shines
like a jewel in crystal goblets and drips in streams over rosy limbs.
The influence of such pictures as these was absorbed by Rubens, but
though they hardly surpass him in colour, they are more idyllic and
less coarse. The perfect taste of the Renaissance is never shown more
victoriously than here, where indulgence ceases to be repulsive, and the
actors are real flesh and blood, yet more Arcadian than revolting. In
the "Bacchus and Ariadne," Titian gives triumphant expression to a mood
of wild rejoicing, so gay, so good-tempered, so simple, that we must
smile in sympathy. The conqueror flinging himself from his golden
chariot drawn by panthers, his deep red mantle fluttering on high, is so
full of reckless life that our spirit bounds with him. His rioting band,
marching with song and laughter, seems to people that golden country-side
with fit inhabitants. The careless satyrs and little merry, goat-legged
fauns shock us no more than a herd of forest ponies, tossing their manes
and dashing along for love of life and movement.[3] Yet almost before
this series was put in place Titian was showing the diversity of his
genius by the "Deposition," now in the Louvre, which was painted at the
instance of the Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua and nephew of Alfonso d'Este.
Here he makes a great step in the use of chiaroscuro. While it is
satisfying in balance and sweeping rhythm, and by the way in which every
line follows and intensifies the helpless, slackened lines of the dead
Body, it escapes Raphael's academic treatment of the same subject. Its
splendid colours are not noisy; they merge into a scene of solemn pathos
and tragedy. The scene has a simplicity and unity in its passion, and
what above all gives it its intense power is the way in which the
flaming hues are absorbed into the twilight shadows. The dark heads
stand out against the dying sunset, the pallor of the dead is half
veiled by the falling night. It is a picture which has the emotional
beauty of a scene in nature, and makes a profound impression by its
depth and mystery. This same solemnity and gravity temper the brilliant
colouring of the great altarpiece painted for the Pesaro family in the
Frari. Columns rise like great tree-trunks, light and air play through
the clouds seen between them. The grouping is a new experiment, but the
way in which the Mother and Child, though placed quite at one side of
the picture, are focussed as the centre of interest, by the conv