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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Later works of Titian, by Claude Phillips
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+
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+
+Title: The Later works of Titian
+
+Author: Claude Phillips
+
+Release Date: June 19, 2004  [eBook #12657]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LATER WORKS OF TITIAN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere, and the Project
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+
+THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN
+
+By
+
+CLAUDE PHILLIPS
+
+Keeper of the Wallace Collection
+
+1898
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Titian. From a photograph by G. Brogi.]
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+COPPER PLATES
+
+Portrait of Titian, by himself. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Frontispiece
+
+La Bella di Tiziano. Pitti Palace, Florence.
+
+Titian's daughter Lavinia. Berlin Gallery.
+
+The Cornaro Family. Collection of the Duke of Northumberland.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS PRINTED IN SEPIA
+
+Drawing of St. Jerome. British Museum.
+
+Landscape with Stag. Collection of Professor Legros.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
+
+Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist. In the
+National Gallery.
+
+Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence.
+
+Francis the First. Louvre.
+
+Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence.
+
+S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of that name at
+Venice.
+
+The Girl in the Fur Cloak. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
+
+Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
+
+The Battle of Cadore (from a reduced copy of part only). Uffizi Gallery,
+Florence.
+
+The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Accademia delle Belle
+Arti, Venice.
+
+The Magdalen. Pitti Palace, Florence.
+
+The Infant Daughter of Roberto Strozzi. Royal Gallery, Berlin.
+
+Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna
+
+Aretino. Pitti Palace, Florence
+
+Pope Paul III. with Cardinal Farnese and Ottavio Farnese. Naples Gallery
+
+Danae and the Golden Rain. Naples Gallery
+
+Charles V. at the Battle of Muehlberg. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid
+
+Venus with the Mirror. Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg
+
+Christ crowned with Thorns. Louvre
+
+The Rape of Europa
+
+Portrait of Titian, by himself. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid
+
+St. Jerome in the Desert. Gallery of the Brera, Milan
+
+The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese, Rome
+
+Religion succoured by Spain. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid
+
+Portrait of the Antiquary Jacopo da Strada. Imperial Gallery, Vienna
+
+Madonna and Child. Collection of Mr. Ludwig Mond
+
+Christ crowned with Thorns. Alte Pinakothek, Munich
+
+Pieta. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice
+
+
+
+
+THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_Friendship with Aretino--Its effect on Titian's art--Characteristics of
+the middle period--"Madonna with St. Catherine" of National
+Gallery--Portraits not painted from life--"Magdalen" of the Pitti--First
+Portrait of Charles V.--Titian the painter, par excellence, of
+aristocratic traits--The "d'Avalos Allegory"--Portrait of Cardinal
+Ippolito de' Medici--S. Giovanni Elemosinario altar-piece._
+
+
+Having followed Titian as far as the year 1530, rendered memorable by
+that sensational, and, of its kind, triumphant achievement, _The
+Martyrdom of St. Peter the Dominican_, we must retrace our steps some
+three years in order to dwell a little upon an incident which must
+appear of vital importance to those who seek to understand Titian's
+life, and, above all, to follow the development of his art during the
+middle period of splendid maturity reaching to the confines of old age.
+This incident is the meeting with Pietro Aretino at Venice in 1527, and
+the gradual strengthening by mutual service and mutual inclination of
+the bonds of a friendship which is to endure without break until the
+life of the Aretine comes, many years later, to a sudden and violent
+end. Titian was at that time fifty years of age, and he might thus be
+deemed to have over-passed the age of sensuous delights. Yet it must be
+remembered that he was in the fullest vigour of manhood, and had only
+then arrived at the middle point of a career which, in its untroubled
+serenity, was to endure for a full half-century more, less a single
+year. Three years later on, that is to say in the middle of August
+1530, the death of his wife Cecilia, who had borne to him Pomponio,
+Orazio, and Lavinia, left him all disconsolate, and so embarrassed with
+the cares of his young family that he was compelled to appeal to his
+sister Orsa, who thereupon came from Cadore to preside over his
+household. The highest point of celebrity, of favour with princes and
+magnates, having been attained, and a certain royalty in Venetian art
+being already conceded to him, there was no longer any obstacle to the
+organising of a life in which all the refinements of culture and all the
+delights of sense were to form the most agreeable relief to days of
+continuous and magnificently fruitful labour. It is just because
+Titian's art of this great period of some twenty years so entirely
+accords with what we know, and may legitimately infer, to have been his
+life at this time, that it becomes important to consider the friendship
+with Aretino and the rise of the so-called Triumvirate, which was a kind
+of Council of Three, having as its _raison d'etre_ the mutual
+furtherance of material interests, and the pursuit of art, love, and
+pleasure. The third member of the Triumvirate was Jacopo Tatti or del
+Sansovino, the Florentine sculptor, whose fame and fortune were so far
+above his deserts as an artist. Coming to Venice after the sack of Rome,
+which so entirely for the moment disorganised art and artists in the
+pontifical city, he elected to remain there notwithstanding the pressing
+invitations sent to him by Francis the First to take service with him.
+In 1529 he was appointed architect of San Marco, and he then by his
+adhesion completed the Triumvirate which was to endure for more than a
+quarter of a century.
+
+It has always excited a certain sense of distrust in Titian, and caused
+the world to form a lower estimate of his character than it would
+otherwise have done, that he should have been capable of thus living in
+the closest and most fraternal intimacy with a man so spotted and in
+many ways so infamous as Aretino. Without precisely calling Titian to
+account in set terms, his biographers Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and above
+all M. Georges Lafenestre in _La Vie et L'Oeuvre du Titien_, have
+relentlessly raked up Aretino's past before he came together with the
+Cadorine, and as pitilessly laid bare that organised system of
+professional sycophancy, adulation, scurrilous libel, and blackmail,
+which was the foundation and the backbone of his life of outward pomp
+and luxurious ease at Venice. By them, as by his other biographers, he
+has been judged, not indeed unjustly, yet perhaps too much from the
+standard of our own time, too little from that of his own. With all his
+infamies, Aretino was a man whom sovereigns and princes, nay even
+pontiffs, delighted to honour, or rather to distinguish by honours. The
+Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua, the Duke Guidobaldo II. of Urbino,
+among many others, showed themselves ready to propitiate him; and such a
+man as Titian the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom
+ample means and the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity; who
+was grasping yet not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it
+secured material consideration and a life of serene enjoyment; such a
+man could not be expected to rise superior to the temptations presented
+by a friendship with Aretino, or to despise the immense advantages which
+it included. As he is revealed by his biographers, and above all by
+himself, Aretino was essentially "good company." He could pass off his
+most flagrant misdeeds, his worst sallies, with a certain large and
+Rabelaisian gaiety; if he made money his chief god, it was to spend it
+in magnificent clothes and high living, but also at times with an
+intelligent and even a beneficent liberality. He was a fine though not
+an unerring connoisseur of art, he had a passionate love of music, and
+an unusually exquisite perception of the beauties of Nature.
+
+To hint that the lower nature of the man corrupted that of Titian, and
+exercised a disintegrating influence over his art, would be to go far
+beyond the requirements of the case. The great Venetian, though he might
+at this stage be much nearer to earth than in those early days when he
+was enveloped in the golden glow of Giorgione's overmastering influence,
+could never have lowered himself to the level of those too famous
+_Sonetti Lussuriosi_ which brought down the vengeance of even a Medici
+Pope (Clement VII.) upon Aretino the writer, Giulio Romano the
+illustrator, and Marcantonio Raimondi the engraver. Gracious and
+dignified in sensuousness he always remained even when, as at this
+middle stage of his career, the vivifying shafts of poetry no longer
+pierced through, and transmuted with their vibration of true passion,
+the fair realities of life. He could never have been guilty of the
+frigid and calculated indecency of a Giulio Romano; he could not have
+cast aside all conventional restraints, of taste as well as of
+propriety, as Rubens and even Rembrandt did on occasion; but as Van
+Dyck, the child of Titian almost as much as he was the child of Rubens,
+ever shrank from doing. Still the ease and splendour of the life at Biri
+Grande--that pleasant abode with its fair gardens overlooking Murano,
+the Lagoons, and the Friulan Alps, to which Titian migrated in 1531--the
+Epicureanism which saturated the atmosphere, the necessity for keeping
+constantly in view the material side of life, all these things operated
+to colour the creations which mark this period of Titian's practice, at
+which he has reached the apex of pictorial achievement, but shows
+himself too serene in sensuousness, too unruffled in the masterly
+practice of his profession to give to the heart the absolute
+satisfaction that he affords to the eyes. This is the greatest test of
+genius of the first order--to preserve undimmed in mature manhood and
+old age the gift of imaginative interpretation which youth and love
+give, or lend, to so many who, buoyed up by momentary inspiration, are
+yet not to remain permanently in the first rank. With Titian at this
+time supreme ability is not invariably illumined from within by the lamp
+of genius; the light flashes forth nevertheless, now and again, and most
+often in those portraits of men of which the sublime _Charles V. at
+Muehlberg_ is the greatest. Towards the end the flame will rise once more
+and steadily burn, with something on occasion of the old heat, but with
+a hue paler and more mysterious, such as may naturally be the outward
+symbol of genius on the confines of eternity.
+
+The second period, following upon the completion of the _St. Peter
+Martyr_, is one less of great altar-pieces and _poesie_ such as the
+miscalled _Sacred and Profane Love_ (_Medea and Venus_), the
+_Bacchanals_, and the _Bacchus and Ariadne_, than it is of splendid
+nudities and great portraits. In the former, however mythological be the
+subject, it is generally chosen but to afford a decent pretext for the
+generous display of beauty unveiled. The portraits are at this stage
+less often intimate and soul-searching in their summing up of a human
+personality than they are official presentments of great personages and
+noble dames; showing them, no doubt, without false adulation or cheap
+idealisation, yet much as they desire to appear to their allies, their
+friends, and their subjects, sovereign in natural dignity and
+aristocratic grace, yet essentially in a moment of representation.
+Farther on the great altar-pieces reappear more sombre, more agitated in
+passion, as befits the period of the sixteenth century in which
+Titian's latest years are passed, and the patrons for whom he paints. Of
+the _poesie_ there is then a new upspringing, a new efflorescence, and
+we get by the side of the _Venus and Adonis_, the _Diana and Actaeon_,
+the _Diana and Calisto_, the _Rape of Europa_, such pieces of a more
+exquisite and penetrating poetry as the _Venere del Pardo_ of Paris, and
+the _Nymph and Shepherd_ of Vienna.
+
+This appears to be the right place to say a word about the magnificent
+engraving by Van Dalen of a portrait, no longer known to exist, but
+which has, upon the evidence apparently of the print, been put down as
+that of Titian by himself. It represents a bearded man of some
+thirty-five years, dressed in a rich but sombre habit, and holding a
+book. The portrait is evidently not that of a painter by himself, nor
+does it represent Titian at any age; but it finely suggests, even in
+black and white, a noble original by the master. Now, a comparison with
+the best authenticated portrait of Aretino, the superb three-quarter
+length painted in 1545, and actually at the Pitti Palace, reveals
+certain marked similarities of feature and type, notwithstanding the
+very considerable difference of age between the personages represented.
+Very striking is the agreement of eye and nose in either case, while in
+the younger as in the older man we note an idiosyncrasy in which
+vigorous intellect as well as strong sensuality has full play. Van
+Dalen's engraving very probably reproduces one of the lost portraits of
+Aretino by Titian. In Crowe and Cavalcaselle's _Biography_ (vol. i. pp.
+317-319) we learn from correspondence interchanged in the summer of 1527
+between Federigo Gonzaga, Titian, and Aretino, that the painter, in
+order to propitiate the Mantuan ruler, sent to him with a letter, the
+exaggerated flattery of which savours of Aretino's precept and example,
+portraits of the latter and of Signor Hieronimo Adorno, another
+"faithful servant" of the Marquess. Now Aretino was born in 1492, so
+that in 1527 he would be thirty-five, which appears to be just about the
+age of the vigorous and splendid personage in Van Dalen's print.
+
+Some reasons were given in the former section of this monograph[1] for
+the assertion that the _Madonna with St. Catherine_, mentioned in a
+letter from Giacomo Malatesta to the Marchese Federigo Gonzaga, dated
+February 1530, was not, as is assumed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the
+_Madonna del Coniglio_ of the Louvre, but the _Madonna and Child with
+St. John the Baptist and St. Catherine_, which is No. 635 at the
+National Gallery.[2] Few pictures of the master have been more
+frequently copied and adapted than this radiantly beautiful piece, in
+which the dominant chord of the scheme of colour is composed by the
+cerulean blues of the heavens and the Virgin's entire dress, the deep
+luscious greens of the landscape, and the peculiar, pale, citron hue,
+relieved with a crimson girdle, of the robe worn by the St. Catherine, a
+splendid Venetian beauty of no very refined type or emotional intensity.
+Perfect repose and serenity are the keynote of the conception, which in
+its luxuriant beauty has little of the power to touch that must be
+conceded to the more naive and equally splendid _Madonna del
+Coniglio_.[3] It is above all in the wonderful Venetian landscape--a
+mountain-bordered vale, along which flocks and herds are being driven,
+under a sky of the most intense blue--that the master shows himself
+supreme. Nature is therein not so much detailed as synthesised with a
+sweeping breadth which makes of the scene not the reflection of one
+beautiful spot in the Venetian territory, but without loss of essential
+truth or character a very type of Venetian landscape of the sixteenth
+century. These herdsmen and their flocks, and also the note of warning
+in the sky of supernatural splendour, recall the beautiful Venetian
+storm-landscape in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace. This has
+been very generally attributed to Titian himself,[4] and described as
+the only canvas still extant in which he has made landscape his one and
+only theme. It has, indeed, a rare and mysterious power to move, a true
+poetry of interpretation. A fleeting moment, full of portent as well as
+of beauty, has been seized; the smile traversed by a frown of the stormy
+sky, half overshadowing half revealing the wooded slopes, the rich
+plain, and the distant mountains, is rendered with a rare felicity. The
+beauty is, all the same, in the conception and in the thing actually
+seen--much less in the actual painting. It is hardly possible to
+convince oneself, comparing the work with such landscape backgrounds as
+those in this picture at the National Gallery in the somewhat earlier
+_Madonna del Coniglio_, and the gigantic _St. Peter Martyr_, or, indeed,
+in a score of other genuine productions, that the depth, the vigour, the
+authority of Titian himself are here to be recognised. The weak
+treatment of the great Titianesque tree in the foreground, with its too
+summarily indicated foliage--to select only one detail that comes
+naturally to hand--would in itself suffice to bring such an attribution
+into question.
+
+[Illustration: _Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the
+Baptist. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli._]
+
+Vasari states, speaking confessedly from hearsay, that in 1530, the
+Emperor Charles V. being at Bologna, Titian was summoned thither by
+Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, using Aretino as an intermediary, and
+that he on that occasion executed a most admirable portrait of His
+Majesty, all in arms, which had so much success that the artist received
+as a present a thousand scudi. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, however, adduce
+strong evidence to prove that Titian was busy in Venice for Federigo
+Gonzaga at the time of the Emperor's first visit, and that he only
+proceeded to Bologna in July to paint for the Marquess of Mantua the
+portrait of a Bolognese beauty, _La Cornelia_, the lady-in-waiting of
+the Countess Pepoli, whom Covas, the all-powerful political secretary of
+Charles the Fifth, had seen and admired at the splendid entertainments
+given by the Pepoli to the Emperor. Vasari has in all probability
+confounded this journey of Charles in 1530 with that subsequent one
+undertaken in 1532 when Titian not only portrayed the Emperor, but also
+painted an admirable likeness of Ippolito de' Medici presently to be
+described. He had the bad luck on this occasion to miss the lady
+Cornelia, who had retired to Nuvolara, indisposed and not in good face.
+The letter written by our painter to the Marquess in connection with
+this incident[5] is chiefly remarkable as affording evidence of his too
+great anxiety to portray the lady without approaching her, relying
+merely on the portrait, "che fece quel altro pittore della detta
+Cornelia"; of his unwillingness to proceed to Nuvolara, unless the
+picture thus done at second hand should require alteration. In truth we
+have lighted here upon one of Titian's most besetting sins, this
+willingness, this eagerness, when occasion offers, to paint portraits
+without direct reference to the model. In this connection we are
+reminded that he never saw Francis the First, whose likeness he
+notwithstanding painted with so showy and superficial a magnificence as
+to make up to the casual observer for the absence of true vitality;[6]
+that the Empress Isabella, Charles V.'s consort, when at the behest of
+the monarch he produced her sumptuous but lifeless and empty portrait,
+now in the great gallery of the Prado, was long since dead. He
+consented, basing his picture upon a likeness of much earlier date, to
+paint Isabella d'Este Gonzaga as a young woman when she was already an
+old one, thereby flattering an amiable and natural weakness in this
+great princess and unrivalled dilettante, but impairing his own
+position as an artist of supreme rank.[7] It is not necessary to include
+in this category the popular _Caterina Cornaro_ of the Uffizi, since it
+is confessedly nothing but a fancy portrait, making no reference to the
+true aspect at any period of the long-since deceased queen of Cyprus,
+and, what is more, no original Titian, but at the utmost an atelier
+piece from his _entourage_. Take, however, as an instance the _Francis
+the First_, which was painted some few years later than the time at
+which we have now arrived, and at about the same period as the _Isabella
+d'Este_. Though as a _portrait d'apparat_ it makes its effect, and
+reveals the sovereign accomplishment of the master, does it not shrink
+into the merest insignificance when compared with such renderings from
+life as the successive portraits of _Charles the Fifth_, the _Ippolito
+de' Medici_, the _Francesco Maria della Rovere_? This is as it must and
+should be, and Titian is not the less great, but the greater, because he
+cannot convincingly evolve at second hand the true human individuality,
+physical and mental, of man or woman.
+
+It was in the earlier part of 1531 that Titian painted for Federigo
+Gonzaga a _St. Jerome_ and a _St. Mary Magdalene_, destined for the
+famous Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, who had expressed to
+the ruler of Mantua the desire to possess such a picture. Gonzaga writes
+to the Marchioness on March 11, 1831[8]:--"Ho subito mandate a Venezia e
+scritto a Titiano, quale e forse il piu eccellente in quell' arte che a
+nostri tempi si ritrovi, ed e tutto mio, ricercandolo con grande
+instantia a volerne fare una bella lagrimosa piu che si so puo, e
+farmela haver presto." The passage is worth quoting as showing the
+estimation in which Titian was held at a court which had known and still
+knew the greatest Italian masters of the art.
+
+It is not possible at present to identify with any extant painting the
+_St. Jerome_, of which we know that it hung in the private apartments
+of the Marchioness Isabella at Mantua. The writer is unable to accept
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle's suggestion that it may be the fine moonlight
+landscape with St. Jerome in prayer which is now in the Long Gallery of
+the Louvre. This piece, if indeed it be by Titian, which is by no means
+certain, must belong to his late time. The landscape, which is marked by
+a beautiful and wholly unconventional treatment of moonlight, for which
+it would not be easy to find a parallel in the painting of the time, is
+worthy of the Cadorine, and agrees well, especially in the broad
+treatment of foliage, with, for instance, the background in the late
+_Venus and Cupid_ of the Tribuna.[9] The figure of St. Jerome, on the
+other hand, does not in the peculiar tightness of the modelling, or in
+the flesh-tints, recall Titian's masterly synthetic way of going to work
+in works of this late period. The noble _St. Jerome_ of the Brera, which
+indubitably belongs to a well-advanced stage in the late time, will be
+dealt with in its right place. Though it does not appear probable that
+we have, in the much-admired _Magdalen_ of the Pitti, the picture here
+referred to--this last having belonged to Francesco Maria della Rovere,
+Duke of Urbino, and representing, to judge by style, a somewhat more
+advanced period in the painter's career--it may be convenient to mention
+it here. As an example of accomplished brush-work, of handling careful
+and yet splendid in breadth, it is indeed worthy of all admiration. The
+colours of the fair human body, the marvellous wealth of golden blond
+hair, the youthful flesh glowing semi-transparent, and suggesting the
+rush of the blood beneath; these are also the colours of the picture,
+aided only by the indefinite landscape and the deep blue sky of the
+background. If this were to be accepted as the _Magdalen_ painted for
+Federigo Gonzaga, we must hold, nevertheless, that Titian with his
+masterpiece of painting only half satisfied the requirements of his
+patron. _Bellissima_ this Magdalen undoubtedly is, but hardly _lagrimosa
+pin che si puo_. She is a _belle pecheresse_ whose repentance sits all
+too lightly upon her, whose consciousness of a physical charm not easily
+to be withstood is hardly disguised. Somehow, although the picture in
+no way oversteps the bounds of decency, and cannot be objected to even
+by the most over-scrupulous, there is latent in it a jarring note of
+unrefinement in the presentment of exuberant youth and beauty which we
+do not find in the more avowedly sensuous _Venus of the Tribuna_. This
+last is an avowed act of worship by the artist of the naked human body,
+and as such, in its noble frankness, free from all offence, except to
+those whose scruples in matters of art we are not here called upon to
+consider. From this _Magdalen_ to that much later one of the Hermitage,
+which will be described farther on, is a great step upwards, and it is a
+step which, in passing from the middle to the last period, we shall more
+than once find ourselves taking.
+
+[Illustration: ST. JEROME. PEN DRAWING BY TITIAN (?) _British Museum_.]
+
+It is impossible to give even in outline here an account of Titian's
+correspondence and business relations with his noble and royal patrons,
+instructive as it is to follow these out, and to see how, under the
+influence of Aretino, his natural eagerness to grasp in every direction
+at material advantages is sharpened; how he becomes at once more humble
+and more pressing, covering with the manner and the tone appropriate to
+courts the reiterated demands of the keen and indefatigable man of
+business. It is the less necessary to attempt any such account in these
+pages--dealing as we are chiefly with the work and not primarily with
+the life of Titian--seeing that in Crowe and Cavalcaselle's admirable
+biography this side of the subject, among many others, is most patiently
+and exhaustively dealt with.
+
+In 1531 we read of a _Boy Baptist_ by Titian sent by Aretino to Maximian
+Stampa, an imperialist partisan in command of the castle of Milan. The
+donor particularly dwells upon "the beautiful curl of the Baptist's
+hair, the fairness of his skin, etc.," a description which recalls to
+us, in striking fashion, the little St. John in the _Virgin and Child
+with St. Catherine_ of the National Gallery, which belongs, as has been
+shown, to the same time.
+
+It was on the occasion of the second visit of the Emperor and his court
+to Bologna at the close of 1532 that Titian first came in personal
+contact with Charles V., and obtained from that monarch his first
+sitting. In the course of an inspection, with Federigo Gonzaga himself
+as cicerone, of the art treasures preserved in the palace at Mantua, the
+Emperor saw the portrait by Titian of Federigo, and was so much struck
+with it, so intent upon obtaining a portrait of himself from the same
+brush, that the Marquess wrote off at once pressing our master to join
+him without delay in his capital. Titian preferred, however, to go
+direct to Bologna in the train of his earlier patron Alfonso d'Este. It
+was on this occasion that Charles's all-powerful secretary, the greedy,
+overbearing Covos, exacted as a gift from the agents of the Duke of
+Ferrara, among other things, a portrait of Alfonso himself by Titian;
+and in all probability obtained also a portrait from the same hand of
+Ercole d'Este, the heir-apparent. There is evidence to show that the
+portrait of Alfonso was at once handed over to, or appropriated by, the
+Emperor.
+
+Whether this was the picture described by Vasari as representing the
+prince with his arm resting on a great piece of artillery, does not
+appear. Of this last a copy exists in the Pitti Gallery which Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle have ascribed to Dosso Dossi, but the original is nowhere
+to be traced. The Ferrarese ruler is, in this last canvas, depicted as a
+man of forty or upwards, of resolute and somewhat careworn aspect. It
+has already been demonstrated, on evidence furnished by Herr Carl Justi,
+that the supposed portrait of Alfonso, in the gallery of the Prado at
+Madrid, cannot possibly represent Titian's patron at any stage of his
+career, but in all probability, like the so-called _Giorgio Cornaro_ of
+Castle Howard, is a likeness of his son and successor, Ercole II.
