mporary taste. For instance, he remarks the growing
admiration for colour, and hopes by painting gay, flat tints, in bright
contrast, to produce the desired effect.

It is evident that he made many friends among the rich connoisseurs of
the time, and that his importance was out of proportion to his real
merit. Marcantonio Michele, writing an account of Raphael's last days to
a friend in Venice, and touching on Michelangelo's illness, begs him to
see that Catena takes care of himself, "as the times are unfavourable to
great painters." Catena had acquired and inherited considerable wealth;
he came of a family of merchants, and resided in his own house in San
Bartolommeo del Rialto. He lived in unmarried relations with Dona Maria
Fustana, the daughter of a furrier, to whom he bequeaths in his will 300
ducats and all his personal effects. As a careful portrait-painter, with
a talent for catching a likeness, he was in constant demand, and in some
of his heads--that of a canon dressed in blue and red, at Vienna, and
especially in one of a member of the Fugger family, now at Dresden--he
attains real distinction. And in his last phase he does at length prove
the power that lies behind long industry and perseverance. Suddenly the
Giorgionesque influence strikes him, and turning to imbibe this new
element, he produces that masterpiece which throws a glamour over all
his mediocre performances; his "Warrior adoring the Infant Christ," in
the National Gallery, is a picture full of charm, rich and romantic in
tone and spirit. The Virgin and the Child upon her knee are of his
dull round-eyed type, the form and colours of her draperies are still
unsatisfactory, but the knight in armour with his Eastern turban, the
romantic young page, holding his horse, are pure Giorgionesque figures.
Beautiful in themselves, set in a beautiful landscape glowing with light
and air, the whole picture exemplifies what surprising excellence could
be suddenly attained by even very inferior artists, who were constantly
associating with greater men, at a moment when the whole air was, as it
were, vibrating with genius.

Catena was very much addicted to making his will, and at least five
testaments or codicils exist, one of them devising a sum of money for
the benefit of the School of Painters in Venice, and another leaving to
his executor, Prior Ignatius, the picture of a "St. Jerome in his Cell,"
which may be the one in our national collection, which remain