ll see it in every one of these religious paintings
you are about to study. The subjects seem only pretexts, or foundations,
for the gorgeous display of a rare artistic ability. To paint beauty for
beauty's sake only, in form, features, costumes, and accessories was
Titian's native sphere, and gloriously did he fill it. In these church
pictures, the Madonna and Child are almost always entirely secondary in
interest. In many, the family of the donor, with their aristocratic
faces and magnificent costumes, and the saints with waving banners, are
far more important. A fine example of this is the _Madonna of the
Pesaro family_ in the Church of the Frari. With such a _motif_
underlying his work, the great painter fell easily into the habit of
portraying ideal figures, especially of women,--'fancy female figures,'
one writer has termed them,--whose sole merit lies in the superb
rendering of rosy flesh, heavy tresses of auburn hair, lovely eyes, and
rich garments. Such are his _Flora_, _Venuses_, _Titian's Daughter_--of
which there are several examples--_Magdalens_, etc.; together with many
so called portraits, such as his _La Donna Bella_ in the Pitti,
Florence.

"Titian could paint such pictures so free from coarseness, so
magnificent in all art qualities, that the world was delighted with
them. After him, however, the lowered aim had its influence; poorer
artists tried to follow in his footsteps, and the world of art soon
became flooded with mediocre examples of these meaningless pictures. All
this hastened rapidly the decay of Italian art.

"But you must remember," Mr. Sumner hastened to say, as he watched the
faces about him, "that I am giving you my own personal thoughts. To me,
the purity of sentiment and the lofty _motif_ of a picture mean so much
that they always influence my judgment of it. With many other people it
is not so. They revel in the color, the line, the tone, the grouping,
the purely art qualities. In these Titian, as I have said, is perfect,
and worthy of the high place he holds in the art-world.

"I hope you will take great pains to study him here by yourselves,--in
the Academy and in the various churches,--wherever there are examples of
his work. Let each form his own judgment, founded on that which he finds
in the pictures. The work of any artist of the High Renaissance, whose
aim is purely artistic, is not difficult to understand. His means of
expression were so ample that it is easy indeed to read