+
+Titian's first portrait of the Emperor, a full-length in which he
+appeared in armour with a generalissimo's baton of command, was taken in
+1556 from Brussels to Madrid, after the formal ceremony of abdication,
+and perished, it would appear, in one of the too numerous fires which
+have devastated from time to time the royal palaces of the Spanish
+capital and its neighbourhood. To the same period belongs, no doubt, the
+noble full-length of Charles in gala court costume which now hangs in
+the _Sala de la Reina Isabel_ in the Prado Gallery, as a pendant to
+Titian's portrait of Philip II. in youth. Crowe and Cavalcaselle assume
+that not this picture, but a replica, was the one which found its way
+into Charles I.'s collection, and was there catalogued by Van der Doort
+as "the Emperor Charles the Fifth, brought by the king from Spain, being
+done at length with a big white Irish dog"--going afterwards, at the
+dispersal of the king's effects, to Sir Balthasar Gerbier for _L_150.
+There is, however, no valid reason for doubting that this is the very
+picture owned for a time by Charles I., and which busy intriguing
+Gerbier afterwards bought, only to part with it to Cardenas the Spanish
+ambassador.[10] Other famous originals by Titian were among the choicest
+gifts made by Philip IV. to Prince Charles at the time of his runaway
+expedition to Madrid with the Duke of Buckingham, and this was no doubt
+among them. Confirmation is supplied by the fact that the references to
+the existence of this picture in the royal palaces of Madrid are for the
+reigns of Philip II., Charles II., and Charles III., thus leaving a
+large gap unaccounted for. Dimmed as the great portrait is, robbed of
+its glow and its chastened splendour in a variety of ways, it is still a
+rare example of the master's unequalled power in rendering race, the
+unaffected consciousness of exalted rank, natural as distinguished from
+assumed dignity. There is here no demonstrative assertion of _grandeza_,
+no menacing display of truculent authority, but an absolutely serene and
+simple attitude such as can only be the outcome of a consciousness of
+supreme rank and responsibility which it can never have occurred to any
+one to call into question. To see and perpetuate these subtle qualities,
+which go so far to redeem the physical drawbacks of the House of
+Hapsburg, the painter must have had a peculiar instinct for what is
+aristocratic in the higher sense of the word--that is, both outwardly
+and inwardly distinguished. This was indeed one of the leading
+characteristics of Titian's great art, more especially in portraiture.
+Giorgione went deeper, knowing the secret of the soul's refinement, the
+aristocracy of poetry and passion; Lotto sympathetically laid bare the
+heart's secrets and showed the pathetic helplessness of humanity.
+Tintoretto communicated his own savage grandeur, his own unrest, to
+those whom he depicted; Paolo Veronese charmed without _arriere-pensee_
+by the intensity of vitality which with perfect simplicity he preserved
+in his sitters. Yet to Titian must be conceded absolute supremacy in the
+rendering not only of the outward but of the essential dignity, the
+refinement of type and bearing, which without doubt come unconsciously
+to those who can boast a noble and illustrious ancestry.
+
+Again the writer hesitates to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle when
+they place at this period, that is to say about 1533, the superb
+_Allegory_ of the Louvre (No. 1589), which is very generally believed to
+represent the famous commander Alfonso d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto,
+with his family. The eminent biographers of Titian connect the picture
+with the return of d'Avalos from the campaign against the Turks,
+undertaken by him in the autumn of 1532, under the leadership of Croy,
+at the behest of his imperial master. They hazard the surmise that the
+picture, though painted after Alfonso's return, symbolises his departure
+for the wars, "consoled by Victory, Love, and Hymen." A more natural
+conclusion would surely be that what Titian has sought to suggest is the
+return of the commander to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of victory.
+
+[Illustration: _Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence.
+From a Photograph by G. Brogi_.]
+
+The Italo-Spanish grandee was born at Naples in 1502, so that at this
+date he would have been but thirty-one years of age, whereas the mailed
+warrior of the _Allegory_ is at least forty, perhaps older. Moreover,
+and this is the essential point, the technical qualities of the picture,
+the wonderful easy mastery of the handling, the peculiarities of the
+colouring and the general tone, surely point to a rather later date, to
+a period, indeed, some ten years ahead of the time at which we have
+arrived. If we are to accept the tradition that this Allegory, or
+quasi-allegorical portrait-piece, giving a fanciful embodiment to the
+pleasures of martial domination, of conjugal love, of well-earned peace
+and plenty, represents d'Avalos, his consort Mary of Arragon, and their
+family--and a comparison with the well-authenticated portrait of Del
+Vasto in the _Allocution_ of Madrid does not carry with it entire
+conviction--we must perforce place the Louvre picture some ten years
+later than do Crowe and Cavalcaselle. Apart from the question of
+identification, it appears to the writer that the technical execution of
+the piece would lead to a similar conclusion.[11]
+
+To this year, 1533, belongs one of the masterpieces in portraiture of
+our painter, the wonderful _Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici in a Hungarian
+habit_ of the Pitti. This youthful Prince of the Church, the natural
+son of Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, was born in 1511, so that
+when Titian so incomparably portrayed him, he was, for all the perfect
+maturity of his virile beauty, for all the perfect self-possession of
+his aspect, but twenty-two years of age. He was the passionate
+worshipper of the divine Giulia Gonzaga, whose portrait he caused to be
+painted by Sebastiano del Piombo. His part in the war undertaken by
+Charles V. in 1532, against the Turks, had been a strange one. Clement
+VII., his relative, had appointed him Legate and sent him to Vienna at
+the head of three hundred musketeers. But when Charles withdrew from the
+army to return to Italy, the Italian contingent, instead of going in
+pursuit of the Sultan into Hungary, opportunely mutinied, thus affording
+to their pleasure-loving leader the desired pretext for riding back with
+them through the Austrian provinces, with eyes wilfully closed the while
+to their acts of depredation. It was in the rich and fantastic habit of
+a Hungarian captain that the handsome young Medici was now painted by
+Titian at Bologna, the result being a portrait unique of its kind even
+in his life-work. The sombre glow of the supple, youthful flesh, the
+red-brown of the rich velvet habit which defines the perfect shape of
+Ippolito, the red of the fantastic plumed head-dress worn by him with
+such sovereign ease, make up a deep harmony, warm, yet not in the
+technical sense hot, and of indescribable effect. And this effect is
+centralised in the uncanny glance, the mysterious aspect of the man
+whom, as we see him here, a woman might love for his beauty, but a man
+would do well to distrust. The smaller portrait painted by Titian about
+the same time of the young Cardinal fully armed--the one which, with the
+Pitti picture, Vasari saw in the closet (_guardaroba_) of Cosimo, Duke
+of Tuscany--is not now known to exist.[12]
+
+[Illustration: _Francis the First. Louvre. From a Photograph by
+Neurdein_.]
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a
+Photograph by E. Alinari_.]
+
+It may be convenient to mention here one of the most magnificent among
+the male portraits of Titian, the _Young Nobleman_ in the Sala di Marte
+of the Pitti Gallery, although its exact place in the middle time of the
+artist it is, failing all data on the point, not easy to determine. At
+Florence there has somehow been attached to it the curious name _Howard
+duca di Norfolk_,[13] but upon what grounds, if any, the writer is
+unable to state. The master of Cadore never painted a head more finely
+or with a more exquisite finesse, never more happily characterised a
+face, than that of this resolute, self-contained young patrician with
+the curly chestnut hair and the short, fine beard and moustache--a
+personage high of rank, doubtless, notwithstanding the studied
+simplicity of his dress. Because we know nothing of the sitter, and
+there is in his pose and general aspect nothing sensational, this
+masterpiece is, if not precisely not less celebrated among connoisseurs,
+at any rate less popular with the larger public, than it deserves to
+be.[14]
+
+[Illustration: _S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of
+that name at Venice. From a Photograph by Naya._]
+
+The noble altar-piece in the church of S. Giovanni Elemosinario at
+Venice showing the saint of that name enthroned, and giving alms to a
+beggar, belongs to the close of 1533 or thereabouts, since the
+high-altar was finished in the month of October of that year. According
+to Vasari, it must be regarded as having served above all to assert once
+for all the supremacy of Titian over Pordenone, whose friends had
+obtained for him the commission to paint in competition with the
+Cadorine an altar-piece for one of the apsidal chapels of the church,
+where, indeed, his work is still to be seen.[15] Titian's canvas, like
+most of the great altar-pieces of the middle time, was originally arched
+at the top; but the vandalism of a subsequent epoch has, as in the case
+of the _Madonna di S. Niccola_, now in the Vatican, made of this arch a
+square, thereby greatly impairing the majesty of the general effect.
+Titian here solves the problem of combining the strong and simple
+decorative aspect demanded by the position of the work as the central
+feature of a small church, with the utmost pathos and dignity, thus
+doing incomparably in his own way--the way of the colourist and the
+warm, the essentially human realist--what Michelangelo had, soaring high
+above earth, accomplished with unapproachable sublimity in the
+_Prophets_ and _Sibyls_ of the Sixtine Chapel.
+
+The colour is appropriately sober, yet a general tone is produced of
+great strength and astonishing effectiveness. The illumination is that
+of the open air, tempered and modified by an overhanging canopy of
+green; the great effect is obtained by the brilliant grayish white of
+the saint's alb, dominating and keeping in due balance the red of the
+rochet and the under-robes, the cloud-veiled sky, the marble throne or
+podium, the dark green hanging. This picture must have had in the years
+to follow a strong and lasting influence on Paolo Veronese, the keynote
+to whose audaciously brilliant yet never over-dazzling colour is this
+use of white and gray in large dominating masses. The noble figure of S.
+Giovanni gave him a prototype for many of his imposing figures of
+bearded old men. There is a strong reminiscence, too, of the saint's
+attitude in one of the most wonderful of extant Veroneses--that
+sumptuous altar-piece _SS. Anthony, Cornelius, and Cyprian with a Page_,
+in the Brera, for which he invented a harmony as delicious as it is
+daring, composed wholly of violet-purple, green, and gold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_Francesco Maria della Rovere--Titian and Eleonora Gonzaga--The "Venus
+with the Shell"--Titian's later ideals--The "Venus of Urbino"--The
+"Bella di Tiziano"--The "Twelve Caesars"--Titian and Pordenone--The
+"Battle of Cadore"--Portraits of the Master by himself--The
+"Presentation in the Temple"--The "Allocation" of Madrid--The Ceiling
+Pictures of Santo Spirito--First Meeting with Pope Paul III.--The "Ecce
+Homo" of Vienna--"Christ with the Pilgrims at Emmaus_."
+
+
+Within the years 1532 and 1538, or thereabouts, would appear to fall
+Titian's relations with another princely patron, Francesco Maria della
+Rovere, Duke of Urbino, the nephew of the redoubtable Pope Julius II.,
+whose qualities of martial ardour and unbridled passion he reproduced in
+an exaggerated form. By his mother, Giovanna da Montefeltro, he
+descended also from the rightful dynasty of Urbino, to which he
+succeeded in virtue of adoption. His life of perpetual strife, of
+warfare in defence of his more than once lost and reconquered duchy, and
+as the captain first of the army of the Church, afterwards of the
+Venetian forces, came to an abrupt end in 1538. With his own hand he
+had, in the ardent days of his youth, slain in the open streets of
+Ravenna the handsome, sinister Cardinal Alidosi, thereby bringing down
+upon himself the anathemas of his uncle, Julius II., and furnishing to
+his successor, the Medici pope Leo X., the best possible excuse for the
+sequestration of the duchy of Urbino in favour of his own house. He
+himself died by poison, suspicion resting upon the infamous Pier Luigi
+Farnese, the son of Paul III.
+
+Francesco Maria had espoused Eleonora Gonzaga, the sister of Titian's
+protector, Federigo, and it is probably through the latter that the
+relations with our master sprang up to which we owe a small group of
+his very finest works, including the so-called _Venus of Urbino_ of the
+Tribuna, the _Girl in a Fur Cloak_ of the Vienna Gallery, and the
+companion portraits of Francesco Maria and Eleonora which are now in the
+Venetian Gallery at the Uffizi. The fiery leader of armies had, it
+should be remembered, been brought up by Guidobaldo of Montefeltro, one
+of the most amiable and enlightened princes of his time, and, moreover,
+his consort Eleonora was the daughter of Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, than
+whom the Renaissance knew no more enthusiastic or more discriminating
+patron of art.
+
+[Illustration: _The Girl in the Fur Cloak. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
+From a Photograph by Loewy._]
+
+A curious problem meets us at the outset. We may assume with some degree
+of certainty that the portraits of the duke and duchess belong to the
+year 1537. Stylistic characteristics point to the conclusion that the
+great _Venus_ of the Tribuna, the so-called _Bella di Tiziano_, and the
+_Girl in the Fur Cloak_--to take only undoubted originals--belong to
+much the same stage of Titian's practice as the companion portraits at
+the Uffizi. Eleonora Gonzaga, a princess of the highest culture, the
+daughter of an admirable mother, the friend of Pietro Bembo, Sadolet,
+and Baldassarre Castiglione, was at this time a matron of some twenty
+years' standing; at the date when her avowed portrait was painted she
+must have been at the very least forty. By what magic did Titian manage
+to suggest her type and physiognomy in the famous pictures just now
+mentioned, and yet to plunge the duchess into a kind of _Fontaine de
+Jouvence_, realising in the divine freshness of youth and beauty beings
+who nevertheless appear to have with her some kind of mystic and
+unsolved connection? If this was what he really intended--and the
+results attained may lead us without temerity to assume as much--no
+subtler or more exquisite form of flattery could be conceived. It is
+curious to note that at the same time he signally failed with the
+portrait of her mother, Isabella d'Este, painted in 1534, but showing
+the Marchioness of Mantua as a young woman of some twenty-five years,
+though she was then sixty. Here youth and a semblance of beauty are
+called up by the magic of the artist, but the personality, both physical
+and mental, is lost in the effort. But then in this last case Titian was
+working from an early portrait, and without the living original to refer
+to.
+
+But, before approaching the discussion of the _Venus of Urbino_, it is
+necessary to say a word about another _Venus_ which must have been
+painted some years before this time, revealing, as it does, a
+completely different and, it must be owned, a higher ideal. This is the
+terribly ruined, yet still beautiful, _Venus Anadyomene_, or _Venus of
+the Shell_, of the Bridgewater Gallery, painted perhaps at the
+instigation of some humanist, to realise a description of the
+world-famous painting of Apelles. It is not at present possible to place
+this picture with anything approaching to chronological exactitude. It
+must have been painted some years after the _Bacchus and Ariadne_ of the
+National Gallery, some years before the _Venus_ of the Tribuna, and that
+is about as near as surmise can get. The type of the goddess in the
+Ellesmere picture recalls somewhat the _Ariadne_ in our masterpiece at
+the National Gallery, but also, albeit in a less material form, the
+_Magdalens_ of a later time. Titian's conception of perfect womanhood is
+here midway between his earlier Giorgionesque ideal and the frankly
+sensuous yet grand luxuriance of his maturity and old age. He never,
+even in the days of youth and Giorgionesque enchantment, penetrated so
+far below the surface as did his master and friend Barbarelli. He could
+not equal him in giving, with the undisguised physical allurement which
+belongs to the true woman, as distinguished from the ideal conception
+compounded of womanhood's finest attributes, that sovereignty of amorous
+yet of spiritual charm which is its complement and its corrective.[16]
+Still with Titian, too, in the earlier years, woman, as presented in the
+perfection of mature youth, had, accompanying and elevating her bodily
+loveliness, a measure of that higher and nobler feminine attractiveness
+which would enable her to meet man on equal terms, nay, actively to
+exercise a dominating influence of fascination. In illustration of this
+assertion it is only necessary to refer to the draped and the undraped
+figure in the _Medea and Venus (Sacred and Profane Love)_ of the
+Borghese Gallery, to the _Herodias_ of the Doria Gallery, to the _Flora_
+of the Uffizi. Here, even when the beautiful Venetian courtesan is
+represented or suggested, what the master gives is less the mere votary
+than the priestess of love. Of this power of domination, this feminine
+royalty, the _Venus Anadyomene_ still retains a measure, but the _Venus
+of Urbino_ and the splendid succession of Venuses and Danaes, goddesses,
+nymphs, and heroines belonging to the period of the fullest maturity,
+show woman in the phase in which, renouncing her power to enslave, she
+is herself reduced to slavery.
+
+These glowing presentments of physical attractiveness embody a lower
+ideal--that of woman as the plaything of man, his precious possession,
+his delight in the lower sense. And yet Titian expresses this by no
+means exalted conception with a grand candour, an absence of
+_arriere-pensee_ such as almost purges it of offence. It is Giovanni
+Morelli who, in tracing the gradual descent from his recovered treasure,
+the _Venus_ of Giorgione in the Dresden Gallery,[17] through the various
+Venuses of Titian down to those of the latest manner, so finely
+expresses the essential difference between Giorgione's divinity and her
+sister in the Tribuna. The former sleeping, and protected only by her
+sovereign loveliness, is safer from offence than the waking goddess--or
+shall we not rather say woman?--who in Titian's canvas passively waits
+in her rich Venetian bower, tended by her handmaidens. It is again
+Morelli[18] who points out that, as compared with Correggio, even
+Giorgione--to say nothing of Titian--is when he renders the beauty of
+woman or goddess a realist. And this is true in a sense, yet not
+altogether. Correggio's _Danae_, his _Io_, his _Leda_, his _Venus_, are
+in their exquisite grace of form and movement farther removed from the
+mere fleshly beauty of the undraped model than are the goddesses and
+women of Giorgione. The passion and throb of humanity are replaced by a
+subtler and less easily explicable charm; beauty becomes a perfectly
+balanced and finely modulated harmony. Still the allurement is there,
+and it is more consciously and more provocatively exercised than with
+Giorgione, though the fascination of Correggio's divinities asserts
+itself less directly, less candidly. Showing through the frankly human
+loveliness of Giorgione's women there is after all a higher
+spirituality, a deeper intimation of that true, that clear-burning
+passion, enveloping body and soul, which transcends all exterior grace
+and harmony, however exquisite it may be in refinement of
+voluptuousness.[19]
+
+It is not, indeed, by any means certain that we are justified in
+seriously criticising as a _Venus_ the great picture of the Tribuna.
+Titian himself has given no indication that the beautiful Venetian woman
+who lies undraped after the bath, while in a sumptuous chamber,
+furnished according to the mode of the time, her handmaidens are seeking
+for the robes with which she will adorn herself, is intended to present
+the love-goddess, or even a beauty masquerading with her attributes.
+Vasari, who saw it in the picture-closet of the Duke of Urbino,
+describes it, no doubt, as "une Venere giovanetta a giacere, con fieri e
+certi panni sottili attorno." It is manifestly borrowed, too--as is now
+universally acknowledged--from Giorgione's _Venus_ in the Dresden
+Gallery, with the significant alteration, however, that Titian's fair
+one voluptuously dreams awake, while Giorgione's goddess more divinely
+reposes, and sleeping dreams loftier dreams. The motive is in the
+borrowing robbed of much of its dignity and beauty, and individualised
+in a fashion which, were any other master than Titian in question, would
+have brought it to the verge of triviality. Still as an example of his
+unrivalled mastery in rendering the glow and semi-transparency of flesh,
+enhanced by the contrast with white linen--itself slightly golden in
+tinge; in suggesting the appropriate atmospheric environment; in giving
+the full splendour of Venetian colour, duly subordinated nevertheless to
+the main motive, which is the glorification of a beautiful human body as
+it is; in all these respects the picture is of superlative excellence, a
+representative example of the master and of Venetian art, a piece which
+it would not be easy to match even among his own works.
+
+More and more, as the supreme artist matures, do we find him disdaining
+the showier and more evident forms of virtuosity. His colour is more and
+more marked in its luminous beauty by reticence and concentration, by
+the search after such a main colour-chord as shall not only be beautiful
+and satisfying in itself, but expressive of the motive which is at the
+root of the picture. Play of light over the surfaces and round the
+contours of the human form; the breaking-up and modulation of masses of
+colour by that play of light; strength, and beauty of general
+tone--these are now Titian's main preoccupations. To this point his
+perfected technical art has legitimately developed itself from the
+Giorgionesque ideal of colour and tone-harmony, which was essentially
+the same in principle, though necessarily in a less advanced stage, and
+more diversified by exceptions. Our master became, as time went on, less
+and less interested in the mere dexterous juxtaposition of brilliantly
+harmonising and brilliantly contrasting tints, in piquancy, gaiety, and
+sparkle of colour, to be achieved for its own sake. Indeed this phase of
+Venetian sixteenth-century colour belongs rather to those artists who
+issued from Verona--to the Bonifazi, and to Paolo Veronese--who in this
+respect, as generally in artistic temperament, proved themselves the
+natural successors of Domenico and Francesco Morone, of Girolamo dai
+Libri, of Cavazzola.
+
+Yet when Titian takes colour itself as his chief motive, he can vie with
+the most sumptuous of them in splendour, and eclipse them all by the
+sureness of his taste. A good example of this is the celebrated _Bella
+di Tiziano_ of the Pitti Gallery, another work which, like the _Venus of
+Urbino_, recalls the features without giving the precise personality of
+Eleonora Gonzaga. The beautiful but somewhat expressionless head with
+its crowning glory of bright hair, a waving mass of Venetian gold, has
+been so much injured by rubbing down and restoration that we regret what
+has been lost even more than we enjoy what is left. But the surfaces of
+the fair and exquisitely modelled neck and bosom have been less cruelly
+treated; the superb costume retains much of its pristine splendour. With
+its combination of brownish-purple velvet, peacock-blue brocade, and
+white lawn, its delicate trimmings of gold, and its further adornment
+with small knots, having in them, now at any rate, but an effaced note
+of red, the gown of _La Bella_ has remained the type of what is most
+beautiful in Venetian costume as it was in the earlier half of the
+sixteenth century. In richness and ingenious elaboration, chastened by
+taste, it far transcends the over-splendid and ponderous dresses in
+which later on the patrician dames portrayed by Veronese and his school
+loved to array themselves. A bright note of red in the upper jewel of
+one earring, now, no doubt, cruder than was originally intended, gives a
+fillip to the whole, after a fashion peculiar to Titian.
+
+[Illustration: _La Bella di Tiziano. From a photograph by Aplinari.
+Walter L. Cells. Ph._]
+
+The _Girl in the Fur Cloak_, No 197 in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna,
+shows once more in a youthful and blooming woman the features of
+Eleonora. The model is nude under a mantle of black satin lined with
+fur, which leaves uncovered the right breast and both arms. The picture
+is undoubtedly Titian's own, and fine in quality, but it reveals less
+than his usual graciousness and charm. It is probably identical with the
+canvas described in the often-quoted catalogue of Charles I.'s pictures
+as "A naked woman putting on her smock, which the king changed with the
+Duchess of Buckingham for one of His Majesty's Mantua pieces." It may
+well have suggested to Rubens, who must have seen it among the King's
+possessions on the occasion of his visit to London, his superb, yet
+singularly unrefined, _Helene Fourment in a Fur Mantle_, now also in the
+Vienna Gallery.
+
+The great portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in the Uffizi
+belong, as has already been noted, to 1537. Francesco Maria, here
+represented in the penultimate year of his stormy life, assumes
+deliberately the truculent warrior, and has beyond reasonable doubt made
+his own pose in a portrait destined to show the leader of armies, and
+not the amorous spouse or the patron of art and artists. Praise
+enthusiastic, but not excessive, has ever been and ever will be lavished
+on the breadth and splendid decision of the painting; on the magnificent
+rendering of the suit of plain but finely fashioned steel armour, with
+its wonderful reflections; on the energy of the virile countenance, and
+the appropriate concentration and simplicity of the whole. The superb
+head has, it must be confessed, more grandeur and energy than true
+individuality or life. The companion picture represents Eleonora Gonzaga
+seated near an open window, wearing a sombre but magnificent costume,
+and, completing it, one of those turbans with which the patrician ladies
+of North Italy, other than those of Venice, habitually crowned their
+locks. It has suffered in loss of freshness and touch more than its
+companion. Fine and accurate as the portrait is, much as it surpasses
+its pendant in subtle truth of characterisation, it has in the opinion
+of the writer been somewhat overpraised. For once, Titian approaches
+very nearly to the northern ideal in portraiture, underlining the truth
+with singular accuracy, yet with some sacrifice of graciousness and
+charm. The daughter of the learned and brilliant Isabella looks here as
+if, in the decline of her beauty, she had become something of a
+_precieuse_ and a prude, though it would be imprudent to assert that she
+was either the one or the other. Perhaps the most attractive feature of
+the whole composition is the beautiful landscape so characteristically
+stretching away into the far blue distance, suggested rather than
+revealed through the open window. This is such a picture as might have
+inspired the Netherlander Antonio Moro, just because it is Italian art
+of the Cinquecento with a difference, that is, with a certain admixture
+of northern downrightness and literalness of statement.
