How does Pietà (Titian) elucidate its History?
Titian had always intended to be buried in the church in Pieve di Cadore where he was baptized.  He frequently visited the village, on the edge of Venetian territory in the mountains some 110 km almost due north of the city, although he had left the village for Venice more than 75 years before his death in 1576.  Around 1572 a series of quarrels with the local authorities there and his relations led him to change his mind and plan a burial in the large Franciscan church of the Frari in Venice, which contained two of his important early masterpieces, the Assunta on the main altar and the Pesaro Altarpiece on a side wall, nearly opposite the intended site.He chose a spot in a chapel with a famous crucifix in it and made the Pietà for it, presenting it to the church. He thought he had an agreement with the friars, but it emerged that they would not move the crucifix, and hung the painting in another chapel.  Titian was furious, and eventually got the papal nuncio in Venice to instruct the friars to return the painting to him, in a decree of 1 March 1575.  Titian now planned once again to be buried in the church in Pieve di Cadore, with the painting over the high altar, and once the painting was back in his studio he extended it to fit the space there.In 1576 Titian died in the middle of a major epidemic of plague, followed a few days later by his son Orazio, and it was impossible to arrange for the transportation of the body to Cadore. He was at least not buried in one of the mass-graves used for most of the dead, but quietly carried to the Frari and buried there.  The painting would probably have been taken to Cadore if Orazio had survived the plague, but with his death the ownership of Titian's estate was disputed between various heirs, and it remained in Venice.The painting was finished by Palma Giovane; it seems he only received it some years after Titian's death, and then had it in his studio for some years.  He added an inscription recording his contribution below Christ.  Only after Palma's death in 1628 did it finally hang in a church, but this was St Angelo in Venice, which was closed in 1810, and demolished in 1837.  It entered the Gallerie dell'Accademia in 1814.  The painting has achieved a presence in the Frari as it is one of the five religious paintings by Titian represented in marble reliefs on the large monument to him put up in the church in the 19th century, in the chapel where the painting was intended to hang.
Titian Gallerie dell'Accademia Pietà Venice crucifix Pieve di Cadore Franciscan relief papal nuncio Frari Pesaro Altarpiece plague Palma Giovane Assunta