Pieta, 1570- 1576, oil on canvas, 378 x 347 cm.
Towards the end of Titian's life he began to paint Pieta for the church of the Frari, where he wished to be buried. In the bottom right hand corner the viewer can see the painter himself and his son Orazio kneeling before Mary and Christ, in a small devotional tablet. However, upon examining the canvas it has been found that it is indeed made from several canvases, patched together as the composition evolved around the Virgin and Christ. But the evolution never came to be fully realized, as Titian and his son Orazio both died in an outbreak of the plague in August of 1576.
The painting then passed into the hands of Palma Giovane who completed what Titian had left undone. It is speculated that really the only part which Palma worked on was the flying angel in the top right hand corner, as the rest of the painting is highly reminiscent of Titian's Death of Actaeon and its muted color pallet. It is also thought that Titian was trying to show is humble awe and love for the sacrifice that Christ made by including some of his personal facial features into the kneeling Saint Jerome.
While Titian obviously knew his time to meet the Lord was coming, he was still cut short by the plague, of which few realized he actually had and attributed his death to fever instead. In the chaos of the outbreak there was not time or the organization to afford Titian and his son the funeral of a great renaissance painter, like Michelangelo had. Indeed, his grave was only marked by a simple tile in the Frari church until half way through the nineteenth century. With no one left to defend their house or works of art, fellow artists helped themselves to the contents of Titian's home.
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