+
+About this same time Titian received from the brother of this princess,
+his patron and admirer Federigo Gonzaga, the commission for the famous
+series of the _Twelve Caesars_, now only known to the world by stray
+copies here and there, and by the grotesquely exaggerated engravings of
+AEgidius Sadeler. Giulio Romano having in 1536[20] completed the Sala di
+Troja in the Castello of Mantua, and made considerable progress with the
+apartments round about it, Federigo Gonzaga conceived the idea of
+devoting one whole room to the painted effigies of the _Twelve Caesars_
+to be undertaken by Titian. The exact date when the _Caesars_ were
+delivered is not known, but it may legitimately be inferred that this
+was in the course of 1537 or the earlier half of 1538. Our master's
+pictures were, according to Vasari, placed in an _anticamera_ of the
+Mantuan Palace, below them being hung twelve _storie a olio_--histories
+in oils--by Giulio Romano.[21] The _Caesars_ were all half-lengths,
+eleven out of the twelve being done by the Venetian master and the
+twelfth by Giulio Romano himself.[22] Brought to England with the rest
+of the Mantua pieces purchased by Daniel Nys for Charles I., they
+suffered injury, and Van Dyck is said to have repainted the _Vitellius_,
+which was one of several canvases irretrievably ruined by the
+quicksilver of the frames during the transit from Italy.[23] On the
+disposal of the royal collection after Charles Stuart's execution the
+_Twelve Caesars_ were sold by the State--not presented, as is usually
+asserted--to the Spanish Ambassador Cardenas, who gave L1200 for them.
+On their arrival in Spain with the other treasures secured on behalf of
+Philip IV., they were placed in the Alcazar of Madrid, where in one of
+the numerous fires which successively devastated the royal palace they
+must have perished, since no trace of them is to be found after the end
+of the seventeenth century. The popularity of Titian's decorative
+canvases is proved by the fact that Bernardino Campi of Cremona made
+five successive sets of copies from them--for Charles V., d'Avalos, the
+Duke of Alva, Rangone, and another Spanish grandee. Agostino Caracci
+subsequently copied them for the palace of Parma, and traces of yet
+other copies exist. Numerous versions are shown in private collections,
+both in England and abroad, purporting to be from the hand of Titian,
+but of these none--at any rate none of those seen by the writer--are
+originals or even Venetian copies. Among the best are the examples in
+the collection of Earl Brownlow and at the royal palace of Munich
+respectively, and these may possibly be from the hand of Campi. Although
+we are expressly told in Dolce's _Dialogo_ that Titian "painted the
+_Twelve Caesars_, taking them in part from medals, in part from antique
+marbles," it is perfectly clear that of the exact copying of
+antiques--such as is to be noted, for instance, in those marble
+medallions by Donatello which adorn the courtyard of the Medici Palace
+at Florence--there can have been no question. The attitudes of the
+_Caesars_, as shown in the engravings and the extant copies, exclude any
+such supposition. Those who have judged them from those copies and the
+hideous grotesques of Sadeler have wondered at the popularity of the
+originals, somewhat hastily deeming Titian to have been here inferior to
+himself. Strange to say, a better idea of what he intended, and what he
+may have realised in the originals, is to be obtained from a series of
+small copies now in the Provincial Museum of Hanover, than from anything
+else that has survived.[24] The little pictures in question, being on
+copper, cannot well be anterior to the first part of the seventeenth
+century, and they are not in themselves wonders. All the same they have
+a unique interest as proving that, while adopting the pompous attitudes
+and the purely decorative standpoint which the position of the pictures
+in the Castello may have rendered obligatory, Titian managed to make of
+his Emperors creatures of flesh and blood; the splendid Venetian warrior
+and patrician appearing in all the glory of manhood behind the
+conventional dignity, the self-consciousness of the Roman type and
+attitude.
+
+[Illustration: _Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi
+Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari_.]
+
+These last years had been to Titian as fruitful in material gain as in
+honour. He had, as has been seen, established permanent and intimate
+relations not only with the art-loving rulers of the North Italian
+principalities, but now with Charles V. himself, mightiest of European
+sovereigns, and, as a natural consequence, with the all-powerful
+captains and grandees of the Hispano-Austrian court. Meanwhile a serious
+danger to his supremacy had arisen. At home in Venice his unique
+position was threatened by Pordenone, that masterly and wonderfully
+facile _frescante_ and painter of monumental decorations, who had on
+more than one occasion in the past been found in competition with him.
+
+The Friulan, after many wanderings and much labour in North Italy, had
+settled in Venice in 1535, and there acquired an immense reputation by
+the grandeur and consummate ease with which he had carried out great
+mural decorations, such as the facade of Martin d'Anna's house on the
+Grand Canal, comprising in its scheme of decoration a Curtius on
+horse-back and a flying Mercury which according to Vasari became the
+talk of the town.[25] Here, at any rate, was a field in which even
+Titian himself, seeing that he had only at long intervals practised in
+fresco painting, could not hope to rival Pordenone. The Friulan, indeed,
+in this his special branch, stood entirely alone among the painters of
+North Italy.
+
+The Council of Ten in June 1537 issued a decree recording that Titian
+had since 1516 been in possession of his _senseria_, or broker's patent,
+and its accompanying salary, on condition that he should paint "the
+canvas of the land fight on the side of the Hall of the Great Council
+looking out on the Grand Canal," but that he had drawn his salary
+without performing his promise. He was therefore called upon to refund
+all that he had received for the time during which he had done no work.
+This sharp reminder operated as it was intended to do. We see from
+Aretino's correspondence that in November 1537 Titian was busily engaged
+on the great canvas for the Doges' Palace. This tardy recognition of an
+old obligation did not prevent the Council from issuing an order in
+November 1538 directing Pordenone to paint a picture for the Sala del
+Gran Consiglio, to occupy the space next to that reserved for Titian's
+long-delayed battle-piece.
+
+That this can never have been executed is clear, since Pordenone, on
+receipt of an urgent summons from Ercole II., Duke of Ferrara, departed
+from Venice in the month of December of the same year, and falling sick
+at Ferrara, died so suddenly as to give rise to the suspicion of foul
+play, which too easily sprang up in those days when ambition or private
+vengeance found ready to hand weapons so many and so convenient. Crowe
+and Cavalcaselle give good grounds for the assumption that, in order to
+save appearances, Titian was supposed--replacing and covering the
+battle-piece which already existed in the Great Hall--to be presenting
+the Battle of Spoleto in Umbria, whereas it was clear to all Venetians,
+from the costumes, the banners, and the landscape, that he meant to
+depict the Battle of Cadore fought in 1508. The latter was a Venetian
+victory and an Imperial defeat, the former a Papal defeat and an
+Imperial victory. The all-devouring fire of 1577 annihilated the _Battle
+of Cadore_ with too many other works of capital importance in the
+history both of the primitive and the mature Venetian schools. We have
+nothing now to show what it may have been, save the print of Fontana,
+and the oil painting in the Venetian Gallery of the Uffizi, reproducing
+on a reduced scale part only of the big canvas. This last is of Venetian
+origin, and more or less contemporary, but it need hardly be pointed out
+that it is a copy from, not a sketch for, the picture.
+
+[Illustration: _The Battle of Cadore (from a reduced copy of part only).
+Uffizi Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by G. Brogi._]
+
+To us who know the vast battle-piece only in the feeble echo of the
+print and the picture just now mentioned, it is a little difficult to
+account for the enthusiasm that it excited, and the prominent place
+accorded to it among the most famous of the Cadorine's works. Though the
+whole has abundant movement and passion, and the _mise-en-scene_ is
+undoubtedly imposing, the combat is not raised above reality into the
+region of the higher and more representative truth by any element of
+tragic vastness and significance. Even though the Imperialists are armed
+more or less in the antique Roman fashion, to distinguish them from the
+Venetians, who appear in the accoutrements of their own day, it is still
+that minor and local combat the _Battle of Cadore_ that we have before
+us, and not, above and beyond this battle, War, as some masters of the
+century, gifted with a higher power of evocation, might have shown it.
+Even as the fragment of Leonardo da Vinci's _Battle of Anghiari_
+survives in the free translation of Rubens's well-known drawing in the
+Louvre, we see how he has made out of the unimportant cavalry combat,
+yet without conventionality or undue transposition, a representation
+unequalled in art of the frenzy generated in man and beast by the clash
+of arms and the scent of blood. And Rubens, too, how incomparably in the
+_Battle of the Amazons_ of the Pinakothek at Munich, he evokes the
+terrors, not only of one mortal encounter, but of War--the hideous din,
+the horror of man let loose and become beast once more, the pitiless
+yell of the victors, the despairing cry of the vanquished, the
+irremediable overthrow! It would, however, be foolhardy in those who can
+only guess at what the picture may have been to arrogate to themselves
+the right of sitting in judgment on Vasari and those contemporaries who,
+actually seeing, enthusiastically admired it. What excited their delight
+must surely have been Titian's magic power of brush as displayed in
+individual figures and episodes, such as that famous one of the knight
+armed by his page in the immediate foreground.
+
+Into this period of our master's career there fit very well the two
+portraits in which he appears, painted by himself, on the confines of
+old age, vigorous and ardent still, fully conscious, moreover, though
+without affectation, of pre-eminent genius and supreme artistic rank.
+The portraits referred to are those very similar ones, both of them
+undoubtedly originals, which are respectively in the Berlin Gallery and
+the Painters' Gallery of the Uffizi. It is strange that there should
+exist no certain likeness of the master of Cadore done in youth or
+earlier manhood, if there be excepted the injured and more than doubtful
+production in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna, which has pretty generally
+been supposed to be an original auto-portrait belonging to this period.
+In the Uffizi and Berlin pictures Titian looks about sixty years old,
+but may be a little more or a little less. The latter is a half-length,
+showing him seated and gazing obliquely out of the picture with a
+majestic air, but also with something of combativeness and disquietude,
+an element, this last, which is traceable even in some of the earlier
+portraits, but not in the mythological _poesie_ or any sacred work. More
+and more as we advance through the final period of old age do we find
+this element of disquietude and misgiving asserting itself in male
+portraiture, as, for instance, in the _Maltese Knight_ of the Prado, the
+_Dominican Monk_ of the Borghese, the _Portrait of a Man with a Palm
+Branch_ of the Dresden Gallery. The atmosphere of sadness and foreboding
+enveloping man is traceable back to Giorgione; but with him it comes
+from the plenitude of inner life, from the gaze turned inwards upon the
+mystery of the human individuality rather than outwards upon the
+inevitable tragedies of the exterior life common to all. This same
+atmosphere of passionate contemplativeness enwraps, indeed, all that
+Giorgione did, and is the cause that he sees the world and himself
+lyrically, not dramatically; the flame of aspiration burning steadily at
+the heart's core and leaving the surface not indeed unruffled, but
+outwardly calm in its glow. Titian's is the more dramatic temperament in
+outward things, but also the more superficial. It must be remembered,
+too, that arriving rapidly at the maturity of his art, and painting all
+through the period of the full Renaissance, he was able with far less
+hindrance from technical limitations to express his conceptions to the
+full. His portraiture, however, especially his male portraiture, was and
+remained in its essence a splendid and full-blown development of the
+Giorgionesque ideal. It was grander, more accomplished, and for obvious
+reasons more satisfying, yet far less penetrating, less expressive of
+the inner fibre, whether of the painter or of his subject.
+
+But to return to the portrait of Berlin. It is in parts unfinished, and
+therefore the more interesting as revealing something of the methods
+employed by the master in this period of absolute mastery, when his
+palette was as sober in its strength as it was rich and harmonious;
+when, as ever, execution was a way to an end, and therefore not to be
+vain-gloriously displayed merely for its own sake. The picture came,
+with very many other masterpieces of the Italian and Netherlandish
+schools, from the Solly collection, which formed the nucleus of the
+Berlin Gallery. The Uffizi portrait emerges noble still, in its
+semi-ruined state, from a haze of restoration and injury, which has not
+succeeded in destroying the exceptional fineness and sensitiveness of
+the modelling. Although the pose and treatment of the head are
+practically identical with that in the Berlin picture, the conception
+seems a less dramatic one. It includes, unless the writer has misread
+it, an element of greater mansuetude and a less perturbed
+reflectiveness.
+
+The double portrait in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at
+Windsor Castle, styled _Titian and Franceschini_[26] has no pretensions
+whatever to be even discussed as a Titian. The figure of the Venetian
+senator designated as Franceschini is the better performance of the two;
+the lifeless head of Titian, which looks very like an afterthought, has
+been copied, without reference to the relation of the two figures the
+one to the other, from the Uffizi picture, or some portrait identical
+with it in character. A far finer likeness of Titian than any of these
+is the much later one, now in the Prado Gallery; but this it will be
+best to deal with in its proper chronological order.
+
+We come now to one of the most popular of all Titian's great canvases
+based on a sacred subject, the _Presentation in the Temple_ in the
+Accademia delle Belle Arti at Venice. This, as Vasari expressly states,
+was painted for the Scuola di S. Maria della Carita, that is, for the
+confraternity which owned the very building where now the Accademia
+displays its treasures. It is the magnificent scenic rendering of a
+subject lending itself easily to exterior pomp and display, not so
+easily to a more mystic and less obvious mode of conception. At the root
+of Titian's design lies in all probability the very similar picture on a
+comparatively small scale by Cima da Conegliano, now No. 63 in the
+Dresden Gallery, and this last may well have been inspired by
+Carpaccio's _Presentation of the Virgin_, now in the Brera at Milan.[27]
+The imposing canvases belonging to this particular period of Titian's
+activity, and this one in particular, with its splendid architectural
+framing, its wealth of life and movement, its richness and variety in
+type and costume, its fair prospect of Venetian landscape in the
+distance, must have largely contributed to form the transcendent
+decorative talent of Paolo Veronese. Only in the exquisitely fresh and
+beautiful figure of the childlike Virgin, who ascends the mighty flight
+of stone steps, clad all in shimmering blue, her head crowned with a
+halo of yellow light, does the artist prove that he has penetrated to
+the innermost significance of his subject. Here, at any rate, he
+touches the heart as well as feasts the eye. The thoughts of all who are
+familiar with Venetian art will involuntarily turn to Tintoretto's
+rendering of the same moving, yet in its symbolical character not
+naturally ultra-dramatic, scene. The younger master lends to it a
+significance so vast that he may be said to go as far beyond and above
+the requirements of the theme as Titian, with all his legitimate
+splendour and serene dignity, remains below it. With Tintoretto as
+interpreter we are made to see the beautiful episode as an event of the
+most tremendous import--one that must shake the earth to its centre. The
+reason of the onlooker may rebel against this portentous version, yet he
+is dominated all the same, is overwhelmed with something of the
+indefinable awe that has seized upon the bystanders who are witnesses of
+the scene.
+
+[Illustration: _The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Accademia
+delle Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by Naya._]
+
+But now to discuss a very curious point in connection with the actual
+state of Titian's important canvas. It has been very generally
+assumed--and Crowe and Cavalcaselle have set their seal on the
+assumption--that Titian painted his picture for a special place in the
+Albergo (now Accademia), and that this place is now architecturally as
+it was in Titian's time. Let them speak for themselves. "In this room
+(in the Albergo), which is contiguous to the modern hall in which
+Titian's _Assunta_ is displayed, there were two doors for which
+allowance was made in Titian's canvas; twenty-five feet--the length of
+the wall--is now the length of the picture. When this vast canvas was
+removed from its place, the gaps of the doors were filled in with new
+linen, and painted up to the tone of the original...."
+
+That the pieces of canvas to which reference is here made were new, and
+not Titian's original work from the brush, was of course well known to
+those who saw the work as it used to hang in the Accademia. Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle give indeed the name of a painter of this century who is
+responsible for them. Within the last three years the new and
+enterprising director of the Venice Academy, as part of a comprehensive
+scheme of rearrangement of the whole collection, caused these pieces of
+new canvas to be removed and then proceeded to replace the picture in
+the room for which it is believed to have been executed, fitting it into
+the space above the two doors just referred to. Many people have
+declared themselves delighted with the alteration, looking upon it as a
+tardy act of justice done to Titian, whose work, it is assumed, is now
+again seen just as he designed it for the Albergo. The writer must own
+that he has, from an examination of the canvas where it is now placed,
+or replaced, derived an absolutely contrary impression. First, is it
+conceivable that Titian in the heyday of his glory should have been
+asked to paint such a picture--not a mere mural decoration--for such a
+place? There is no instance of anything of the kind having been done
+with the canvases painted by Gentile Bellini, Carpaccio, Mansueti, and
+others for the various _Scuole_ of Venice. There is no instance of a
+great decorative canvas by a sixteenth century master of the first
+rank,[28] other than a ceiling decoration, being degraded in the first
+instance to such a use. And then Vasari, who saw the picture in Venice,
+and correctly characterises it, would surely have noticed such an
+extraordinary peculiarity as the abnormal shape necessitated by the two
+doors. It is incredible that Titian, if so unpalatable a task had indeed
+been originally imposed upon him, should not have designed his canvas
+otherwise. The hole for the right door coming in the midst of the
+monumental steps is just possible, though not very probable. Not so that
+for the left door, which, according to the present arrangement, cuts the
+very vitals out of one of the main groups in the foreground. Is it not
+to insult one of the greatest masters of all time thus to assume that he
+would have designed what we now see? It is much more likely that Titian
+executed his _Presentation_ in the first place in the normal shape, and
+that vandals of a later time, deciding to pierce the room in the Scuola
+in which the picture is now once more placed with one, or probably two,
+additional doors, partially sacrificed it to the structural requirements
+of the moment. Monstrous as such barbarism may appear, we have already
+seen, and shall again see later on, that it was by no means uncommon in
+those great ages of painting, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+
+When the untimely death of Pordenone, at the close of 1538, had
+extinguished the hopes of the Council that the grandiose facility of
+this master of monumental decoration might be made available for the
+purposes of the State, Titian having, as has been seen, made good his
+gravest default, was reinstated in his lucrative and by no means onerous
+office. He regained the _senseria_ by decree of August 28, 1539. The
+potent d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto, had in 1539 conferred upon Titian's
+eldest son Pomponio, the scapegrace and spendthrift that was to be, a
+canonry. Both to father and son the gift was in the future to be
+productive of more evil than good. At or about the same time he had
+commissioned of Titian a picture of himself haranguing his soldiers in
+the pompous Roman fashion; this was not, however, completed until 1541.
+Exhibited by d'Avalos to admiring crowds at Milan, it made a sensation
+for which there is absolutely nothing in the picture, as we now see it
+in the gallery of the Prado, to account; but then it would appear that
+it was irreparably injured in a fire which devastated the Alcazar of
+Madrid in 1621, and was afterwards extensively repainted. The Marquis
+and his son Francesco, both of them full-length figures, are placed on a
+low plinth, to the left, and from this point of vantage the Spanish
+leader addresses a company of foot-soldiers who with fine effect raise
+their halberds high into the air.[29] Among these last tradition places
+a portrait of Aretino, which is not now to be recognised with any
+certainty. Were the pedigree of the canvas a less well-authenticated
+one, one might be tempted to deny Titian's authorship altogether, so
+extraordinary are, apart from other considerations, the disproportions
+in the figure of the youth Francesco. Restoration must in this instance
+have amounted to entire repainting. Del Vasto appears more robust, more
+martial, and slightly younger than the armed leader in the _Allegory_ of
+the Louvre. If this last picture is to be accepted as a semi-idealised
+presentment of the Spanish captain, it must, as has already been pointed
+out, have been painted nearer to the time of his death, which took place
+in 1546. The often-cited biographers of our master are clearly in error
+in their conclusion that the painting described in the collection of
+Charles I. as "done by Titian, the picture of the Marquis Guasto,
+containing five half-figures so big as the life, which the king bought
+out of an Almonedo," is identical with the large sketch made by Titian
+as a preparation for the _Allocution_ of Madrid. This description, on
+the contrary, applies perfectly to the _Allegory_ of the Louvre, which
+was, as we know, included in the collection of Charles, and subsequently
+found its way into that of Louis Quatorze.
+
+[Illustration: _The Magdalen. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph
+by Anderson._]
+
+It was in 1542 that Vasari, summoned to Venice at the suggestion of
+Aretino, paid his first visit to the city of the Lagoons in order to
+paint the scenery and _apparato_ in connection with a carnival
+performance, which included the representation of his fellow-townsman's
+_Talanta.[30]_ It was on this occasion, no doubt, that Sansovino, in
+agreement with Titian, obtained for the Florentine the commission to
+paint the ceilings of Santo Spirito in Isola--a commission which was
+afterwards, as a consequence of his departure, undertaken and performed
+by Titian himself, with whose grandiose canvases we shall have to deal a
+little later on. In weighing the value of Vasari's testimony with
+reference to the works of Vecellio and other Venetian painters more or
+less of his own time, it should be borne in mind that he paid two
+successive visits to Venice, enjoying there the company of the great
+painter and the most eminent artists of the day, and that on the
+occasion of Titian's memorable visit to Rome he was his close friend,
+cicerone, and companion. Allowing for the Aretine biographer's
+well-known inaccuracies in matters of detail and for his royal disregard
+of chronological order--faults for which it is manifestly absurd to
+blame him over-severely--it would be unwise lightly to disregard or
+overrule his testimony with regard to matters which he may have learned
+from the lips of Titian himself and his immediate _entourage_.
+
+To the year 1542 belongs, as the authentic signature and date on the
+picture affirm, that celebrated portrait, _The Daughter of Roberto
+Strozzi_, once in the splendid palace of the family at Florence, but
+now, with some other priceless treasures having the same origin, in the
+Berlin Museum. Technically, the picture is one of the most brilliant,
+one of the most subtly exquisite, among the works of the great
+Cadorine's maturity. It well serves to show what Titian's ideal of
+colour was at this time. The canvas is all silvery gleam, all splendour
+and sober strength of colour--yet not of colours. These in all their
+plentitude and richness, as in the crimson drapery and the distant
+landscape, are duly subordinated to the main effect; they but set off
+discreetly the figure of the child, dressed all in white satin with hair
+of reddish gold, and contribute without fanfare to the fine and
+harmonious balance of the whole. Here, as elsewhere, more particularly
+in the work of Titian's maturity, one does not in the first place pause
+to pick out this or the other tint, this or the other combination of
+colours as particularly exquisite; and that is what one is so easily
+led to do in the contemplation of the Bonifazi and of Paolo Veronese.
+
+[Illustration: _The Infant Daughter of Roberto Strozzi. Royal Gallery,
+Berlin. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstaengl._]
+
+As the portrait of a child, though in conception it reveals a marked
+progress towards the _intimite_ of later times, the Berlin picture lacks
+something of charm and that quality which, for want of a better word,
+must be called loveableness. Or is it perhaps that the eighteenth and
+nineteenth centuries have spoilt us in this respect? For it is only in
+these latter days that to the child, in deliberate and avowed
+portraiture, is allowed that freakishness, that natural _espieglerie_
+and freedom from artificial control which has its climax in the
+unapproached portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds. This is the more curious
+when it is remembered how tenderly, with what observant and sympathetic
+truth the relation of child to mother, of child to child, was noted in
+the innumerable "Madonnas" and "Holy Families" of the fifteenth and
+sixteenth centuries; how both the Italians, and following them the
+Netherlanders, relieved the severity of their sacred works by the
+delightful roguishness, the romping impudence of their little angels,
+their _putti_.
