Titian’s Miracles: Artistry and Efficacy Between the San Rocco Christ and the Accademia Pietà

In the 1568 edition of his Lives, Giorgio Vasari attributed a miracle-working icon to Titian. The San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross had been working miracles since 1519, and following Vasari’s attribution it was inextricably linked to Titian’s artistry. The magnitude of this claim has not been appreciated. Titian’s final painting, the Pietà (Venice, Galleria dell’Accademia), cannot be understood outside of this heritage of miraculous efficacy. This painting had been ideated as the altarpiece for Titian’s tomb. Therefore, scholars have long seen the painting as a reflection of Titian’s artistic identity. This article suggests that the painting attests to the complexity and instability of that identity as it relates to the larger question of how images and image-makers mediated the dispersal of divine grace, which had been evoked by Vasari. In his final picture Titian capitalized on the anxieties that attended his reputation as the producer of a miraculous image. While recalling this earlier moment in Titian’s career, this last painting layers references to miraculous agency by including votive objects associated with miracles; appropriating the history of the painting’s intended site; and citing a little known miracle-working image, the Madonna della Navicella. All of these coordinates point to Titian’s Pietà as the vector of miraculous grace, which is a radical claim for the artist to put forward in the wake of the Reformation and the decrees of the Council of Trent