offered Titian the chance to cross lances with Michelangelo once more, this time at close range, and to demonstrate the triumph of Venetian colorito, even on the unforgiving surface of stone. The appearance of the lost Ece Homo might have been similarly inspired by Titian's Roman experience. Scholars have identified a link between the affective quality of the later Madrid Ece Homo with Sebastiano del Piombo's cultivation of a new kind of intensity and directness in his own religious work, as we can see in his Christ carrying the cross in the Prado. Sebastiano's example, taken together with the visual evidence of the later Madrid painting and Redolfi's description of the Roman version's affective power, strongly suggests that Titian's lost Roman Ece Homo shared in this new type of emotional appeal to the viewer. Such a painting would have suited the religious climate in Rome, where Titian had arrived just months before the long delayed opening of the Council of Trent. It would take the Council nearly two decades to get around to discussing the status of religious images, but ultimately they would be declared necessary so that the faithful, quote, may be excited to love and adore God and to cultivate piety, end quote. Of course, if scholars like Marsha Hall and Alexander Nagel have reminded us, artists hadn't been sitting around waiting for instructions all that time, rather they'd taken the lead in experimenting with new ways of reaching the viewer. It's clear that Titian was doing this in the Madrid Ece Homo, and even though we can't see it, he likely did so in the Roman version as well that he gave to Paul III, the pope who, however grudgingly, opened the Reform Council at long last. Bazzari evidently wanted to give his readers the impression that Titian's Roman Ece Homo was a failure, albeit a minor one, brought on by Titian's inability to match up to the artists like Michelangelo that he encountered when he finally went to Rome in 1545. Failures certainly do happen, even for great artists, but I argue that Titian's problem was of a different sort, one of technique as the result of experimentation. With Titian's painting in absentia, Bazzari's texts may have the advantage, but this paper has tried to give the Roman Ece Homo back at least some of its voice.