+
+It has already been recorded that Titian, taking up the commission
+abandoned by Vasari, undertook a great scheme of pictorial decoration
+for the Brothers of Santo Spirito in Isola. All that he carried out for
+that church has now found its way into that of the Salute. The three
+ceiling pictures, _The Sacrifice of Isaac, Cain and Abel_, and _David
+victorious over Goliath_, are in the great sacristy of the church; the
+_Four Evangelists_ and _Four Doctors_ are in the ceiling of the choir
+behind the altar; the altar-piece, _The Descent of the Holy Spirit_, is
+in one of the chapels which completely girdle the circular church
+itself. The ceiling pictures, depicting three of the most dramatic
+moments in sacred history, have received the most enthusiastic praise
+from the master's successive biographers. They were indeed at the time
+of their inception a new thing in Venetian art. Nothing so daring as
+these foreshortenings, as these scenes of dramatic violence, of physical
+force triumphant, had been seen in Venice. The turbulent spirit was an
+exaggeration of that revealed by Titian in the _St. Peter Martyr_; the
+problem of the foreshortening for the purposes of ceiling decoration was
+superadded. It must be remembered, too, that even in Rome, the
+headquarters of the grand style, nothing precisely of the same kind
+could be said to exist. Raphael and his pupils either disdained, or it
+may be feared to approach, the problem. Neither in the ceiling
+decorations of the Farnesina nor in the Stanze is there any attempt on a
+large scale to _faire plafonner_ the figures, that is, to paint them so
+that they might appear as they would actually be seen from below.
+Michelangelo himself, in the stupendous decoration of the ceiling to the
+Sixtine Chapel, had elected to treat the subjects of the flat surface
+which constitutes the centre and climax of the whole, as a series of
+pictures designed under ordinary conditions. It can hardly be doubted
+that Titian, in attempting these _tours de force_, though not
+necessarily or even probably in any other way, was inspired by
+Correggio. It would not be easy, indeed, to exaggerate the Venetian
+master's achievement from this point of view, even though in two at
+least of the groups--the _Cain and Abel_ and the _David and
+Goliath_--the modern professor might be justified in criticising with
+considerable severity his draughtsmanship and many salient points in his
+design. The effect produced is tremendous of its kind. The power
+suggested is, however, brutal, unreasoning, not nobly dominating force;
+and this not alone in the _Cain and Abel_, where such an impression is
+rightly conveyed, but also in the other pieces. It is as if Titian, in
+striving to go beyond anything that had hitherto been done of the same
+kind, had also gone beyond his own artistic convictions, and thus, while
+compassing a remarkable pictorial achievement, lost his true balance.
+Tintoretto, creating his own atmosphere, as far outside and above mere
+physical realities as that of Michelangelo himself, might have succeeded
+in mitigating this impression, which is, on the whole, a painful one.
+Take for instance the _Martyrdom of St. Christopher_ of the younger
+painter--not a ceiling picture by the way--in the apse of S. Maria del
+Orto. Here, too, is depicted, with sweeping and altogether irresistible
+power, an act of hideous violence. And yet it is not this element of the
+subject which makes upon the spectator the most profound effect, but the
+impression of saintly submission, of voluntary self-sacrifice, which is
+the dominant note of the whole.
+
+It may be convenient to mention here _The Descent of the Holy Spirit_,
+although in its definitive form, as we see it in its place in the Church
+of the Salute, it appears markedly more advanced in style than the works
+of the period at which we have now arrived, giving, both in manner and
+feeling, a distinct suggestion of the methods and standpoint which mark
+the later phase of old age. Vasari tells us that the picture, originally
+painted in 1541, was seriously damaged and subsequently repainted; Crowe
+and Cavalcaselle state that the work now seen at the Salute was painted
+to replace an altar-piece which the Brothers of Santo Spirito had
+declined to accept. Even as the picture now appears, somewhat faded, and
+moreover seen at a disadvantage amid its cold surroundings of polished
+white marble, it is a composition of wonderful, of almost febrile
+animation, and a painting saturated with light, pierced through
+everywhere with its rays. The effect produced is absolutely that which
+the mystical subject requires.[31] Abandoning the passionless serenity
+which has been the rule in sacred subjects of the middle time, Titian
+shows himself more stimulated, more moved by his subject.
+
+It was in the spring of 1543 that the master first came into personal
+contact with Pope Paul III. and the Farnese family. The meeting took
+place at Ferrara, and our painter then accompanied the papal court to
+Busseto, and subsequently proceeded to Bologna. Aretino's correspondence
+proves that Titian must at that time have painted the Pope, and that he
+must also have refused the sovereign pontiff's offer of the _Piombo_,
+which was then still, as it had been for years past, in the possession
+of Sebastiano Luciani. That Titian, with all his eagerness for wealth
+and position, could not find it in his heart to displace his
+fellow-countryman, a friend no doubt of the early time, may legitimately
+excite admiration and sympathy now, as according to Aretino it actually
+did at the time. The portraits of the Farnese family included that of
+the Pope, repeated subsequently for Cardinal Santafiore, that of Pier
+Luigi, then that of Paul III. and this monstrous yet well-loved son
+together,[32] and a likeness of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Upon the
+three-quarter length portrait of Paul III. in the Naples Museum, Crowe
+and Cavalcaselle have lavished their most enthusiastic praise, placing
+it, indeed, among his masterpieces. All the same--interesting as the
+picture undoubtedly is, remarkable in finish, and of undoubtedly
+Titianesque origin--the writer finds it difficult, nay impossible, to
+accept this _Paul III._ as a work from the hand of Titian himself.
+Careful to excess, and for such an original too much wanting in
+brilliancy and vitality, it is the best of many repetitions and
+variations; of this particular type the original is not at present
+forthcoming. Very different is the "Paul III." of the Hermitage, which
+even in a reproduction loudly proclaims its originality.[33] This is by
+no means identical in design with the Naples picture, but appears much
+less studied, much more directly taken from the life. The astute Farnese
+Pope has here the same simiesque type, the same furtive distrustful
+look, as in the great unfinished group now to be described.[34] This
+Titian, which doubtless passed into the Hermitage with the rest of the
+Barbarigo pictures, may have been the first foundation for the series of
+portraits of the Farnese Pope, and as such would naturally have been
+retained by the master for his own use. The portrait-group in the Naples
+Museum, showing, with Paul III., Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio
+Farnese (afterwards Duke of Parma), is, apart from its extraordinary
+directness and swift technical mastery, of exceptional interest as being
+unfinished, and thus doubly instructive. The composition, lacking in its
+unusual momentariness the repose and dignity of Raphael's _Leo X. with
+Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and de' Rossi_ at the Pitti, is not wholly
+happy. Especially is the action of Ottavio Farnese, as in reverence he
+bends down to reply to the supreme Pontiff, forced and unconvincing; but
+the unflattered portrait of the pontiff himself is of a bold and quite
+unconventional truth, and in movement much happier. The picture may
+possibly, by reason of this unconventional conception less than
+perfectly realised, have failed to please the sitters, and thus have
+been left in its present state.[35]
+
+Few of Titian's canvases of vast dimensions have enjoyed a higher degree
+of popularity than the large _Ecce Homo_ to which the Viennese proudly
+point as one of the crowning ornaments of the great Imperial Gallery of
+their city. Completed in 1543[36] for Giovanni d'Anna, a son of the
+Flemish merchant Martin van der Hanna, who had established himself in
+Venice, it was vainly coveted by Henri III. on the occasion of his
+memorable visit in 1574, but was in 1620 purchased for the splendid
+favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by the English envoy Sir
+Henry Wotton. From him the noblest and most accomplished of English
+collectors, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, sought to obtain the prize with the
+unparalleled offer of L7000, yet even thus failed. At the time of the
+great _debacle_, in 1648, the guardians and advisers of his youthful son
+and successor were glad enough to get the splendid gallery over to the
+Low Countries, and to sell with the rest the _Ecce Homo_, which brought
+under these circumstances but a tenth part of what Lord Arundel would
+have given for it. Passing into the collection of the Archduke Leopold
+William, it was later on finally incorporated with that of the Imperial
+House of Austria. From the point of view of scenic and decorative
+magnificence combined with dramatic propriety, though not with any depth
+or intensity of dramatic passion, the work is undoubtedly imposing. Yet
+it suffers somewhat, even in this respect, from the fact that the
+figures are not more than small life-size. With passages of Titianesque
+splendour there are to be noted others, approaching to the acrid and
+inharmonious, which one would rather attribute to the master's
+assistants than to himself. So it is, too, with certain exaggerations of
+design characteristic rather of the period than the man--notably with
+the two figures to the left of the foreground. The Christ in His
+meekness is too little divine, too heavy and inert;[37] the Pontius
+Pilate not inappropriately reproduces the features of the worldling and
+_viveur_ Aretino. The mounted warrior to the extreme right, who has been
+supposed to represent Alfonso d'Este, shows the genial physiognomy made
+familiar by the Madrid picture so long deemed to be his portrait, but
+which, as has already been pointed out, represents much more probably
+his successor Ercole II. d'Este, whom we find again in that superb piece
+by the master, the so-called _Giorgio Cornaro_ of Castle Howard. The
+_Ecce Homo_ of Vienna is another of the works of which both the
+general _ordonnance_ and the truly Venetian splendour must have
+profoundly influenced Paolo Veronese.
+
+[Illustration: _Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph
+by Loewy_.]
+
+[Illustration: _Aretino. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by E.
+Alinari_.]
+
+To this period belongs also the _Annunciation of the Virgin_ now in the
+Cathedral of Verona--a rich, harmonious, and appropriate altar-piece,
+but not one of any special significance in the life-work of the painter.
+
+Shall we not, pretty much in agreement with Vasari, place here, just
+before the long-delayed visit to Rome, the _Christ with the Pilgrims at
+Emmaus_ of the Louvre? A strong reason for dating this, one of the
+noblest, one of the most deeply felt of all Titian's works, before
+rather than after the stay in the Eternal City, is that in its
+_naivete_, in its realistic episodes, in its fulness of life, it is so
+entirely and delightfully Venetian. Here again the colour-harmony in its
+subdued richness and solemnity has a completeness such as induces the
+beholder to accept it in its unity rather than to analyse those infinite
+subtleties of juxtaposition and handling which, avoiding bravura,
+disdain to show themselves on the surface. The sublime beauty of the
+landscape, in which, as often elsewhere, the golden radiance of the
+setting sun is seen battling with masses of azure cloud, has not been
+exceeded by Titian himself. With all the daring yet perfectly
+unobtrusive and unconscious realism of certain details, the conception
+is one of the loftiest, one of the most penetrating in its very
+simplicity, of Venetian art at its apogee. The divine mansuetude, the
+human and brotherly sympathy of the Christ, have not been equalled since
+the early days of the _Cristo della Moneta_. Altogether the _Pilgrims at
+Emmaus_ well marks that higher and more far-reaching conception of
+sacred art which reveals itself in the productions of Titian's old age,
+when we compare them with the untroubled serenity and the conventional
+assumptions of the middle time.[38]
+
+To the year 1545 belongs the supremely fine _Portrait of Aretino_, which
+is one of the glories of the Pitti Gallery. This was destined to
+propitiate the Grand Duke Cosimo of Tuscany, the son of his passionately
+attached friend of earlier days, Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Aretino,
+who had particular reasons for desiring to appear before the obdurate
+Cosimo in all the pomp and opulence of his later years, was obviously
+wounded that Titian, true to his genius, and to his method at this
+moment, should have made the keynote of his masterpiece a dignified
+simplicity. For once unfaithful to his brother Triumvir and friend, he
+attacks him in the accompanying letter to the Tuscan ruler with the
+withering sarcasm that "the satins, velvets, and brocades would perhaps
+have been better if Titian had received a few more scudi for working
+them out." If Aretino's pique had not caused the momentary clouding over
+of his artistic vision, he would have owned that the canvas now in the
+Pitti was one of the happiest achievements of Titian and one of the
+greatest things in portraiture. There is no flattery here of the "Divine
+Aretino," as with heroic impudence the notorious publicist styles
+himself. The sensual type is preserved, but rendered acceptable, and in
+a sense attractive, by a certain assurance and even dignity of bearing,
+such as success and a position impregnable of its unique and unenviable
+kind may well have lent to the adventurer in his maturity. Even Titian's
+brush has not worked with greater richness and freedom, with an effect
+broader or more entirely legitimate than in the head with its softly
+flowing beard and the magnificent yet not too ornate robe and vest of
+plum-coloured velvet and satin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_The Visit to Rome--Titian and Michelangelo--The "Danae" of Naples--"St.
+John the Baptist in the Desert"--Journey to Augsburg--"Venus and Cupid"
+of the Tribuna--"Venus with the Organ Player" of Madrid--The Altar-piece
+of Serravalle--"Charles V. at the Battle of Muehlberg"--"Prometheus
+Bound" and companion pictures--Second Journey to Augsburg--Portraits of
+Philip of Spain--The so-called "Marques del Vasto" at Cassel--The "St.
+Margaret"--"Danae" of Madrid--The "Trinity"--"Venus and Adonis"--"La
+Fede."_
+
+
+At last, in the autumn of 1545, the master of Cadore, at the age of
+sixty-eight years, was to see Rome, its ruins, its statues, its
+antiquities, and what to the painter of the Renaissance must have meant
+infinitely more, the Sixtine Chapel and the Stanze of the Vatican. Upon
+nothing in the history of Venetian art have its lovers, and the many
+who, with profound interest, trace Titian's noble and perfectly
+consistent career from its commencement to its close, more reason to
+congratulate themselves than on this circumstance, that in youth and
+earlier manhood fortune and his own success kept him from visiting Rome.
+Though his was not the eclectic tendency, the easily impressionable
+artistic temperament of a Sebastiano Luciani--the only eclectic,
+perhaps, who managed all the same to prove and to maintain himself an
+artist of the very first rank--if Titian had in earlier life been lured
+to the Eternal City, and had there settled, the glamour of the grand
+style might have permanently and fatally disturbed his balance. Now it
+was too late for the splendid and gracious master, who even at
+sixty-eight had still before him nearly thirty fruitful years, to
+receive any impressions sufficiently deep to penetrate to the root of
+his art. There is some evidence to show that Titian, deeply impressed
+with the highest manifestations of the Florentine and Umbro-Florentine
+art transplanted to Rome, considered that his work had improved after
+the visit of 1545-1546. If there was such improvement--and certainly in
+the ultimate phases of his practice there will be evident in some ways
+a wider view, a higher grasp of essentials, a more responsive
+sensitiveness in the conceiving anew of the great sacred subjects--it
+must have come, not from any effort to assimilate the manner or to
+assume the standpoint which had obtained in Rome, but from the closer
+contact with a world which at its centre was beginning to take a deeper,
+a more solemn and gloomy view of religion and life. It should not be
+forgotten that this was the year when the great Council of Trent first
+met, and that during the next twenty years or more the whole of Italy,
+nay, the whole of the Catholic world, was overshadowed by its
+deliberations.
+
+Titian's friend and patron of that time, Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino,
+had at first opposed Titian's visit to the Roman court, striving to
+reserve to himself the services of the Venetian master until such time
+as he should have carried out for him the commissions with which he was
+charged. Yielding, however, to the inevitable, and yielding, too, with a
+good grace, he himself escorted his favourite with his son Orazio from
+Venice through Ferrara to Pesaro, and having detained him a short while
+there, granted him an escort through the Papal States to Rome. There he
+was well received by the Farnese Pope, and with much cordiality by
+Cardinal Bembo. Rooms were accorded to him in the Belvedere section of
+the Vatican Palace, and there no doubt he painted the unfinished
+portrait-group _Paul III. with Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio
+Farnese_, which has been already described, and with it other pieces of
+the same type, and portraits of the Farnese family and circle now no
+longer to be traced. Vasari, well pleased no doubt to renew his
+acquaintance with the acknowledged head of the contemporary Venetian
+painters, acted as his cicerone in the visits to the antiquities of
+Rome, to the statues and art-treasures of the Vatican, while Titian's
+fellow-citizen Sebastiano del Piombo was in his company when he studied
+the Stanze of Raphael.
+
+It was but three years since Michelangelo's _Last Judgment_ had been
+uncovered in the Sixtine, and it would have been in the highest degree
+interesting to read his comments on this gigantic performance, towards
+which it was so little likely that his sympathies would spontaneously go
+out. Memorable is the visit paid by Buonarroti, with an unwonted regard
+for ceremonious courtesy, to Titian in his apartments at the Belvedere,
+as it is recalled by Vasari with that naive touch, that power of
+suggestion, which gives such delightful colour to his unstudied prose.
+No _Imaginary Conversation_ among those that Walter Savage Landor has
+devised equals in significance this meeting of the two greatest masters
+then living, simply as it is sketched in by the Aretine biographer. The
+noble Venetian representing the alternating radiance and gloom of earth,
+its fairest pages as they unfold themselves, the joys and sorrows, the
+teeming life of humanity; the mighty Florentine disdainful of the world,
+its colours, its pulsations, its pomps and vanities, incurious of
+mankind save in its great symbolical figures, soaring like the solitary
+eagle into an atmosphere of his own where the dejected beholder can
+scarce breathe, and, sick at heart, oppressed with awe, lags far behind!
+
+[Illustration: _Pope Paul III. with Cardinal Farnese and Ottavio
+Farnese. Naples Gallery. From a Photograph by E. Alinari._]
+
+Titian the gracious, the serene, who throughout a long life of splendid
+and by comparison effortless achievement has openly and candidly drunk
+deep of all the joys of life, a man even as others are! Michelangelo the
+austere, the scornful, to whom the pleasures of the world, the company
+in well-earned leisure of his fellow-man, suggest but the loss of
+precious hours which might be devoted to the shaping in solitude of
+masterpieces; in the very depths of whose nature lurk nevertheless, even
+in old age, the strangest ardours, the fiercest and most insatiate
+longings for love and friendship!
+
+Let Vasari himself be heard as to this meeting. "Michelangelo and Vasari
+going one day to pay a visit to Titian in the Belvedere, saw, in a
+picture which he had then advanced towards completion, a nude female
+figure representing _Danae_ as she receives the embrace of Jove
+transformed into a rain of gold, and, as the fashion is in people's
+presence, praised it much to him. When they had taken leave, and the
+discussion was as to the art of Titian, Buonarroti praised it highly,
+saying that the colour and handling pleased him much, but that it was a
+subject for regret that at Venice they did not learn from the very
+beginning to design correctly, and that its painters did not follow a
+better method in their study of art." It is the battle that will so
+often be renewed between the artist who looks upon colour as merely a
+complement and adjunct to design, and the painter who regards it as not
+only the outer covering, but the body and soul of art. We remember how
+the stiff-necked Ingres, the greatest Raphaelesque of this century,
+hurled at Delacroix's head the famous dictum, "Le dessin c'est la
+probite de l'art," and how his illustrious rival, the chief of a
+romanticism which he would hardly acknowledge, vindicated by works
+rather than by words his contention that, if design was indeed art's
+conscience, colour was its life-blood, its very being.
+
+The _Danae_, seen and admired with reservations by Buonarroti in the
+painting-room of Titian at the Belvedere, is now, with its beauty
+diminished in important particulars, to be found with the rest of the
+Farnese pictures in the gallery of the Naples Museum. It serves to show
+that if the artist was far beyond the stage of imitation or even of
+assimilation on the larger scale, he was, at any rate, affected by the
+Roman atmosphere in art. For once he here comes nearer to the
+realisation of Tintoretto's ideal--the colour of Titian and the design
+of Michelangelo--than his impetuous pupil and rival ever did. While
+preserving in the _Danae_ his own true warmth and transparency of
+Venetian colour--now somewhat obscured yet not effaced--he combines
+unusual weightiness and majesty with voluptuousness in the nude, and
+successfully strives after a more studied rhythm in the harmony of the
+composition generally than the art of Venice usually affected.
+
+[Illustration: _Danae and the Golden Rain. Naples Gallery. From a
+Photograph by E. Alinari._]
+
+Titian, in his return from Rome, which he was never to revisit, made a
+stay at Florence with an eye, as we may guess, both to business and
+pleasure. There, as Vasari takes care to record, our master visited the
+artistic sights, and _rimase stupefatto_--remained in breathless
+astonishment--as he had done when he made himself acquainted with the
+artistic glories of Rome. This is but vague, and a little too much
+smacks of self-flattery and adulation of the brother Tuscans. Titian was
+received by Duke Cosimo at Poggio a Caiano, but his offer to paint the
+portrait of the Medici ruler was not well received. It may be, as Vasari
+surmises, that this attitude was taken up by the duke in order not to do
+wrong to the "many noble craftsmen" then practising in his city and
+dominion. More probably, however, Cosimo's hatred and contempt of his
+father's minion Aretino, whose portrait by Titian he had condescended to
+retain, yet declined to acknowledge, impelled him to show something less
+than favour to the man who was known to be the closest friend and
+intimate of this self-styled "Scourge of Princes."
+
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle have placed about the year 1555 the extravagantly
+lauded _St. John the Baptist in the Desert_, once in the church of S.M.
+Maria Maggiore at Venice, and now in the Accademia there. To the writer
+it appears that it would best come in at this stage--that is to say in
+or about 1545--not only because the firm close handling in the nude
+would be less explicable ten years later on, but because the conception
+of the majestic St. John is for once not pictorial but purely
+sculptural. Leaving Rome, and immediately afterwards coming into contact
+for the first time with the wonders of the earlier Florentine art,
+Titian might well have conceived, might well have painted thus. Strange
+to say, the influence is not that of Michelangelo, but, unless the
+writer is greatly deceived, that of Donatello, whose noble ascetic type
+of the _Precursor_ is here modernised, and in the process deprived of
+some of its austerity. The glorious mountain landscape, with its
+brawling stream, fresher and truer than any torrent of Ruysdael's, is
+all Titian. It makes the striking figure of St. John, for all its
+majesty, appear not a little artificial.
+
+The little town of Serravalle, still so captivatingly Venetian in its
+general aspect, holds one of the most magnificent works of Titian's late
+time, a vast _Virgin and Child with St. Peter and St. Andrew_. This
+hangs--or did when last seen by the writer--in the choir of the Church
+of St. Andrew; there is evidence in Titian's correspondence that it was
+finished in 1547, so that it must have been undertaken soon after the
+return from Rome. In the distance between the two majestic figures of
+the saints is a prospect of landscape with a lake, upon which Titian has
+shown on a reduced scale Christ calling Peter and Andrew from their
+nets; an undisguised adaptation this, by the veteran master, of the
+divine Urbinate's _Miraculous Draught of Fishes_, but one which made of
+the borrowed motive a new thing, no excrescence but an integral part of
+the conception. In this great work, which to be more universally
+celebrated requires only to be better known to those who do not come
+within the narrow circle of students, there is evidence that while
+Titian, after his stay at the Papal court, remained firm as a rock in
+his style and general principles--luckily a Venetian and no
+pseudo-Roman,--his imagination became more intense in its glow, gloomier
+but grander, than it had been in middle age--his horizon altogether
+vaster. To a grand if sometimes too unruffled placidity succeeded a
+physical and psychical perturbation which belonged both to the man in
+advanced years and to the particular moment in the century. Even in his
+treatment of classic myth, of the nude in goddess and woman, there was,
+as we shall see presently, a greater unrest and a more poignant
+sensuality--there was evidence of a mind and temperament troubled anew
+instead of being tranquillised by the oncoming of old age.
+
+Are we to place here, as Crowe and Cavalcaselle do, the _Venus and
+Cupid_ of the Tribuna and the _Venus with the Organ Player_ of the
+Prado? The technical execution of these canvases, the treatment of
+landscape in the former, would lead the writer to place them some years
+farther on still in the _oeuvre_ of the master. There are, however,
+certain reasons for following them in this chronological arrangement.
+The _Venus and Cupid_ which hangs in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, as the
+pendant to the more resplendent but more realistic _Venus of Urbino_, is
+a darker and less well-preserved picture than its present companion, but
+a grander if a more audacious presentment of the love-goddess. Yet even
+here she is not so much the Cytherean as an embodiment of the Venetian
+ideal of the later time, an exemplification of the undisguised worship
+of fleshly loveliness which then existed in Venice. It has been pointed
+out that the later Venus has the features of Titian's fair daughter
+Lavinia, and this is no doubt to a certain extent true. The goddesses,
+nymphs, and women of this time bear a sort of general family resemblance
+to her and to each other. This piece illustrates the preferred type of
+Titian's old age, as the _Vanitas, Herodias_, and _Flora_ illustrate the
+preferred type of his youth; as the paintings which we have learnt to
+associate with the Duchess of Urbino illustrate that of his middle time.
