I've seen some flashy tombs in my time but Titian's takes the cake. OK, he was a big shot, he was the top banana, and it was kind of bad luck keeling over with plague just when he was within sight of his 90th birthday. But not as bad as Marietta's luck (Tintoretto's daughter, a talented painter who died at around thirty, probably in childbirth).
And I suppose it's a bit unfair, criticising a guy's tomb, especially if it was created three centuries after his death. All the same, it's a crazy megalomaniac Las Vegas kind of structure. Compare it with Monteverdi's tomb a few yards away: a simple slab set in the floor, inscribed with Claudio's date of birth and death, around a yard wide, no more. Tears came to my eyes because Monteverdi has been part of my life since I was about 18 and first heard his Vespers, and was transported by them into some kind of parallel universe where human beings, like lions, can fly. Winged lions are all very well by the way, but I do worry rather about the songbirds.
So there was Monteverdi, keeping a very modest low profile in death, and there was Titian being commemorated in a way that somehow made me think of Elvis. Somebody had placed a couple of roses on Monteverdi's memorial slab but you couldn't have reached up far enough to do the same for Titian.
In the same church (familiarly known as the Frari) I finally saw the painting that made Henry James come over queer, and he was quite right, it is a heavenly Bellini altarpiece which glows. Apparently Bellini's soulful pouting Madonnas were modelled by his gorgeous pouting mistress. That girl could pout for eternity, and happily, she will.
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