+The dignity and rhythmic outline of Eros in the _Danae_ of Naples have
+been given up in favour of a more naturalistic conception of the
+insinuating urchin, who is in this _Venus and Cupid_ the successor of
+those much earlier _amorini_ in the _Worship of Venus_ at Madrid. The
+landscape in its sweeping breadth is very characteristic of the late
+time, and would give good reason for placing the picture later than it
+here appears. The difficulty is this. The _Venus with the Organ
+Player_[39] of Madrid, which in many essential points is an inferior
+repetition of the later _Venus_ of the Tribuna, contains the portrait of
+Ottavio Farnese, much as we see him in the unfinished group painted, as
+has been recorded, at Rome in 1546. This being the case, it is not easy
+to place the _Venus and Cupid_, or its subsequent adaptation, much later
+than just before the journey to Augsburg. The _Venus with the Organ
+Player_ has been overrated; there are things in this canvas which we
+cannot without offence to Titian ascribe to his own brush. Among these
+are the tiresome, formal landscape, the wooden little dog petted by
+Venus, and perhaps some other passages. The goddess herself and the
+amorous Ottavio, though this last is not a very striking or successful
+portrait, may perhaps be left to the master. He vindicates himself more
+completely than in any other passage of the work when he depicts the
+youthful, supple form of the Venetian courtesan, as in a merely passive
+pose she personates the goddess whose insignificant votary she really
+is. It cannot be denied that he touches here the lowest level reached by
+him in such delineations. What offends in this _Venus with the Organ
+Player_, or rather _Ottavio Farnese with his Beloved_, is that its
+informing sentiment is not love, or indeed any community of sentiment,
+but an ostentatious pride in the possession of covetable beauty subdued
+like that of Danae herself by gold.
+
+If we are to assume with Crowe and Cavalcaselle that the single figure
+_Ecce Homo_ of the Prado Gallery was the piece taken by the master to
+Charles V. when, at the bidding of the Emperor, he journeyed to
+Augsburg, we can only conclude that his design was carried out by pupils
+or assistants. The execution is not such as we can ascribe to the brush
+which is so shortly to realise for the monarch a group of masterpieces.
+
+It was in January 1548 that Titian set forth to obey the command of the
+Emperor, "per far qualche opera," as Count Girolamo della Torre has it
+in a letter of recommendation given to Titian for the Cardinal of Trent
+at Augsburg. It is significant to find the writer mentioning the
+painter, not by any of the styles and titles which he had a right to
+bear, especially at the court of Charles V., but extolling him as
+"Messer Titiano Pittore et il primo huomo della Christianita."[40]
+
+It might be imagined that it would be a terrible wrench for Titian, at
+the age of seventy, to transplant himself suddenly, and for the first
+time, into a foreign land. But then he was not as other men of seventy
+are. The final years of his unexampled career will conclusively show
+that he preserved his mental and physical vigour to the end. Further,
+the imperial court with its Spanish etiquette, its Spanish language and
+manners, was much the same at Augsburg as he had known it on previous
+occasions at Bologna. Moreover, Augsburg and Nuremberg[41] had, during
+the last fifty years, been in close touch with Venice in all matters
+appertaining to art and commerce. Especially the great banking house of
+the Fuggers had the most intimate relations with the queen-city of the
+Adriatic. Yet art of the two great German cities would doubtless appeal
+less to the Venetian who had arrived at the zenith of his development
+than it would and did to the Bellinis and their school at the beginning
+of the century. The gulf had become a far wider one, and the points of
+contact were fewer.
+
+The trusted Orazio had been left behind, notwithstanding the success
+which he had achieved during the Roman tour, and it may be assumed that
+he presided over the studio and workshop at Biri Grande during his
+father's absence. Titian was accompanied to Augsburg by his second
+cousin, Cesare Vecellio,[42] who no doubt had a minor share in very many
+of the canvases belonging to the period of residence at Augsburg. Our
+master's first and most grateful task must have been the painting of the
+great equestrian portrait of the Emperor at the Battle of Muehlberg,
+which now hangs in the Long Gallery of the Prado at Madrid. It suffered
+much injury in the fire of the Pardo Palace, which annihilated so many
+masterpieces, but is yet very far from being the "wreck" which, with an
+exaggeration not easily pardonable under the circumstances, Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle have described it. In the presence of one of the world's
+masterpieces criticism may for once remain silent, willingly renouncing
+all its rights. No purpose would be served here by recording how much
+paint has been abraded in one corner, how much added in another. A deep
+sense of thankfulness should possess us that the highest manifestation
+of Titian's genius has been preserved, even though it be shorn of some
+of its original beauty. Splendidly armed in steel from head to foot, and
+holding firmly grasped in his hand the spear, emblem of command in this
+instance rather than of combat, Caesar advances with a mien impassive yet
+of irresistible domination. He bestrides with ease his splendid
+dark-brown charger, caparisoned in crimson, and heavily weighted like
+himself with the full panoply of battle, a perfect harmony being here
+subtly suggested between man and beast. The rich landscape, with a gleam
+of the Elbe in the distance, is still in the half gloom of earliest day;
+but on the horizon, and in the clouds overhead, glows the red ominous
+light of sunrise, colouring the veils of the morning mist. The Emperor
+is alone--alone as he must be in life and in death--a man, yet lifted so
+high above other men that the world stretches far below at his feet,
+while above him this ruler knows no power but that of God. It is not
+even the sneer of cold command, but a majesty far higher and more
+absolutely convinced of its divine origin, that awes the beholder as he
+gazes. In comparison with the supreme dignity of this ugly, pallid
+Hapsburger, upon whom disease and death have already laid a shadowy
+finger, how artificial appear the divine assumptions of an Alexander,
+how theatrical the Olympian airs of an Augustus, how merely vulgar and
+ill-worn the imperial poses of a Napoleon.
+
+[Illustration: _Charles V. at the Battle of Muehlberg. Gallery of the
+Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement & Cie._]
+
+No veracious biographer of Titian could pretend that he is always thus
+imaginative, that coming in contact with a commanding human
+individuality he always thus unfolds the outer wrappings to reveal the
+soul within. Indeed, especially in the middle time just past, he not
+infrequently contents himself with the splendid outsides of splendid
+things. To interpret this masterpiece as the writer has ventured to do,
+it is not necessary to assume that Titian reasoned out the poetic
+vision, which was at the same time an absolutely veracious presentment,
+argumentatively with himself, as the painter of such a portrait in words
+might have done. Pictorial genius of the creative order does not proceed
+by such methods, but sees its subject as a whole, leaving to others the
+task of probing and unravelling. It should be borne in mind, too, that
+this is the first in order, as it is infinitely the greatest and the
+most significant among the vast equestrian portraits of monarchs by
+court painters. Velazquez on the one hand, and Van Dyck on the other,
+have worked wonders in the same field. Yet their finest productions,
+even the _Philip IV._, the _Conde Duque Olivarez_, the _Don Balthasar
+Carlos_ of the Spaniard, even the two equestrian portraits of Charles
+I., the _Francisco de Moncada_, the _Prince Thomas of Savoy_ of the
+Fleming, are in comparison but magnificent show pieces aiming above all
+at decorative pomp and an imposing general effect.
+
+We come to earth and every-day weariness again with the full-length of
+Charles V., which is now in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. Here the
+monarch, dressed in black and seated in a well-worn crimson velvet
+chair, shows without disguise how profoundly he is ravaged by ill-health
+and _ennui_. Fine as the portrait still appears notwithstanding its bad
+condition, one feels somehow that Titian is not in this instance, as he
+is in most others, perfect master of his material, of the main elements
+of his picture. The problem of relieving the legs cased in black against
+a relatively light background, and yet allowing to them their full
+plastic form, is not perfectly solved. Neither is it, by the way, as a
+rule in the canvases of those admirable painters of men, the
+quasi-Venetians, Moretto of Brescia and Moroni of Bergamo. The
+Northerners--among them Holbein and Lucidel--came nearer to perfect
+success in this particular matter. The splendidly brushed-in prospect of
+cloudy sky and far-stretching country recalls, as Morelli has observed,
+the landscapes of Rubens, and suggests that he underwent the influence
+of the Cadorine in this respect as in many others, especially after his
+journey as ambassador to Madrid.
+
+Another portrait, dating from the first visit to Augsburg, is the
+half-length of the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, now in the Imperial
+Gallery at Vienna. He sits obese and stolid, yet not without the dignity
+that belongs to absolute simplicity, showing on his left cheek the wound
+received at the battle of Muehlberg. The picture has, as a portrait by
+Titian, no very commanding merit, no seduction of technique, and it is
+easy to imagine that Cesare Vecellio may have had a share in it.
+Singular is the absence of all pose, of all attempt to harmonise the
+main lines of the design or give pictorial elegance to the naive
+directness of the presentment. This mode of conception may well have
+been dictated to the courtly Venetian by sturdy John Frederick himself.
+
+The master painted for Mary, Queen Dowager of Hungary, four canvases
+specially mentioned by Vasari, _Prometheus Bound to the Rock, Ixion,
+Tantalus_, and _Sisyphus_, which were taken to Spain at the moment of
+the definitive migration of the court in 1556. Crowe and Cavalcaselle
+state that the whole four perished in the all-devouring conflagration of
+the Pardo Palace, and put down the _Prometheus_ and _Sisyphus_ of the
+Prado Gallery as copies by Sanchez Coello. It is difficult to form a
+definite judgment on canvases so badly hung, so darkened and injured.
+They certainly look much more like Venetian originals than Spanish
+copies. These mythological subjects may very properly be classed with
+the all too energetic ceiling-pictures now in the Sacristy of the
+Salute. Here again the master, in the effort to be grandiose in a style
+not properly his, overreaches himself and becomes artificial. He must
+have left Augsburg this time in the autumn of 1548, since in the month
+of October of that year we find him at Innsbruck making a family picture
+of the children of King Ferdinand, the Emperor's brother. That monarch
+himself, his two sons and five daughters, he had already portrayed.
+
+Much feasting, much rejoicing, in the brilliant and jovial circle
+presided over by Aretino and the brother Triumvirs, followed upon our
+master's return to Venice. Aretino, who after all was not so much the
+scourge as the screw of princes, would be sure to think the more highly
+of the friend whom he really cherished in all sincerity, when he
+returned from close and confidential intercourse with the mightiest
+ruler of the age, the source not only of honour but of advantages which
+the Aretine, like Falstaff, held more covetable because more
+substantial. To the year 1549 belongs the gigantic woodcut _The
+Destruction of Pharaoh's Host_, designed, according to the inscription
+on the print, by "the great and immortal Titian," and engraved by
+Domenico delle Greche, who, notwithstanding his name, calls himself
+"depentore Venetiano." He is not, as need hardly be pointed out, to be
+confounded with the famous Veneto-Spanish painter, Domenico
+Theotocopuli, Il Greco, whose date of birth is just about this time
+(1548).
+
+Titian, specially summoned by the Emperor, travelled back to Augsburg in
+November 1550. Charles had returned thither with Prince Philip, the
+heir-presumptive of the Spanish throne, and it can hardly be open to
+question that one of the main objects for which the court painter was
+made to undertake once more the arduous journey across the Alps was to
+depict the son upon whom all the monarch's hopes and plans were centred.
+Charles, whose health had still further declined, was now, under an
+accumulation of political misfortune, gloomier than ever before, more
+completely detached from the things of the world. Barely over fifty at
+this moment, he seemed already, and, in truth, was an old man, while the
+master of Cadore at seventy-three shone in the splendid autumn of his
+genius, which even then had not reached its final period of expansion.
+Titian enjoyed the confidence of his imperial master during this second
+visit in a degree which excited surprise at the time; the intercourse
+with Charles at this tragic moment of his career, when, sick and
+disappointed, he aspired only to the consolations of faith, seeing his
+sovereign remedy in the soothing balm of utter peace, may have worked to
+deepen the gloom which was overspreading the painter's art if not his
+soul. It is not to be believed, all the same, that this atmosphere of
+unrest and misgiving, of faith coloured by an element of terror, in
+itself operated so strongly as unaided to give a final form to Titian's
+sacred works. There was in this respect kinship of spirit between the
+mighty ruler and his servant; Titian's art had already become sadder and
+more solemn, had already shown a more sombre passion. The tragic gloom
+is now to become more and more intense, until we come to the climax in
+the astonishing _Pieta_ left unfinished when the end comes a quarter of
+a century later still.
+
+And with this change in the whole atmosphere of the sacred art comes
+another in the inverse sense, which, being an essential trait, must be
+described, though to do so is not quite easy. Titian becomes more and
+more merely sensuous in his conception of the beauty of women. He
+betrays in his loss of serenity that he is less than heretofore
+impervious to the stings of an invading sensuality, which serves to make
+of his mythological and erotic scenes belonging to this late time a
+tribute to the glories of the flesh unennobled by the gilding touch of
+the purer flame. And the painter who, when Charles V. retired into his
+solitude, had suffered the feeble flame of his life to die slowly out,
+was to go on working for King Philip, as fierce in the intensity of his
+physical passion as in the fervour of his faith, would receive
+encouragement to develop to the full these seemingly conflicting
+tendencies of sacred and amorous passion.
+
+The Spanish prince whom it was the master's most important task on this
+occasion to portray was then but twenty-four years of age, and youth
+served not indeed to hide, but in a slight measure to attenuate, some of
+his most characteristic physical defects. His unattractive person even
+then, however, showed some of the most repellent peculiarities of his
+father and his race. He had the supreme distinction of Charles but not
+his majesty, more than his haughty reserve, even less than his power of
+enlisting sympathy. In this most difficult of tasks--the portrayal that
+should be at one and the same time true in its essence, distinguished,
+and as sympathetic as might be under the circumstances, of so unlovable
+a personage--Titian won a new victory. His _Prince Philip of Austria in
+Armour_ at the Prado is one of his most complete and satisfying
+achievements, from every point of view. A veritable triumph of art, but
+as usual a triumph to which the master himself disdains to call
+attention, is the rendering of the damascened armour, the puffed hose,
+and the white silk stockings and shoes. The two most important
+variations executed by the master, or under his immediate direction, are
+the full-lengths of the Pitti Palace and the Naples Museum, in both of
+which sumptuous court-dress replaces the gala military costume. They are
+practically identical, both in the design and the working out, save that
+in the Florence example Philip stands on a grass plot in front of a
+colonnade, while in that of Naples the background is featureless. As the
+pictures are now seen, that in the Pitti is marked by greater subtlety
+in the characterisation of the head, while the Naples canvas appears the
+more brilliant as regards the working out of the costume and
+accessories.
+
+To the period of Titian's return from the second visit to Augsburg
+belongs a very remarkable portrait which of late years there has been
+some disinclination to admit as his own work. This is the imposing
+full-length portrait which stands forth as the crowning decoration of
+the beautiful and well-ordered gallery at Cassel. In the days when it
+was sought to obtain _quand meme_ a striking designation for a great
+picture, it was christened _Alfonso d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto_.
+More recently, with some greater show of probability, it has
+been called _Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino_. In the _Jahrbuch der
+koeniglich-preussischen Kunstsammlungen_,[43] Herr Carl Justi, ever bold
+and ingenious in hypothesis, strives, with the support of a mass of
+corroborative evidence that cannot be here quoted, to prove that the
+splendid personage presented is a Neapolitan nobleman of the highest
+rank, Giovan Francesco Acquaviva, Duke of Atri. There is the more reason
+to accept his conjecture since it helps us to cope with certain
+difficulties presented by the picture itself. It may be conceded at the
+outset that there are disturbing elements in it, well calculated to give
+pause to the student of Titian. The handsome patrician, a little too
+proud of his rank, his magnificent garments and accoutrements, his
+virile beauty, stands fronting the spectator in a dress of crimson and
+gold, wearing a plumed and jewelled hat, which in its elaboration
+closely borders on the grotesque, and holding a hunting-spear. Still
+more astonishing in its exaggeration of a Venetian mode in
+portraiture[44] is the great crimson, dragon-crowned helmet which, on
+the left of the canvas, Cupid himself supports. To the right, a rival
+even of Love in the affections of our enigmatical personage, a noble
+hound rubs himself affectionately against the stalwart legs of his
+master. Far back stretches a prospect singularly unlike those rich-toned
+studies of sub-Alpine regions in which Titian as a rule revels. It has
+an august but more colourless beauty recalling the middle Apennines; one
+might almost say that it prefigures those prospects of inhospitable
+Sierra which, with their light, delicate tonality, so admirably relieve
+and support the portraits of Velazquez. All this is unusual, and still
+more so is the want of that aristocratic gravity, of that subordination
+of mere outward splendour to inborn dignity, which mark Titian's
+greatest portraits throughout his career. The splendid materials for the
+picture are not as absolutely digested, as absolutely welded into one
+consistent and harmonious whole, as with such authorship one would
+expect. But then, on the other hand, take the magnificent execution in
+the most important passages: the distinguished silvery tone obtained
+notwithstanding the complete red-and-gold costume and the portentous
+crimson helmet; the masterly brush-work in these last particulars, in
+the handsome virile head of the model and the delicate flesh of the
+_amorino_. The dog might without exaggeration be pronounced the best,
+the truest in movement, to be found in Venetian art--indeed, in art
+generally, until Velazquez appears. Herr Carl Justi's happy conjecture
+helps us, if we accept it, to get over some of these difficulties and
+seeming contradictions. The Duke of Atri belonged to a great Neapolitan
+family, exiled and living at the French court under royal countenance
+and protection. The portrait was painted to be sent back to France, to
+which, indeed, its whole subsequent history belongs. Under such
+circumstances the young nobleman would naturally desire to affirm his
+rank and pretensions as emphatically as might be; to outdo in splendour
+and _prestance_ all previous sitters to Titian; to record himself apt in
+war, in the chase, in love, and more choice in the fashion of his
+appointments than any of his compeers in France or Italy.
+
+An importance to which it is surely not entitled in the life-work of the
+master is given to the portrait of the Legate Beccadelli, executed in
+the month of July 1552, and included among the real and fancied
+masterpieces of the Tribuna in the Uffizi. To the writer it has always
+appeared the most nearly tiresome and perfunctory of Titian's more
+important works belonging to the same class. Perhaps the elaborate
+legend inscribed on the paper held by the prelate, including the unusual
+form of signature "Titianus Vecellius faciebat Venetiis MDLII, mense
+Julii," may have been the cause that the canvas has attracted an undue
+share of attention.[45] At p. 218 of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's second
+volume we get, under date the 11th of October 1552, Titian's first
+letter to Philip of Spain. There is mention in it of a _Queen of
+Persia_, which the artist does not expressly declare to be his own work,
+and of a _Landscape_ and _St. Margaret_ previously sent by Ambassador
+Vargas ("... il Paesaggio et il ritratto di Sta. Margarita mandatovi per
+avanti"). The comment of the biographers on this is that "for the first
+time in the annals of Italian painting we hear of a picture which claims
+to be nothing more than a landscape, etc." Remembering, however, that
+when in 1574, at the end of his life, our master sent in to Philip's
+secretary, Antonio Perez, a list of paintings delivered from time to
+time, but not paid for, he described the _Venere del Pardo_, or _Jupiter
+and Antiope_, as "La nuda con il paese con el satiro," would it not be
+fair to assume that the description _Il Paesaggio et il ritratto di Sta.
+Margarita_ means one and the same canvas--_The Figure of St. Margaret in
+a Landscape_? Thus should we be relieved from the duty of searching
+among the authentic works of the master of Cadore for a landscape pure
+and simple, and in the process stumbling across a number of spurious and
+doubtful things. The _St. Margaret_ is evidently the picture which,
+having been many years at the Escorial, now hangs in the Prado Gallery.
+Obscured and darkened though it is by the irreparable outrages of time,
+it may be taken as a very characteristic example of Titian's late but
+not latest manner in sacred art. In the most striking fashion does it
+exhibit that peculiar gloom and agitation of the artist face to face
+with religious subjects which at an earlier period would have left his
+serenity undisturbed. The saint, uncertain of her triumph, armed though
+she is with the Cross, flees in affright from the monster whose huge
+bulk looms, terrible even in overthrow, in the darkness of the
+foreground. To the impression of terror communicated by the whole
+conception the distance of the lurid landscape--a city in
+flames--contributes much.
+
+[Illustration: _Venus with the Mirror._ _Gallery of the Hermitage, St.
+Petersburg. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie._]
+
+In the spring and summer of 1554 were finished for Philip of Spain the
+_Danae_ of Madrid; for Mary, Queen of Hungary, a _Madonna Addolorata_;
+for Charles V. the _Trinity_, to which he had with Titian devoted so
+much anxious thought. The _Danae_ of the Prado, less grandiose, less
+careful in finish than the Naples picture, is painted with greater
+spontaneity and _elan_ than its predecessor, and vibrates with an
+undisguisedly fleshly passion. Is it to the taste of Philip or to a
+momentary touch of cynicism in Titian himself that we owe the deliberate
+dragging down of the conception until it becomes symbolical of the
+lowest and most venal form of love? In the Naples version Amor, a
+fairly-fashioned divinity of more or less classic aspect, presides; in
+the Madrid and subsequent interpretations of the legend, a grasping hag,
+the attendant of Danae, holds out a cloth, eager to catch her share of
+the golden rain. In the St. Petersburg version, which cannot be
+accounted more than an atelier piece, there is, with some slight yet
+appreciable variations, a substantial agreement with the Madrid picture.
+Of this Hermitage _Danae_ there is a replica in the collection of the
+Duke of Wellington at Apsley House. In yet another version (also a
+contemporary atelier piece), which is in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna,
+and has for that reason acquired a certain celebrity, the greedy duenna
+is depicted in full face, and holds aloft a chased metal dish.
+
+Satisfaction of a very different kind was afforded to Queen Mary of
+Hungary and Charles V. The lady obtained a _Christ appearing to the
+Magdalen_, which was for a long time preserved at the Escorial, where
+there is still to be found a bad copy of it. A mere fragment of the
+original, showing a head and bust of Christ holding a hoe in his left
+hand, has been preserved, and is now No. 489 in the gallery of the
+Prado. Even this does not convince the student that Titian's own brush
+had a predominant share in the performance. The letter to Charles V.,
+dated from Venice the 10th of September 1554, records the sending of a
+_Madonna Addolorata_ and the great _Trinity_. These, together with
+another _Virgen de los Dolores_ ostensibly by Titian, and the _Ecce
+Homo_ already mentioned, formed afterwards part of the small collection
+of devotional paintings taken by Charles to his monastic retreat at
+Yuste, and appropriated after his death by Philip. If the picture styled
+_La Dolorosa_, and now No. 468 in the gallery of the Prado, is indeed
+the one painted for the great monarch who was so sick in body and
+spirit, so fast declining to his end, the suspicion is aroused that the
+courtly Venetian must have acted with something less than fairness
+towards his great patron, since the _Addolorata_ cannot be acknowledged
+as his own work. Still less can we accept as his own that other _Virgen
+de los Dolores_, now No. 475 in the same gallery.
+
+[Illustration: Landscape drawing in pen and bistre by Titian.]
+
+It is very different with the _Trinity_, called in Spain _La Gloria_,
+and now No. 462 in the same gallery. Though the master must have been
+hampered by the express command that the Emperor should be portrayed as
+newly arisen from the grave and adoring the _Trinity_ in an agony of
+prayer, and with him the deceased Empress Isabel, Queen Mary of Hungary,
+and Prince Philip, also as suppliants, he succeeded in bringing forth
+not indeed a complete masterpiece, but a picture all aspiration and
+fervent prayer--just the work to satisfy the yearnings of the man who,
+once the mightiest, was then the loneliest and saddest of mortals on
+earth. The crown and climax of the whole is the group of the Trinity
+itself, awful in majesty, dazzling in the golden radiance of its
+environment, and, beautifully linking it with mortality, the blue-robed
+figure of the Virgin, who stands on a lower eminence of cloud as she
+intercedes for the human race, towards whom her pitying gaze is
+directed. It would be absurd to pretend that we have here a work
+entitled, in virtue of the perfect achievement of all that has been
+sought for, to rank with such earlier masterpieces as the _Assunta_ or
+the _St. Peter Martyr_. Yet it represents in one way sacred art of a
+higher, a more inspired order, and contains some pictorial
+beauties--such as the great central group--of which Titian would not in
+those earlier days have been equally capable.
+
+There is another descent, though not so marked a one as in the case of
+the _Danae_, with the _Venus and Adonis_ painted for Philip, the new
+King-Consort of England, and forwarded by the artist to London in the
+autumn of 1554. That the picture now in the _Sala de la Reina Isabel_
+at Madrid is this original is proved, in the first place, by the quality
+of the flesh-painting, the silvery shimmer, the vibration of the whole,
+the subordination of local colour to general tone, yet by no means to
+the point of extinction--all these being distinctive qualities of this
+late time. It is further proved by the fact that it still shows traces
+of the injury of which Philip complained when he received the picture in
+London. A long horizontal furrow is clearly to be seen running right
+across the canvas. Apart from the consideration that pupils no doubt had
+a hand in the work, it lacks, with all its decorative elegance and
+felicity of movement, the charm with which Titian, both much earlier in
+his career and later on towards the end, could invest such mythological
+subjects.[46] That the aim of the artist was not a very high one, or
+this _poesia_ very near to his heart, is demonstrated by the amusingly
+material fashion in which he recommends it to his royal patron. He says
+that "if in the _Danae_ the forms were to be seen front-wise, here was
+occasion to look at them from a contrary direction--a pleasant variety
+for the ornament of a _Camerino_." Our worldly-wise painter evidently
+knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to
+captivate Philip. It cannot be alleged, all the same, that this purely
+sensuous mode of conception was not perfectly in consonance with his own
+temperament, with his own point of view, at this particular stage in his
+life and practice.
+
+The new Doge Francesco Venier had, upon his accession in 1554, called
+upon Titian to paint, besides his own portrait, the orthodox votive
+picture of his predecessor Marcantonio Trevisan, and this official
+performance was duly completed in January 1555, and hung in the Sala de'
+Pregadi. At the same time Venier determined that thus tardily the memory
+of a long--deceased Doge, Antonio Grimani, should be rehabilitated by
+the dedication to him of a similar but more dramatic and allusive
+composition. The commission for this piece also was given to Titian, who
+made good progress with it, yet for reasons unexplained never carried
+the important undertaking to completion. It remained in the workshop at
+the time of his death, and was completed--with what divergence from the
+original design we cannot authoritatively say--by assistants. Antonio
+Grimani, supported by members of his house, or officers attached to his
+person, kneels in adoration before an emblematic figure of Faith which
+appears in the clouds holding the cross and chalice, which winged
+child-angels help to support, and haloed round with an oval glory of
+cherubim--a conception, by the way, quite new and not at all orthodox.
+To the left appears a majestic figure of St. Mark, while the clouds upon
+which Faith is upborne, rise just sufficiently to show a very realistic
+prospect of Venice. There is not to be found in the whole life-work of
+Titian a clumsier or more disjointed composition as a whole, even making
+the necessary allowances for alterations, additions, and restorations.
+Though the figure of Faith is a sufficiently noble conception in itself,
+the group which it makes with the attendant angels is inexplicably heavy
+and awkward in arrangement; the flying _pulli_ have none of the
+audacious grace and buoyancy that Lotto or Correggio would have imparted
+to them, none of the rush of Tintoretto. The noble figure of St. Mark
+must be of Titian's designing, but is certainly not of his painting,
+while the corresponding figure on the other side is neither the one nor
+the other. Some consolation is afforded by the figure of the kneeling
+Doge himself, which is a masterpiece--not less in the happy expression
+of naive adoration than in the rendering, with matchless breadth and
+certainty of brush, of burnished armour in which is mirrored the glow of
+the Doge's magnificent state robes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_Portraits of Titian's daughter Lavinia--Death of Aretino--"Martyrdom of
+St. Lawrence"--Death of Charles V.--Attempted assassination of Orazio
+Vecellio--"Diana and Actaeon" and "Diana and Calisto"--The "Comoro
+Family"--The "Magdalen" of the Hermitage--The "Jupiter and Antiope" and
+"Rape of Europa"--Vasari defines Titian's latest manner--"St. Jerome" of
+the Brera--"Education of Cupid"--"Jacopo da Strada"--Impressionistic
+manner of the end--"Ecce Homo" of Munich--"Nymph and Shepherd" of
+Vienna--The unfinished "Pieta"--Death of Titian_.
+
+
+It was in the month of March 1555 that Titian married his only daughter
+Lavinia to Cornelio Sarcinelli of Serravalle, thus leaving the pleasant
+home at Biri Grande without a mistress; for his sister Orsa had been
+dead since 1549.[47] It may be convenient to treat here of the various
+portraits and more or less idealised portrait-pieces in which Titian has
+immortalised the thoroughly Venetian beauty of his daughter. First we
+have in the great _Ecce Homo_ of Vienna the graceful white-robed figure
+of a young girl of some fourteen years, placed, with the boy whom she
+guards, on the steps of Pilate's palace. Then there is the famous piece
+_Lavinia with a Dish of Fruit_, dating according to Morelli from about
+1549, and painted for the master's friend Argentina Pallavicino of
+Reggio. This last-named work passed in 1821 from the Solly Collection
+into the Berlin Gallery. Though its general aspect is splendidly
+decorative, though it is accounted one of the most popular of all
+Titian's works, the Berlin picture cannot be allowed to take the highest
+rank among his performances of the same class. Its fascinations are of
+the obvious and rather superficial kind, its execution is not equal in
+vigour, freedom, and accent to the best that the master did about the
+same time. It is pretty obvious here that only the head is adapted from
+that of Lavinia, the full-blown voluptuous form not being that of the
+youthful maiden, who could not moreover have worn this sumptuous and
+fanciful costume except in the studio. In the strongest contrast to the
+conscious allurement of this showpiece is the demure simplicity of mien
+in the avowed portrait _Lavinia as a Bride_ in the Dresden Gallery. In
+this last she wears a costume of warm white satin and a splendid
+necklace and earrings of pearls. Morelli has pointed out that the fan,
+in the form of a little flag which she holds, was only used in Venice by
+newly betrothed ladies; and this fixes the time of the portrait as 1555,
+the date of the marriage contract. The execution is beyond all
+comparison finer here, the colour more transparent in its warmth, than
+in the more celebrated Berlin piece. Quite eight or ten years later than
+this must date the _Salome_ of the Prado Gallery, which is in general
+design a variation of the _Lavinia_ of Berlin. The figure holding up--a
+grim substitute for the salver of fruit--the head of St. John on a
+charger has probably been painted without any fresh reference to the
+model. The writer is unable to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle when
+they affirm that this _Salome_ is certainly painted by one of the
+master's followers. The touch is assuredly Titian's own in the very late
+time, and the canvas, though much slighter and less deliberate in
+execution than its predecessors, is in some respects more spontaneous,
+more vibrant in touch. Second to none as a work of art--indeed more
+striking than any in the naive and fearless truth of the rendering--is
+the _Lavinia Sarcinelli as a Matron_ in the Dresden Gallery. Morelli
+surely exaggerates a little when he describes Lavinia here as a woman of
+forty. Though the demure, bright-eyed maiden has grown into a
+self-possessed Venetian dame of portentous dimensions, Sarcinelli's
+spouse is fresh still, and cannot be more than two-or three-and-thirty.
+This assumption, if accepted, would fix the time of origin of the
+picture at about 1565, and, reasoning from analogies of technique, this
+appears to be a more acceptable date than the year 1570-72, at which
+Morelli would place it.
+
+[Illustration: _Titian's Daughter Lavinia._]
+
+One of the most important chapters in our master's life closed with the
+death of Aretino, which took place suddenly on the 21st of October 1556.
+He had been sitting at table with friends far into the night or morning.
+One of them, describing to him a farcical incident of Rabelaisian
+quality, he threw himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter, and
+slipping on the polished floor, was thrown with great force on his head
+and killed almost instantaneously. This was indeed the violent and
+sudden death of the strong, licentious man; poetic justice could have
+devised no more fitting end to such a life.
+
+In the year 1558 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, for very sufficient reasons,
+place the _Martyrdom of St. Lawrence_, now preserved in the hideously
+over-ornate Church of the Jesuits at Venice. To the very remarkable
+analysis which they furnish of this work, the writer feels unable to add
+anything appreciable by way of comment, for the simple reason that
+though he has seen it many times, on no occasion has he been fortunate
+enough to obtain such a light as would enable him to judge the picture
+on its own merits as it now stands.[48] Of a design more studied in its
+rhythm, more akin to the Florentine and Roman schools, than anything
+that has appeared since the _St. Peter Martyr_, with a _mise-en-scene_
+more classical than anything else from Titian's hand that can be pointed
+to, the picture may be guessed, rather than seen, to be also a curious
+and subtle study of conflicting lights. On the one hand we have that of
+the gruesome martyrdom itself, and of a huge torch fastened to the
+carved shaft of a pedestal; on the other, that of an effulgence from the
+skies, celestial in brightness, shedding its consoling beams on the
+victim.
+
+The _Christ crowned with Thorns_, which long adorned the church of S.
+Maria delle Grazie at Milan, and is now in the Long Gallery of the
+Louvre, may belong to about this time, but is painted with a larger and
+more generous brush, with a more spontaneous energy, than the carefully
+studied piece at the Gesuiti. The tawny harmonies finely express in
+their calculated absence of freshness the scene of brutal and unholy
+violence so dramatically enacted before our eyes. The rendering of
+muscle, supple and strong under the living epidermis, the glow of the
+flesh, the dramatic momentariness of the whole, have not been surpassed
+even by Titian. Of the true elevation, of the spiritual dignity that the
+subject calls for, there is, however, little or nothing. The finely
+limbed Christ is as coarse in type and as violent in action as his
+executioners; sublimity is reached, strange to say, only in the bust of
+Tiberius, which crowns the rude archway through which the figures have
+issued into the open space. Titian is here the precursor of the
+_Naturalisti_--of Caravaggio and his school. Yet, all the same, how
+immeasurable is the distance between the two!
+
+[Illustration: _Christ crowned with Thorns. Louvre. From a Photograph by
+Neurdein_.]
+
+On the 21st of September 1558 died the imperial recluse of Yuste, once
+Charles V., and it is said his last looks were steadfastly directed
+towards that great canvas _The Trinity_, which to devise with Titian had
+been one of his greatest consolations at a moment when already earthly
+glories held him no more. Philip, on the news of his father's death,
+retired for some weeks to the monastery of Groenendale, and thence sent
+a despatch to the Governor of Milan, directing payment of all the
+arrears of the pensions "granted to Titian by Charles his father (now in
+glory)," adding by way of unusual favour a postscript in his own
+hand.[49] Orazio Vecellio, despatched by his father in the spring of
+1559 to Milan to receive the arrears of pension, accepted the
+hospitality of the sculptor Leone Leoni, who was then living in splendid
+style in a palace which he had built and adorned for himself in the
+Lombard city. He was the rival in art as well as the mortal enemy of
+Benvenuto Cellini, and as great a ruffian as he, though one less
+picturesque in blackguardism. One day early in June, when Orazio, having
+left Leoni's house, had returned to superintend the removal of certain
+property, he was set upon, and murderously assaulted by the perfidious
+host and his servants. The whole affair is wrapped in obscurity. It
+remains uncertain whether vengeance, or hunger after the arrears of
+Titian's pension, or both, were the motives which incited Leoni to
+attempt the crime. Titian's passionate reclamations, addressed
+immediately to Philip II., met with but partial success, since the
+sculptor, himself a great favourite with the court of Spain, was
+punished only with fine and banishment, and the affair was afterwards
+compromised by the payment of a sum of money.
+
+Titian's letter of September 22, 1559, to Philip II. announces the
+despatch of the companion pieces _Diana and Calisto_ and _Diana and
+Actaeon_, as well as of an _Entombment_ intended to replace a painting of
+the same subject which had been lost on the way. The two celebrated
+canvases,[50] now in the Bridgewater Gallery, are so familiar that they
+need no new description. Judging by the repetitions, reductions, and
+copies that exist in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna, the Prado Gallery,
+the Yarborough Collection, and elsewhere, these mythological _poesie_
+have captivated the world far more than the fresher and lovelier painted
+poems of the earlier time--the _Worship of Venus_, the _Bacchanal_, the
+_Bacchus and Ariadne_. At no previous period has Titian wielded the
+brush with greater _maestria_ and ease than here, or united a richer or
+more transparent glow with greater dignity of colour. About the
+compositions themselves, if we are to take them as the _poesie_ that
+Titian loved to call them, there is a certain want of significance,
+neither the divine nor the human note being struck with any depth or
+intensity of vibration. The glamour, the mystery, the intimate charm of
+the early pieces is lost, and there is felt, enwrapping the whole, that
+sultry atmosphere of untempered sensuousness which has already, upon
+more than one occasion, been commented upon. That this should be so is
+only natural when creative power is not extinguished by old age, but is
+on the contrary coloured with its passion, so different in quality from
+that of youth.
+
+The _Entombment_, which went to Madrid with the mythological pieces just
+now discussed, serves to show how vivid was Titian's imagination at this
+point, when he touched upon a sacred theme, and how little dependent he
+was in this field on the conceptions of his earlier prime. A more living
+passion informs the scene, a more intimate sympathy colours it, than we
+find in the noble _Entombment_ of the Louvre, much as the picture which
+preceded it by so many years excels the Madrid example in fineness of
+balance, in dignity, in splendour and charm of colour. Here the
+personages are set free by the master from all academic trammels, and
+express themselves with a greater spontaneity in grief. The colour, too,
+of which the general scheme is far less attractive to the eye than in
+the Louvre picture, blazes forth in one note of lurid splendour in the
+red robe of the saint who supports the feet of the dead Christ.
+
+In this same year Titian painted on the ceiling of the ante-chamber to
+Sansovino's great Library in the Piazzetta the allegorical figure
+_Wisdom_, thus entering into direct competition with young Paolo
+Veronese, Schiavone, and the other painters who, striving in friendly
+rivalry, had been engaged a short time before on the ceiling of the
+great hall in the same building. This noble design contains a pronounced
+reminiscence of Raphael's incomparable allegorical figures in the Camera
+della Segnatura, but excels them as much in decorative splendour and
+facile breadth of execution as it falls behind them in sublimity of
+inspiration.
+
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle are probably right in assigning the great
+_Cornaro Family_ in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland to the
+year 1560 or thereabouts. Little seen of late years, and like most
+Venetian pictures of the sixteenth century shorn of some of its glory by
+time and the restorer, this family picture appears to the writer to rank
+among Titian's masterpieces in the domain of portraiture, and to be
+indeed the finest portrait-group of this special type that Venice has
+produced. In the simplicity and fervour of the conception Titian rises
+to heights which he did not reach in the _Madonna di Casa Pesaro_, where
+he is hampered by the necessity for combining a votive picture with a
+series of avowed portraits. It is pretty clear that this _Cornaro_
+picture, like the Pesaro altar-piece, must have been commissioned to
+commemorate a victory or important political event in the annals of the
+illustrious family. Search among their archives and papers, if they
+still exist, might throw light upon this point, and fix more accurately
+the date of the magnificent work. In the open air--it may be outside
+some great Venetian church--an altar has been erected, and upon it is
+placed a crucifix, on either side of which are church candles, blown
+this way and the other by the wind. Three generations of patricians
+kneel in prayer and thanksgiving, taking precedence according to age,
+six handsome boys, arranged in groups of three on either side of the
+canvas, furnishing an element of great pictorial attractiveness but no
+vital significance. The act of worship acquires here more reality and a
+profounder meaning than it can have in those vast altar-pieces in which
+the divine favour is symbolised by the actual presence of the Madonna
+and Child. An open-air effect has been deliberately aimed at and
+attained, the splendid series of portraits being relieved against the
+cloud-flecked blue sky with a less sculptural plasticity than the master
+would have given to them in an indoor scheme. This is another admirable
+example of the dignity and reserve which Titian combines with sumptuous
+colour at this stage of his practice. His mastery is not less but
+greater, subtler, than that of his more showy and brilliant
+contemporaries of the younger generation; the result is something that
+appears as if it must inevitably have been so and not otherwise. The
+central figure of the patriarch is robed in deep crimson with grayish
+fur, rather black in shadow; the man in the prime of manhood wears a
+more positive crimson, trimmed with tawnier fur, browner in shadow; a
+lighter sheen is on the brocaded mantle of yet another shade of crimson
+worn by the most youthful of the three patricians. Just the stimulating
+note to break up a harmony which might otherwise have been of a richness
+too cloying is furnished--in the master's own peculiar way--by the
+scarlet stockings of one boy in the right hand group, by the cinnamon
+sleeve of another.[51]
+
+[Illustration: The Cornaro Family. In the Collection of the Duke of
+Northumberland.]
+
+To the year 1561 belongs, according to the elaborate inscription on the
+picture, the magnificent _Portrait of a Man_ which is No. 172 in the
+Dresden Gallery. It presents a Venetian gentleman in his usual habit,
+but bearing a palm branch such as we associate with saints who have
+endured martyrdom. Strangely sombre and melancholy in its very reserve
+is this sensitive face, and the tone of the landscape echoes the
+pathetic note of disquiet. The canvas bears the signature "Titianus
+Pictor et Aeques (sic) Caesaris." There group very well with this
+Dresden picture, though the writer will not venture to assert positively
+that they belong to exactly the same period, the _St. Dominic_ of the
+Borghese Gallery and the _Knight of Malta_ of the Prado Gallery. In all
+three--in the two secular portraits as in the sacred piece which is also
+a portrait--the expression given, and doubtless intended, is that of a
+man who has withdrawn himself in his time of fullest physical vigour
+from the pomps and vanities of the world, and sadly concentrates his
+thoughts on matters of higher import.
+
+On the 1st of December 1561 Titian wrote to the king to announce the
+despatch of a _Magdalen_, which had already been mentioned more than
+once in the correspondence. According to Vasari and subsequent
+authorities, Silvio Badoer, a Venetian patrician, saw the masterpiece on
+the painter's easel, and took it away for a hundred scudi, leaving the
+master to paint another for Philip. This last has disappeared, while the
+canvas which remained in Venice cannot be identified with any
+certainty. The finest extant example of this type of _Magdalen_ is
+undoubtedly that which from Titian's ne'er-do-well son, Pompinio, passed
+to the Barbarigo family, and ultimately, with the group of Titians
+forming part of the Barbarigo collection, found its way into the
+Imperial Gallery of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. This answers in
+every respect to Vasari's eloquent description of the _magna peccatrix_,
+lovely still in her penitence. It is an embodiment of the favourite
+subject, infinitely finer and more moving than the much earlier
+_Magdalen_ of the Pitti, in which the artist's sole preoccupation has
+been the alluring portraiture of exuberant feminine charms. This later
+_Magdalen_, as Vasari says, "ancorche che sia bellissima, non muove a
+lascivia, ma a commiserazione," and the contrary might, without
+exaggeration, be said of the Pitti picture.[52] Another of the Barbarigo
+heirlooms which so passed into the Hermitage is the ever-popular _Venus
+with the Mirror_, the original of many repetitions and variations. Here,
+while one winged love holds the mirror, the other proffers a crown of
+flowers, not to the goddess, but to the fairest of women. The rich
+mantle of Venetian fashion, the jewels, the coiffure, all show that an
+idealised portrait of some lovely Cytherean of Venice, and no true
+mythological piece, has been intended.
+
+At this date, or thereabouts, is very generally placed, with the _Rape
+of Europa_ presently to be discussed, the _Jupiter and Antiope_ of the
+Louvre, more popularly known as the _Venere del Pardo_.[53] Seeing that
+the picture is included in the list[54] sent by Titian to Antonio Perez
+in 1574, setting forth the titles of canvases delivered during the last
+twenty-five years, and then still unpaid for, it may well have been
+completed somewhere about the time at which we have arrived. To the
+writer it appears nevertheless that it is in essentials the work of an
+earlier period, taken up and finished thus late in the day for the
+delectation of the Spanish king. Seeing that the _Venere del Pardo_ has
+gone through two fires--those of the Pardo and the Louvre--besides
+cleanings, restorations, and repaintings, even more disfiguring, it
+would be very unsafe to lay undue stress on technique alone. Yet compare
+the close, sculptural modelling in the figure of Antiope with the
+broader, looser handling in the figure of Europa; compare the two
+landscapes, which are even more divergent in style. The glorious sylvan
+prospect, which adds so much freshness and beauty to the _Venere del
+Pardo_, is conspicuously earlier in manner than, for instance, the
+backgrounds to the _Diana and Actaeon_ and _Diana and Calisto_ of
+Bridgewater House. The captivating work is not without its faults, chief
+among which is the curious awkwardness of design which makes of the
+composition, cut in two by a central tree, two pictures instead of one.
+Undeniably, too, there is a certain meanness and triviality in the
+little nymph or mortal of the foreground, which may, however, be due to
+the intervention of an assistant. But then, with an elasticity truly
+astounding in a man of his great age, the master has momentarily
+regained the poetry of his youthful prime, and with it a measure of that
+Giorgionesque fragrance which was evaporating already at the close of
+the early time, when the _Bacchanals_ were brought forth. The Antiope
+herself far transcends in the sovereign charm of her beauty--divine in
+the truer sense of the word--all Titian's Venuses, save the one in the
+_Sacred and Profane Love_. The figure comes in some ways nearer even in
+design, and infinitely nearer in feeling, to Giorgione's _Venus_ at
+Dresden than does the _Venus of Urbino_ in the Tribuna, which was
+closely modelled upon it. And the aged Titian had gone back even a step
+farther than Giorgione; the group of Antiope with Jupiter in the guise
+of a Satyr is clearly a reminiscence of a _Nymph surprised by a
+Satyr_--one of the engravings in the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ first
+published in 1499, but republished with the same illustrations in
+1545.[55]
+
+[Illustration: _The Rape of Europa. From the Engraving by J.Z.
+Delignon_.]
+
+According to the correspondence published by Crowe and Cavalcaselle
+there were completed for the Spanish King in April 1562 the _Poesy of
+Europa carried by the Bull_, and the _Christ praying in the Garden_,
+while a _Virgin and Child_ was announced as in progress.
+
+These paintings, widely divergent as they are in subject, answer very
+well to each other in technical execution, while in both they differ
+very materially from the _Venere del Pardo_. The _Rape of Europa_, which
+has retained very much of its blond brilliancy and charm of colour,
+affords convincing proof of the unrivalled power with which Titian still
+wielded the brush at this stage which precedes that of his very last and
+most impressionistic style. For decorative effect, for "go," for
+frankness and breadth of execution, it could not be surpassed. Yet
+hardly elsewhere has the great master approached so near to positive
+vulgarity as here in the conception of the fair Europa as a strapping
+wench who, with ample limbs outstretched, complacently allows herself to
+be carried off by the Bull, making her appeal for succour merely _pour
+la forme_. What gulfs divide this conception from that of the Antiope,
+from Titian's earlier renderings of female loveliness, from Giorgione's
+supreme Venus![56]
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Titian, by himself. Gallery of the Prado,
+Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie_.]
+
+The _Agony in the Garden_, which is still to be found in one of the
+halls of the Escorial, even now in its faded state serves to evidence
+the intensity of religious fervour which possessed Titian when, so late
+in life, he successfully strove to renew the sacred subjects. If the
+composition--as Crowe and Cavalcaselle assert--does more or less
+resemble that of the famous _Agony_ by Correggio now at Apsley House,
+nothing could differ more absolutely from the Parmese master's amiable
+virtuosity than the aged Titian's deep conviction.[57]
+
+To the year 1562 belongs the nearly profile portrait of the artist,
+painted by himself with a subtler refinement and a truer revelation of
+self than is to be found in those earlier canvases of Berlin and the
+Uffizi in which his late prime still shows as a green and vigorous
+manhood. This is now in the _Sala de la Reina Isabel_ of the Prado. The
+pale noble head, refined by old age to a solemn beauty, is that of one
+brought face to face with the world beyond; it is the face of the man
+who could conceive and paint the sacred pieces of the end, the _Ecce
+Homo_ of Munich and the last _Pieta_, with an awe such as we here read
+in his eyes. Much less easy is it to connect this likeness with the
+artist who went on concurrently producing his Venuses, mythological
+pieces, and pastorals, and joying as much as ever in their production.
+
+Vasari, who, as will be seen, visited Venice in 1566, when he was
+preparing that new and enlarged edition of the _Lives_ which was to
+appear in 1568, had then an opportunity of renewing his friendly
+acquaintance with the splendid old man whom he had last seen, already
+well stricken in years, twenty-one years before in Rome. It must have
+been at this stage that he formed the judgment as to the latest manner
+of Titian which is so admirably expressed in his biography of the
+master. Speaking especially of the _Diana and Actaeon_, the _Rape of
+Europa_, and the _Deliverance of Andromeda_,[58] he delivers himself as
+follows:--"It is indeed true that his technical manner in these last is
+very different from that of his youth. The first works are, be it
+remembered, carried out with incredible delicacy and pains, so that they
+can be looked at both at close quarters and from afar. These last ones
+are done with broad coarse strokes and blots of colour, in such wise
+that they cannot be appreciated near at hand, but from afar look
+perfect. This style has been the cause that many, thinking therein to
+play the imitators and to make a display of practical skill, have
+produced clumsy, bad pictures. This is so, because, notwithstanding that
+to many it may seem that Titian's works are done without labour, this is
+not so in truth, and they who think so deceive themselves. It is, on the
+contrary, to be perceived that they are painted at many sittings, that
+they have been worked upon with the colours so many times as to make the
+labour evident; and this method of execution is judicious, beautiful,
+astonishing, because it makes the pictures seem living."
+
+No better proof could be given of Vasari's genuine _flair_ and intuition
+as a critic of art than this passage. We seem to hear, not the Tuscan
+painter bred to regard the style of Michelangelo as an article of faith,
+to imitate his sculptural smoothness of finish and that of Angelo
+Bronzino, but some intelligent exponent of impressionistic methods,
+defending both from attack and from superficial imitation one of the
+most advanced of modernists.
+
+Among the sacred works produced in this late time is a _Crucifixion_,
+still preserved in a damaged state in the church of S. Domenico at
+Ancona. To a period somewhat earlier than that at which we have arrived
+may belong the late _Madonna and Child in a Landscape_ which is No.
+1113 in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. The writer follows Giovanni
+Morelli in believing that this is a studio picture touched by the
+master, and that the splendidly toned evening landscape is all his. He
+cannot surely be made wholly responsible for the overgrown and inflated
+figure of the divine _Bambino_, so disproportionate, so entirely wanting
+in tenderness and charm.
+
+The power of vivid conception, the spontaneous fervour which mark
+Titian's latest efforts in the domain of sacred art, are very evident in
+the great _St. Jerome_ of the Brera here reproduced. Cima, Basaiti, and
+most of the Bellinesques had shown an especial affection for the
+subject, and it had been treated too by Lotto, by Giorgione, by Titian
+himself; but this is surely as noble and fervent a rendering as Venetian
+art in its prime has brought forth. Of extraordinary majesty and beauty
+is the landscape, with its mighty trees growing out of the abrupt
+mountain slope, close to the naked rock.
+
+In the autumn of 1564 we actually find the venerable master, then about
+eighty-seven years of age, taking a journey to Brescia in connection
+with an important commission given to him for the decoration of the
+great hall in the Palazzo Pubblico at Brescia, to which the Vicentine
+artist Righetto had supplied the ceiling, and Palladio had added columns
+and interior wall-decorations. The three great ceiling-pictures, which
+were afterwards, as a consequence of the contract then entered upon,
+executed by the master, or rather by his assistants, endured only until
+1575, when in the penultimate year of Titian's life they perished in a
+great fire.
+
+The correspondence shows that the vast _Last Supper_ painted for the
+Refectory of the Escorial, and still to be found there, was finished in
+October 1564, and that there was much haggling and finessing on the part
+of the artist before it was despatched to Spain, the object being to
+secure payment of the arrears of pension still withheld by the Milanese
+officials. When the huge work did arrive at the Escorial the monks
+perpetrated upon it one of those acts of vandalism of which Titian was
+in more than one instance the victim. Finding that the picture would not
+fit the particular wall of their refectory for which it had been
+destined, they ruthlessly cut it down, slicing off a large piece of the
+upper part, and throwing the composition out of balance by the
+mutilation of the architectural background.
+
+[Illustration: _St. Jerome in the Desert. Gallery of the Brera, Milan.
+From a Photograph by Anderson_.]
+
+Passing over the _Transfiguration_ on the high altar of San Salvatore
+at Venice, we come to the _Annunciation_ in the same church with the
+signature "Titianus fecit fecit," added by the master, if we are to
+credit the legend, in indignation that those who commissioned the canvas
+should have shown themselves dissatisfied even to the point of
+expressing incredulity as to his share in the performance. Some doubt
+has been cast upon this story, which may possibly have been evolved on
+the basis of the peculiar signature. It is at variance with Vasari's
+statement that Titian held the picture in slight esteem in comparison
+with his other works. It is not to be contested that for all the fine
+passages of colour and execution, the general tone is paler in its
+silveriness, less vibrant and effective on the whole, than in many of
+the masterpieces which have been mentioned in their turn. But the
+conception is a novel and magnificent one, contrasting instructively in
+its weightiness and majesty with the more naive and pathetic renderings
+of an earlier time.
+
+The _Education of Cupid_, popularly but erroneously known as _The Three
+Graces_[59] is one of the pearls of the Borghese Gallery. It is clearly
+built in essentials on the master's own _d'Avalos Allegory_, painted
+many years before. This later allegory shows Venus binding the eyes of
+Love ere he sallies forth into the world, while his bow and his quiver
+well-stocked with arrows are brought forward by two of the Graces. In
+its conception there is no great freshness or buoyancy, no pretence at
+invention. The aged magician of the brush has interested himself more in
+the execution than in the imagining of his picture. It is a fine and
+typical specimen of the painting _di macchia_, which Vasari has praised
+in a passage already quoted. A work such as this bears in technique much
+the same relation to the productions of Titian's first period that the
+great _Family Picture_ of Rembrandt at Brunswick does to his work done
+some thirty-five or forty years before. In both instances it is a
+life-time of legitimate practice that has permitted the old man to
+indulge without danger in an abridgment of labour, a synthetic
+presentment of fact, which means no abatement, but in some ways an
+enhancement of life, breadth, and pictorial effect. To much about the
+same time, judging from the handling and the types, belongs the curious
+allegory, _Religion succoured by Spain_--otherwise _La Fe_--now No. 476
+in the gallery of the Prado. This canvas, notwithstanding a marked
+superficiality of invention as well as of execution, is in essentials
+the master's own; moreover it can boast its own special decorative
+qualities, void though it is of any deep significance. The showy figure
+of Spain holding aloft in one hand a standard, and with the other
+supporting a shield emblazoned with the arms of the realm, recalls the
+similar creations of Paolo Veronese. Titian has rarely been less happily
+inspired than in the figure of Religion, represented as a naked female
+slave newly released from bondage.
+
+[Illustration: _The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese,
+Rome. From a Photograph by E. Alinari_.]
+
+When Vasari in 1566 paid the visit to Venice, of which a word has
+already been said, he noted, among a good many other things then in
+progress, the _Martyrdom of St. Lawrence_, based upon that now at the
+Gesuiti in Venice. This was despatched nearly two years later to the
+Escorial, where it still occupies its place on the high altar of the
+mighty church dedicated to St. Lawrence. The Brescian ceiling canvases
+appeared, too, in his list as unfinished. They were sent to their
+destination early in 1568, to be utterly destroyed, as has been told, by
+fire in 1575.
+
+The best proof we have that Titian's artistic power was in many respects
+at its highest in 1566, is afforded by the magnificent portrait of the
+Mantuan painter and antiquary Jacopo da Strada, now in the Imperial
+Gallery at Vienna. It bears, besides the usual late signature of the
+master, the description of the personage with all his styles and titles,
+and the date MDLXVI. The execution is again _di macchia_, but
+magnificent in vitality, as in impressiveness of general effect, swift
+but not hasty or superficial. The reserve and dignity of former male
+portraits is exchanged for a more febrile vivacity, akin to that which
+Lotto had in so many of his finest works displayed. His peculiar style
+is further recalled in the rather abrupt inclination of the figure and
+the parallel position of the statuette which it holds. But none other
+than Titian himself could have painted the superb head, which he himself
+has hardly surpassed.
+
+It is curious and instructive to find the artist, in a letter addressed
+to Philip on the 2nd of December 1567, announcing the despatch,
+together with the just now described altar-piece, _The Martyrdom of St.
+Lawrence_, of "una pittura d'una Venere ignuda"--the painting of a nude
+Venus. Thus is the peculiar double current of the aged painter's genius
+maintained by the demand for both classes of work. He well knows that to
+the Most Catholic Majesty very secular pieces indeed will be not less
+acceptable than those much-desired sacred works in which now Titian's
+power of invention is greatest.
+
+[Illustration: _Religion succoured by Spain. Gallery of the Prado,
+Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie_.]
+
+Our master, in his dealings with the Brescians, after the completion of
+the extensive decorations for the Palazzo Pubblico, was to have proof
+that Italian citizens were better judges of art than the King of Spain,
+and more grudging if prompter paymasters. They declared, not without
+some foundation in fact, that the canvases were not really from the hand
+of Titian, and refused to pay more than one thousand ducats for them.
+The negotiation was conducted--as were most others at that time--by the
+trusty Orazio, who after much show of indignation was compelled at last
+to accept the proffered payment.
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of the Antiquary Jacopo da Strada. Imperial
+Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Loewy_.]
+
+[Illustration: _Madonna and Child. Collection of Mr. Ludwig Mond_.]
+
+The great victory of Lepanto, gained by the united fleets of Spain and
+Venice over the Turk on the 7th of October 1571, gave fitting occasion
+for one of Paolo Veronese's most radiant masterpieces, the celebrated
+votive picture of the Sala del Collegio, for Tintoretto's _Battle of
+Lepanto_, but also for one of Titian's feeblest works, the allegory
+_Philip II. offering to Heaven his Son, the Infant Don Ferdinand_, now
+No. 470 in the gallery of the Prado. That Sanchez Coello, under special
+directions from the king, prepared the sketch which was to serve as the
+basis for the definitive picture may well have hampered and annoyed the
+aged master. Still this is but an insufficient excuse for the
+absurdities of the design, culminating in the figure of the descending
+angel, who is represented in one of those strained, over-bold attitudes,
+in which Titian, even at his best, never achieved complete success. That
+he was not, all the same, a stranger to the work, is proved by some
+flashes of splendid colour, some fine passages of execution.
+
+In the four pieces now to be shortly described, the very latest and most
+impressionistic form of Titian's method as a painter is to be observed;
+all of them are in the highest degree characteristic of this ultimate
+phase. In the beautiful _Madonna and Child_ here reproduced,[60] the
+hand, though it no longer works with all trenchant vigour of earlier
+times, produces a magical effect by means of unerring science and a
+certainty of touch justifying such economy of mere labour as is by the
+system of execution suggested to the eye. And then this pathetic motive,
+the simple realism, the unconventional treatment of which are
+spiritualised by infinite tenderness, is a new thing in Venetian, nay in
+Italian art. Precisely similar in execution, and equally restrained in
+the scheme of colour adopted, is the _Christ crowned with Thorns_ of the
+Alte Pinakothek at Munich, a reproduction with important variations of
+the better-known picture in the Long Gallery of the Louvre. Less
+demonstratively and obviously dramatic than its predecessor, the Munich
+example is, as a realisation of the scene, far truer and more profound
+in pathos. Nobler beyond compare in His unresisting acceptance of insult
+and suffering is the Munich Christ than the corresponding figure, so
+violent in its instinctive recoil from pain, of the Louvre picture.
+
+[Illustration: _Christ crowned with Thorns. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
+From a Photograph by F. Hanfstaengl_.]
+
+It is nothing short of startling at the very end of Titian's career to
+meet with a work which, expressed in this masterly late technique of
+his, vies in freshness of inspiration with the finest of his early
+_poesie_. This is the _Nymph and Shepherd_[61] of the Imperial Gallery
+at Vienna, a picture which the world had forgotten until it was added,
+or rather restored, to the State collection on its transference from the
+Belvedere to the gorgeous palace which it now occupies. In its almost
+monochromatic harmony of embrowned silver the canvas embodies more
+absolutely than any other, save perhaps the final _Pieta_, the ideal of
+tone-harmony towards which the master in his late time had been steadily
+tending. Richness and brilliancy of local colour are subordinated, and
+this time up to the point of effacement, to this luminous monotone, so
+mysteriously effective in the hands of a master such as Titian. In the
+solemn twilight which descends from the heavens, just faintly flushed
+with rose, an amorous shepherd, flower-crowned, pipes to a nude nymph,
+who, half-won by the appealing strain, turns her head as she lies
+luxuriously extended on a wild beast's hide, covering the grassy knoll;
+in the distance a strayed goat browses on the leafage of a projecting
+branch. It may not be concealed that a note of ardent sensuousness still
+makes itself felt, as it does in most of the later pieces of the same
+class. But here, transfigured by a freshness of poetic inspiration
+hardly to be traced in the master's work in pieces of this order, since
+those early Giorgionesque days when the sixteenth century was in its
+youth, it offends no more than does an idyll of Theocritus. Since the
+_Three Ages_ of Bridgewater House, divided from the _Nymph and Shepherd_
+by nearly seventy years of life and labour, Titian had produced nothing
+which, apart from the question of technical execution, might so nearly
+be paralleled with that exquisite pastoral. The early _poesia_ gives,
+wrapped in clear even daylight, the perfect moment of trusting,
+satisfied love; the late one, with less purity, but, strange to say,
+with a higher passion, renders, beautified by an evening light more
+solemn and suggestive, the divine ardours fanned by solitude and
+opportunity.
+
+And now we come to the _Pieta_,[62] which so nobly and appropriately
+closes a career unexampled for duration and sustained achievement.
+Titian had bargained with the Franciscan monks of the Frari, which
+contained already the _Assunta_ and the _Madonna di Casa Pesaro_, for a
+grave in the Cappella del Crocifisso, offering in payment a _Pieta_, and
+this offer had been accepted. But some misunderstanding and consequent
+quarrel having been the ultimate outcome of the proposed arrangements,
+he left his great canvas unfinished, and willed that his body should be
+taken to Cadore, and there buried in the chapel of the Vecelli.
+
+[Illustration: _Pieta. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle
+Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by E. Alinari._]
+
+The well-known inscription on the base of the monumental niche which
+occupies the centre of the _Pieta_, "Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit,
+Palma reverenter absolvit, Deoque dicavit opus," records how what Titian
+had left undone was completed as reverently as might be by Palma
+Giovine. At this stage--the question being much complicated by
+subsequent restorations--the effort to draw the line accurately between
+the work of the master on one hand and that of his able and pious
+assistant on the other, would be unprofitable. Let us rather strive to
+appreciate what is left of a creation unique in the life-work of Titian,
+and in some ways his most sublime invention. Genius alone could have
+triumphed over the heterogeneous and fantastic surroundings in which he
+has chosen to enframe his great central group. And yet even these--the
+great rusticated niche with the gold mosaic of the pelican feeding its
+young, the statues of Moses on one side and of the Hellespontic Sibyl on
+the other--but serve to heighten the awe of the spectator. The
+artificial light is obtained in part from a row of crystal lamps on the
+cornice of the niche, in part, too, from the torch borne by the
+beautiful boy-angel who hovers in mid-air, yet another focus of
+illumination being the body of the dead Christ. This system of lighting
+furnishes just the luminous half-gloom, the deeply significant
+chiaroscuro, that the painter requires in order to give the most
+poignant effect to his last and most thrilling conception of the world's
+tragedy. As is often the case with Tintoretto, but more seldom with
+Titian, the eloquent passion breathed forth in this _Pieta_ is not to be
+accounted for by any element or elements of the composition taken
+separately; it depends to so great an extent on the poetic
+suggestiveness of the illumination, on the strange and indefinable power
+of evocation that the aged master here exceptionally commands.
+
+Wonderfully does the terrible figure of the Magdalen contrast in its
+excess of passion with the sculptural repose, the permanence of the main
+group. As she starts forward, almost menacing in her grief, her loud and
+bitter cry seems to ring through space, accusing all mankind of its
+great crime. It is with a conviction far more intense than has ever
+possessed him in his prime, with an awe nearly akin to terror, that
+Titian, himself trembling on the verge of eternity, and painting, too,
+that which shall purchase his own grave, has produced this profoundly
+moving work. No more fitting end and crown to the great achievements of
+the master's old age could well be imagined.
+
+There is no temptation to dwell unnecessarily upon the short period of
+horror and calamity with which this glorious life came to an end. If
+Titian had died a year earlier, his biographer might still have wound
+up with those beautiful words of Vasari's peroration: "E stato Tiziano
+sanissimo et fortunate quant' alcun altro suo pari sia stato ancor mai;
+e non ha mai avuto dai cieli se non favori e felicita." Too true it is,
+alas, that no man's life may be counted happy until its close! Now comes
+upon the great city this all-enveloping horror of the plague, beginning
+in 1575, but in 1576 attaining to such vast proportions as to sweep away
+more than a quarter of the whole population of 190,000 inhabitants. On
+the 17th of August, 1576, old Titian is attacked and swept
+away--surprised, as one would like to believe, while still at work on
+his _Pieta_. Even at such a moment, when panic reigns supreme, and the
+most honoured, the most dearly beloved are left untended, he is not to
+be hurried into an unmarked grave. Notwithstanding the sanitary law
+which forbids the burial of one who has succumbed to the plague in any
+of the city churches, he receives the supreme and at this awful moment
+unique honour of solemn obsequies. The body is taken with all due
+observance to the great church of the Frari, and there interred in the
+Cappella del Crocifisso, which Titian has already, before the quarrel
+with the Franciscans, designated as his final resting-place. He is
+spared the grief of knowing that the favourite son, Orazio, for whom all
+these years he has laboured and schemed, is to follow him immediately,
+dying also of the plague, and not even at Biri Grande, but in the
+Lazzaretto Vecchio, near the Lido; that the incorrigible Pomponio is to
+succeed and enjoy the inheritance after his own unworthy fashion. He is
+spared the knowledge of the great calamity of 1577, the destruction by
+fire of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, and with it, of the _Battle of
+Cadore_, and most of the noble work done officially for the Doges and
+the Signoria. One would like to think that this catastrophe of the end
+must have come suddenly upon the venerable master like a hideous dream,
+appearing to him, as death often does to those upon whom it descends,
+less significant than it does to us who read. Instead of remaining fixed
+in sad contemplation of this short final moment when the radiant orb
+goes suddenly down below the horizon in storm and cloud, let us keep
+steadily in view the light as, serene in its far-reaching radiance, it
+illuminated the world for eighty splendid years. Let us think of Titian
+as the greatest painter, if not the greatest genius in art, that the
+world has produced; as, what Vasari with such conviction described him
+to be, "the man as highly favoured by fortune as any of his kind had
+ever been before him."[63]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: "The Earlier Work of Titian," _Portfolio_, October 1897.]
+
+[Footnote 2: According to the catalogue of 1892, this picture was
+formerly in the sacristy of the Escorial in Spain. It can only be by an
+oversight that it is therein described as "possibly painted there,"
+since Titian never was in Spain.]
+
+[Footnote 3: It is especially to be noted that there is not a trace of
+red in the picture, save for the modest crimson waistband of the St.
+Catherine. Contrary to almost universal usage, it might almost be said
+to orthodoxy, the entire draperies of the Virgin are of one intense
+blue. Her veil-like head-gear is of a brownish gray, while the St.
+Catherine wears a golden-brown scarf, continuing the glories of her
+elaborately dressed hair. The audacity of the colour-scheme is only
+equalled by its success; no calculated effort at anything unusual being
+apparent. The beautiful naked _putto_ who appears in the sky, arresting
+the progress of the shepherds, is too trivial in conception for the
+occasion. A similar incident is depicted in the background of the much
+earlier _Holy Family_, No. 4. at the National Gallery, but there the
+messenger angel is more appropriately and more reverently depicted as
+full-grown and in flowing garments.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i. pp. 396, 397; _Tizian_, von
+H. Knackfuss, p. 55.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Appendix to vol. i. p. 448.]
+
+[Footnote 6: No. 1288 in the Long Gallery of the Louvre.]
+
+[Footnote 7: See the canvas No. 163 in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna.
+The want of life and of a definite personal character makes it almost
+repellent, notwithstanding the breadth and easy mastery of the
+technique. Rubens's copy of a lost or unidentified Titian, No. 845 in
+the same gallery, shows that he painted Isabella from life in mature
+middle age, and with a truthfulness omitting no sign of over-ripeness.
+This portrait may very possibly have been done in 1522, when Titian
+appeared at the court of the Gonzagas. Its realism, even allowing for
+Rubens's unconscious exaggeration, might well have deterred the Gonzaga
+princess from being limned from life some twelve years later still.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i., Appendix, p. 451.]
+
+[Footnote 9: The idea of painting St. Jerome by moonlight was not a new
+one. In the house at Venice of Andrea Odoni, the dilettante whose famous
+portrait by Lotto is at Hampton Court, the Anonimo (Marcantonio Michiel)
+saw, in 1532, "St. Jerome seated naked in a desert landscape by
+moonlight, by ---- (sic), copied from a canvas by Zorzi da Castelfranco
+(Giorgione)."]
+
+[Footnote 10: See "The Picture Gallery of Charles I.," _The Portfolio_,
+January 1896, pp. 49 and 99.]
+
+[Footnote 11: The somewhat similar _Allegories_ No. 173 and No. 187 in
+the Imperial Gallery at Vienna (New Catalogue, 1895), both classed as by
+Titian, cannot take rank as more than atelier works. Still farther from
+the master is the _Initiation of a Bacchante_, No. 1116 (Cat. 1891), in
+the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. This is a piece too cold and hard, too
+opaque, to have come even from his studio. It is a _pasticcio_ made up
+in a curiously mechanical way, from the Louvre _Allegory_ and the quite
+late _Education of Cupid_ in the Borghese Gallery; the latter
+composition having been manifestly based by Titian himself, according to
+what became something like a custom in old age, upon the earlier
+_Allegory_.]
+
+[Footnote 12: A rather tiresome and lifeless portrait of Ippolito is
+that to be found in the picture No. 20 in the National Gallery, in which
+it has been assumed that his companion is his favourite painter,
+Sebastiano del Piombo, to whom the picture is, not without some
+misgivings, attributed.]
+
+[Footnote 13: It has been photographed under this name by Anderson of
+Rome.]
+
+[Footnote 14: In much the same position, since it hardly enjoys the
+celebrity to which it is entitled, is another masterpiece of portraiture
+from the brush of Titian, which, as belonging to his earlier middle
+time, should more properly have been mentioned in the first section of
+this monograph. This is the great _Portrait of a Man in Black_, No. 1591
+in the Louvre. It shows a man of some forty years, of simple mien yet of
+indefinably tragic aspect; he wears moderately long hair, is clothed
+entirely in black, and rests his right hand on his hip, while passing
+the left through his belt. The dimensions of the canvas are more
+imposing than those of the _Jeune Homme au Gant_. No example in the
+Louvre, even though it competes with Madrid for the honour of possessing
+the greatest Titians in the world, is of finer quality than this
+picture. Near this--No. 1592 in the same great gallery--hangs another
+_Portrait of a Man in Black_ by Titian, and belonging to his middle
+time. The personage presented, though of high breeding, is cynical and
+repellent of aspect. The strong right hand rests quietly yet menacingly
+on a poniard, this attitude serving to give a peculiarly aggressive
+character to the whole conception. In the present state of this fine and
+striking picture the yellowness and want of transparency of the
+flesh-tones, both in the head and hands, gives rise to certain doubts as
+to the correctness of the ascription. Yet this peculiarity may well
+arise from injury; it would at any rate be hazardous to put forward any
+other name than that of Titian, to whom we must be content to leave the
+portrait.]
+
+[Footnote 15: This is the exceedingly mannered yet all the same rich and
+beautiful _St. Catherine, St. Roch, with a boy angel, and St.
+Sebastian_.]
+
+[Footnote 16: See Giorgione's _Adrastus and Hypsipyle (Landscape with
+the Soldier and the Gipsy)_ of the Giovanelli Palace, the _Venus_ of
+Dresden, the _Concert Champetre_ of the Louvre.]
+
+[Footnote 17: It is unnecessary in this connection to speak of the
+Darmstadt _Venus_ invented by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and to which as a
+type they so constantly refer. Giovanni Morelli has demonstrated with
+very general acceptance that this is only a late adaptation of the
+exquisite _Venus_ of Dresden, which it is his greatest glory to have
+restored to Barbarelli and to the world.]
+
+[Footnote 18: _Die Galerien zu Muenchen und Dresden von Ivan Lermolieff_,
+p. 290.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Palma Vecchio, in his presentments of ripe Venetian
+beauty, was, we have seen, much more literal than Giorgione, more
+literal, too, less the poet-painter, than the young Titian. Yet in the
+great _Venus_ of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge--not, indeed, in that
+of Dresden--his ideal is a higher one than Titian's in such pieces as
+the _Venus of Urbino_ and the later _Venus_, its companion, in the
+Tribuna. The two Bonifazi of Verona followed Palma, giving, however, to
+the loveliness of their women not, indeed, a more exalted character, but
+a less pronounced sensuousness--an added refinement but a weaker
+personality. Paris Bordone took the note from Titian, but being less a
+great artist than a fine painter, descended a step lower in the scale.
+Paolo Veronese unaffectedly joys in the beauty of woman, in the sheen of
+fair flesh, without any under-current of deeper meaning. Tintoretto,
+though like his brother Venetians he delights in the rendering of the
+human form unveiled, is but little disquieted by the fascinating problem
+which now occupies us. He is by nature strangely spiritual, though he is
+far from indulging in any false idealisation, though he shrinks not at
+all from the statement of the truth as it presents itself to him. Let
+his famous pictures in the Anticollegio of the Doges' Palace, his
+_Muses_ at Hampton Court, and above all that unique painted poem, _The
+Rescue_, in the Dresden Gallery, serve to support this view of his art.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Life of Titian_, vol. i. p. 420.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Two of these have survived in the _Roman Emperor on
+Horseback_, No. 257, and the similarly named picture, No. 290, at
+Hampton Court Palace. These panels were among the Mantua pieces
+purchased for Charles I. by Daniel Nys from Duke Vincenzo in 1628-29. If
+the Hampton Court pieces are indeed, as there appears no valid reason to
+doubt, two of the canvases mentioned by Vasari, we must assume that
+though they bore Giulio's name as _chef d'atelier_, he did little work
+on them himself. In the Mantuan catalogue contained in d'Arco's
+_Notizie_ they were entered thus:--"Dieci altri quadri, dipintovi un
+imperatore per quadro a cavallo--opera di mano di Giulio Romano" (see
+_The Royal Gallery of Hampton Court_, by Ernest Law, 1898).]
+
+[Footnote 22: The late Charles Yriarte in a recent article, "Sabionneta
+la petite Athenes," published in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, March
+1898, states that Bernardino Campi of Cremona, Giulio's subordinate at
+the moment, painted the Twelfth _Caesar_, but adduces no evidence in
+support of this departure from the usual assumption.]
+
+[Footnote 23: See "The Picture Gallery of Charles I.," _The Portfolio_,
+October 1897, pp. 98, 99.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Nos. 529-540--Catalogue of 1891--Provincial Museum of
+Hanover. The dimensions are 0.19 _c._ by 0.15 _c._]
+
+[Footnote 25: Of all Pordenone's exterior decorations executed in Venice
+nothing now remains. His only works of importance in the Venetian
+capital are the altar-piece in S. Giovanni Elemosinario already
+mentioned; the _San Lorenzo Giustiniani_ altar-piece in the Accademia
+delle Belle Arti; the magnificent though in parts carelessly painted
+_Madonna del Carmelo_ in the same gallery; the vast _St. Martin and St.
+Christopher_ in the church of S. Rocco; the _Annunciation_ of S. Maria
+degli Angeli at Murano.]
+
+[Footnote 26: No. 108 in the Winter Exhibition at Burlington House in
+1896. By Franceschini is no doubt meant Paolo degli Franceschi, whose
+portrait Titian is known to have painted. He has been identified among
+the figures in the foreground of the _Presentation of the Virgin_.]
+
+[Footnote 27: See a very interesting article, "Vittore Carpaccio--La
+Scuola degli Albanesi," by Dr. Gustav Ludwig, in the _Archivio Storico
+dell' Arte_ for November-December 1897.]
+
+[Footnote 28: A gigantic canvas of this order is, or rather was, the
+famous _Storm_ of the Venetian Accademia, which has for many years past
+been dubitatively assigned to Giorgione. Vasari described it as by Palma
+Vecchio, stating that it was painted for the Scuola di S. Marco in the
+Piazza SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in rivalry with Gian Bellino(!) and
+Mansueti, and referring to it in great detail and with a more fervent
+enthusiasm than he accords to any other Venetian picture. To the writer,
+judging from the parts of the original which have survived, it has long
+appeared that this may indeed be after all the right attribution. The
+ascription to Giorgione is mainly based on the romantic character of the
+invention, which certainly does not answer to anything that we know from
+the hand or brain of Palma. But then the learned men who helped
+Giorgione and Titian may well have helped him; and the structure of the
+thick-set figures in the foreground is absolutely his, as is also the
+sunset light on the horizon.]
+
+[Footnote 29: This is an arrangement analogous to that with the aid of
+which Tintoretto later on, in the _Crucifixion_ of San Cassiano at
+Venice, attains to so sublime an effect. There the spears--not
+brandished but steadily held aloft in rigid and inflexible
+regularity--strangely heighten the solemn tragedy of the scene.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Life of Titian_, vol. vi. p. 59.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The writer is unable to accept as a genuine design by
+Titian for the picture the well-known sepia drawing in the collection of
+the Uffizi. The composition is too clumsy in its mechanical repetition
+of parts, the action of the Virgin too awkward. The design looks more
+like an adaptation by some Bolognese eclectic.]
+
+[Footnote 32: This double portrait has not been preserved. According to
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the full length of Pier Luigi still exists in
+the Palazzo Reale at Naples (not seen by the writer).]
+
+[Footnote 33: The writer, who has studied in the originals all the other
+Titians mentioned in this monograph, has had as yet no opportunity of
+examining those in the Hermitage. He knows them only in the
+reproductions of Messrs. Braun, and in those new and admirable ones
+recently published by the Berlin Photographic Company.]
+
+[Footnote 34: This study from the life would appear to bear some such
+relation to the finished original as the _Innocent X._ of Velazquez at
+Apsley House bears to the great portrait of that Pope in the Doria
+Panfili collection.]
+
+[Footnote 35: This portrait-group belongs properly to the time a few
+years ahead, since it was undertaken during Titian's stay in Rome.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The imposing signature runs _Titianus Eques Ces. F.
+1543._]
+
+[Footnote 37: The type is not the nobler and more suave one seen in the
+_Cristo della Moneta_ and the _Pilgrims of Emmaus_; it is the much less
+exalted one which is reproduced in the _Ecce Homo_ of Madrid, and in the
+many repetitions and variations related to that picture, which cannot
+itself be accepted as an original from the hand of Titian.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Vasari saw a _Christ with Cleophas and Luke_ by Titian,
+above the door in the Salotta d'Oro, which precedes the Sala del
+Consiglio de' Dieci in the Doges' Palace, and states that it had been
+acquired by the patrician Alessandro Contarini and by him presented to
+the Signoria. The evidence of successive historians would appear to
+prove that it remained there until the close of last century. According
+to Crowe and Cavalcaselle the Louvre picture was a replica done for
+Mantua, which with the other Gonzaga pictures found its way into Charles
+I.'s collection, and thence, through that of Jabach, finally into the
+gallery of Louis XIV. At the sale of the royal collection by the
+Commonwealth it was appraised at L600. The picture bears the signature,
+unusual for this period, "Tician." There is another _Christ with the
+Pilgrims at Emmaus_ in the collection of the Earl of Yarborough, signed
+"Titianus," in which, alike as to the figures, the scheme of colour, and
+the landscape, there are important variations. One point is of especial
+importance. Behind the figure of St. Luke in the Yarborough picture is a
+second pillar. This is not intended to appear in the Louvre picture; yet
+underneath the glow of the landscape there is just the shadow of such a
+pillar, giving evidence of a _pentimento_ on the part of the master.
+This, so far as it goes, is evidence that the Louvre example was a
+revised version, and the Yarborough picture a repetition or adaptation
+of the first original seen by Vasari. However this may be, there can be
+no manner of doubt that the picture in the Long Gallery of the Louvre is
+an original entirely from the hand of Titian, while Lord Yarborough's
+picture shows nothing of his touch and little even of the manner of his
+studio at the time.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Purchased at the sale of Charles I.'s collection by Alonso
+de Cardenas for Philip IV. at the price of L165.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Life of Titian_, vol. ii.,
+Appendix (p. 502).]
+
+[Footnote 41: Moritz Thausing has striven in his _Wiener Kunstbriefe_ to
+show that the coat of arms on the marble bas-relief in the _Sacred and
+Profane Love_ is that of the well-known Nuremberg house of Imhof. This
+interpretation has, however, been controverted by Herz Franz Wickhoff.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Cesare Vecellio must have been very young at this time.
+The costume-book, _Degli abiti antichi e moderni_, to which he owes his
+chief fame, was published at Venice in 1590.]
+
+[Footnote 43: "Das Tizianbildniss der koeniglichen Galerie zu Cassel,"
+_Jahrbuch der koeniglich-preussischen Kunstsammlungen_, Funfzehnter Band,
+III. Heft.]
+
+[Footnote 44: See the _Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino_ at the Uffizi;
+also, for the modish headpiece, the _Ippolito de' Medici_ at the Pitti.]
+
+[Footnote 45: A number of fine portraits must of necessity be passed
+over in these remarks. The superb if not very well-preserved _Antonio
+Portia_, within the last few years added to the Brera, dates back a good
+many years from this time. Then we have, among other things, the
+_Benedetto Varchi_ and the _Fabrizio Salvaresio_ of the Imperial Museum
+at Vienna--the latter bearing the date 1558. The writer is unable to
+accept as a genuine Titian the interesting but rather matter-of-fact
+_Portrait of a Lady in Mourning_, No. 174 in the Dresden Gallery. The
+master never painted with such a lack of charm and distinction. Very
+doubtful, but difficult to judge in its present state, is the _Portrait
+of a Lady with a Vase_, No. 173 in the same collection. Morelli accepts
+as a genuine example of the master the _Portrait of a Lady in a Red
+Dress_ also in the Dresden Gallery, where it bears the number 176. If
+the picture is his, as the technical execution would lead the observer
+to believe, it constitutes in its stiffness and unambitious _naivete_ a
+curious exception in his long series of portraits.]
+
+[Footnote 46: It is impossible to discuss here the atelier repetitions
+in the collections of the National Gallery and Lord Wemyss respectively,
+or the numerous copies to be found in other places.]
+
+[Footnote 47: For the full text of the marriage contract see Giovanni
+Morelli, _Die Galerien zu Muenchen und Dresden_, pp. 300-302.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Joshua Reynolds, who saw it during his tour in Italy,
+says: "It is so dark a picture that, at first casting my eyes on it, I
+thought there was a black curtain before it."]
+
+[Footnote 49: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. p. 272.]
+
+[Footnote 50: They were, with the _Rape of Europa_, among the so-called
+"light pieces" presented to Prince Charles by Philip IV., and packed for
+transmission to England. On the collapse of the marriage negotiations
+they were, however, kept back. Later on Philip V. presented them to the
+Marquis de Grammont. They subsequently formed part of the Orleans
+Gallery, and were acquired at the great sale in London by the Duke of
+Bridgewater for L2500 apiece.]
+
+[Footnote 51: This great piece is painted on a canvas of peculiarly
+coarse grain, with a well-defined lozenge pattern. It was once owned by
+Van Dyck, at the sale of whose possessions, in 1556, a good number of
+years after his death, it was acquired by Algernon Percy, Earl of
+Northumberland. In 1873 it was in the exhibition of Old Masters at the
+Royal Academy.]
+
+[Footnote 52: The best repetition of this Hermitage _Magdalen_ is that
+in the Naples Museum; another was formerly in the Ashburton Collection,
+and yet another is in the Durazzo Gallery at Genoa. The similar, but not
+identical, picture in the Yarborough Collection is anything but "cold in
+tone," as Crowe and Cavalcaselle call it. It is, on the contrary, rich
+in colour, but as to the head of the saint, much less attractive than
+the original.]
+
+[Footnote 53: This picture was presented by Philip IV. to Prince Charles
+of England, and was, at the sale of his collection, acquired by Jabach
+for L600, and from him bought by Cardinal Mazarin, whose heirs sold it
+to Louis XIV. The Cardinal thus possessed the two finest representations
+of the _Jupiter and Antiope_ legend--that by Correggio (also now in the
+Louvre) and the Titian. It was to these pictures especially that his
+touching farewell was addressed a few hours before his death.]
+
+[Footnote 54: See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 340.]
+
+[Footnote 55: See as to the vicissitudes through which the picture has
+passed an article, "Les Restaurations du tableau du Titien, _Jupiter et
+Antiope_" by Fernand Engerand, in the _Chronique des Arts_ of 7th May
+1898.]
+
+[Footnote 56: This picture came to England with the Orleans Gallery, and
+was until lately at Cobham Hall in the collection of the Earl of
+Darnley. It has now passed into that of Mrs J.L. Gardner of Boston, U.S.
+It is represented in the Prado Gallery by Rubens's superb copy. A
+Venetian copy on a very small scale exists in the Wallace Collection.]
+
+[Footnote 57: A very clever adaptation of this work is No. 490 in the
+Prado Gallery under the name of the master. It is remarkable for the
+contrast between the moonlight which irradiates the Christ and the
+artificial light supplied by the lantern carried by one of the
+soldiers.]
+
+[Footnote 58: This picture is mentioned in the list of 1574 furnished by
+Titian to Secretary Antonio Perez. A _Perseus and Andromeda_ by, or
+attributed to, Titian was in the Orleans Gallery. Is this the canvas now
+in the Wallace Collection, but not as yet publicly exhibited there? This
+last piece was undoubtedly produced in the _entourage_ and with the
+assistance of Titian, and it corresponds perfectly to Vasari's
+description of the _Deliverance of Andromeda_. It has the loose easy
+touch of the late time, but obscured as it at present is by dirt and
+successive coats of now discoloured varnish, no more definite opinion
+with regard to its merits can be given. No. 135 in the Hermitage is a
+canvas identical in subject and dimensions with this last-named picture.
+It was once attributed to Tintoretto, but is now put down to the school
+of Titian.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Somewhat earlier in the order of the late works should
+come in, if we may venture to judge from the technique of a work that is
+practically a ruin, the _Adam and Eve_ of the Prado, in which, for the
+usual serpent with the human head of the feminine type, Titian has
+substituted as tempter an insignificant _amorino_. Far more enjoyable
+than this original in its present state is the magnificent copy, with
+slight yet marked variations, left behind by Rubens. This is also to be
+found in the Prado. A drawing by the great Antwerper from Titian's
+picture is in the Louvre. This is more markedly Flemish in aspect than
+the painted canvas, and lacks the foolish little Love.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Formerly in the collection of the Earl of Dudley, upon the
+sale of which it was acquired by Mr. Ludwig Mond. It was in the Venetian
+exhibition at the New Gallery. There is an engraving of it by Pieter de
+Jode, jun.]
+
+[Footnote 61: This is No. 186 in the catalogue of 1895. An etching of
+the picture appeared with an article "Les Ecoles d'Italie au Musee de
+Vienne," from the pen of Herr Franz Wickhoff, in the _Gazette des Beaux
+Arts_ for February 1893. It was badly engraved for the Teniers Gallery
+by Lissebetius.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Now in the Accademia delle Belle Arti of Venice.]
+
+[Footnote 63: It was the intention of the writer to add to this
+monograph a short chapter on the drawings of Titian. The subject is,
+however, far too vast for such summary treatment, and its discussion
+must therefore be postponed. Leaving out of the question the very
+numerous drawings by Domenico Campagnola which Morelli has once for all
+separated from those of the greater master, and those also which, while
+belonging to the same class and period, are neither Titian's nor even
+Campagnola's, a few of the genuine landscapes may be just lightly
+touched upon. The beautiful early landscape with a battlemented castle,
+now or lately in the possession of Mr. T.W. Russell (reproduction in the
+British Museum marked 1879-5-10-224) is in the opinion of the writer a
+genuine Titian. _The Vision of St. Eustace_, reproduced in the first
+section of this monograph ("The Earlier Work of Titian") from the
+original in the British Museum, is a noble and pathetic example of the
+earlier manner. Perhaps the most beautiful of the landscape drawings
+still preserving something of the Giorgionesque aroma is that with the
+enigmatic female figure, entirely nude but with the head veiled, and the
+shepherds sheltering from the noonday sun, which is in the great
+collection at Chatsworth (No. 318 in Venetian Exhibition at New
+Gallery). Later than this is the fine landscape in the same collection
+with a riderless horse crossing a stream (No. 867 in Venetian Exhibition
+at New Gallery). The well-known _St. Jerome_ here given (British Museum)
+is ascribed by no less an authority than Giovanni Morelli to the master,
+but the poor quality of the little round trees, and of the background
+generally, is calculated to give pause to the student. A good example of
+the later style, in which the technique is more that of the painter and
+less that of the draughtsman, is the so-called _Landscape with the
+Pedlar_ at Chatsworth. But, faded though it is, the finest extant
+drawing of the later period is that here (p. 78) for the first time
+reproduced by the kind permission of the owner, Professor Legros, who
+had the great good fortune and good taste to discover it in a London
+book-shop. There can be no doubt that this ought to be in the Print Room
+at the British Museum. A good instance, on the other hand, of a drawing
+which cannot without demur be left to Titian, though it is a good deal
+too late in style for Domenico Campagnola, and moreover, much too fine
+and sincere for that clever, facile adapter of other people's work, is
+the beautiful pastoral in the Albertina at Vienna (B. 283), with the
+shepherd piping as he leads his flock homewards.] INDEX
+
+"Agony in the Garden, The" (Escorial), 94
+Alfonso d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto (Madrid), 46
+Alfonso d'Avalos, with his Family, Portrait of (Louvre), 17, 18
+"Alfonso d'Este" (Madrid), 16, 54
+"Annunciation, The" (Venice), 98
+"Annunciation of the Virgin" (Verona), 56
+Aretino, Portrait of (Pitti Gallery), 9, 46, 57, 58
+Acquaviva, Duke of Arti, Portrait of, 74
+
+
+"Bacchanals, The" (Madrid), 8, 87, 92
+"Bacchus and Ariadne" (National Gallery), 8, 29, 87
+"Battle of Cadore, The," 38, 39
+Beccadelli, Legate, Portrait of (Uffizi), 75, 76
+"Bella, La" (Pitti), 32
+"Boy Baptist," 15
+
+
+"Cain and Abel" (Venice), 50, 51
+Charles V., Portrait of (Munich), 70
+"Charles V. at Muehlberg" (Madrid), 8, 68-70
+"Christ crowned with Thorns" (Louvre), 84
+"Christ crowned with Thorns" (Munich), 104
+"Christ with the Pilgrims at Emmaus" (Louvre), 57
+Cornaro Family (Duke of Northumberland's Collection), 88
+Cornaro, Portrait of (Castle Howard), 54
+"Cornelia, La," Portrait of, 12
+
+
+"Danae and the Golden Rain" (Naples Museum), 62, 66
+"Danae with Venus and Adonis" (Madrid), 78-80
+"David victorious over Goliath" (Venice),50, 51
+"Deliverance of Andromeda, The," 95
+"Descent of the Holy Spirit, The" (Venice), 50, 51
+"Destruction of Pharaoh's Host, The," 72
+"Diana and Actaeon" (Bridgewater Gallery), 9, 86, 91, 95
+"Diana and Calisto" (Bridgewater Gallery), 9, 86, 91
+
+
+"Ecce Homo" (Madrid), 67;
+  (Munich), 94;
+  (Vienna), 53, 54.
+"Education of Cupid, The" (Rome), 98
+"Entombment, The" (Louvre), 87
+"Entombment, The" (Madrid), 87
+Ercole d'Este, Portrait of, 16, 54
+
+
+Farnese Family, Portrait of, 52
+"Flora" (Uffizi), 29, 66
+Francis the First, Portrait of (Louvre), 12, 13
+Frederick of Saxony, Portrait of (Vienna), 71
+
+
+"Girl in a Fur Cloak" (Vienna), 28, 83
+Gonzaga, Eleonora, Portraits of, 28, 33, 34
+Gonzaga, Federigo, Portrait of, 15
+Gonzaga, Isabella d'Este, Portrait of, 12, 13
+
+
+"Herodias" (Doria Gallery), 29, 66
+
+
+"Ixion," 71
+
+
+"Jupiter and Antiope," 76, 90, 92
+
+
+Lavinia, Titian's daughter, 82, 83
+
+
+"Madonna Addolorata," 78, 79
+"Madonna and Child in a Landscape" (Munich), 95, 96
+"Madonna and Child" (Mr. Ludwig Mond's Collection), 104
+"Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John"
+     (National Gallery), 9, 10, 11
+"Madonna and Child with St. Peter and St. Andrew" (Serravalle), 65
+"Madonna del Coniglio" (Louvre), 9-11
+"Magdalen" (Florence), 14, 15
+"Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, The" (Venice), 84, 100, 101
+Medici, Portrait of Ippolito de' (Pitti), 12, 13, 18-21
+
+
+"Nymph and Shepherd" (Vienna), 9, 106
+
+
+"Ottavio Farnese with his Beloved": see _Venus with Organ Player_
+
+
+Philip II., Portrait of (Madrid), 16
+"Pieta," 73, 94, 106, 107
+Pope Paul III., Portrait of (Naples), 52;
+  (Hermitage), 53
+Pope Paul III. with Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio Farnese (Naples), 53, 60
+"Portrait of a Man" (Dresden), 89
+"Portrait of a Man in Black" (Louvre), 22 (footnote)
+"Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple" (Venice), 42-45
+"Prometheus Bound to the Rock," 71
+"Prince Philip of Austria in Armour" (Madrid), 73;
+  (Pitti), 74;
+  (Naples), 74
+
+
+"Rape of Europa," 9, 90, 92, 95
+"Religion succoured by Spain" (Madrid), 100
+
+
+"Sacred and Profane Love" (Borghese Gallery), 8, 29, 92
+"Sacrifice of Isaac" (Venice), 50
+"St. Jerome in Prayer" (Louvre), 14
+"St. Jerome in the Desert" (Milan), 96
+"St. John in the Desert" (Venice), 64
+"St. Margaret in a Landscape" (Madrid), 76
+"St. Peter Martyr," 8, 11, 50, 79, 84
+"Sisyphus" (Madrid), 71
+Strada, Jacopo da, Portrait of (Vienna), 100
+
+
+"Tantalus" (Madrid), 71
+"Three Ages, The" (Bridgewater Gallery), 106
+Titian, Portrait of, by himself (Berlin), 40, 41;
+  (Madrid), 94;
+  (Pitti), 9;
+  (Uffizi), 40, 41
+"Titian and Franceschini" (Windsor Castle), 42
+"Trinity, The," 86
+"Twelve Caesars, Series of," 34-36
+
+
+Vasto, Marques del: see _Alfonso d' Avalos_
+"Venere del Pardo" (Paris), 9; see also _Jupiter and Antiope_
+"Venetian Storm Landscape" (Buckingham Palace), 10
+"Venus Anadyomene" (Bridgewater Gallery), 29
+"Venus and Cupid" (Tribuna), 14, 15, 29, 65
+"Venus of Urbino," 28, 29, 32, 66, 92
+"Venus with the Mirror" (Hermitage), 90
+"Venus with the Organ Player" (Madrid), 66
+"Virgen de los Dolores" (Madrid), 79
+
+
+"Worship of Venus" (Madrid), 65, 66, 87
+
+
+"Young Nobleman, Portrait of" (Florence), 22
+
+
+
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