erging
lines, diagonal on the one hand and straight on the other, crowns it
with success. The scheme of colour brings the two figures into high
relief, while St. Francis and the family of the donor are subordinated
to rich, deep tints. Titian has abandoned, more completely than ever
before, any attempt to invest the Child with supernatural majesty. He is
a delightful, spoiled baby, fully aware of his sovereignty over his
mother, pretending to take no notice of the kneeling suppliants, but
occupying himself in making a tent over his head out of her veil. The
"Madonna in Glory with six Saints" of the Vatican is another example of
the rich and "smouldering" colour in which Titian was now creating his
great altarpieces, kneading his pigments into a quality, a solidity,
which gives reality without heaviness, and finishing with that
fine-grained texture which makes his flesh look like marble endowed
with life.

[3] It is this quality of unarrested movement, so conspicuous
above all in the figure of Bacchus, which attracts us irresistibly in
the Huntress, in Lord Brownlow's "Diana and Actaeon." The construction
of the form of the goddess in this beautiful but little-known picture is
admirable. Worn as the colour is, appearing almost as a monochrome, the
landscape is full of atmospheric suggestion. It is in Titian's latest
manner, and its ample lines and free unimpeded motion can be due to no
inferior brush.

[Illustration: _Titian._
DIANA AND ACTAEON.
_Earl Brownlow._
(_The Medici Society, Ltd._)]

Venuses, altarpieces, and portraits all tell us how boldly his own style
was established. His sacred persons are not different from his pagans
and goddesses. Yet though he has gone far, he still reminds us of
Giorgione. He has been constant to the earliest influences which
surrounded him, and to that temperament which made him accept those
influences so instantaneously--and this constancy and unity give him the
untroubled ascendancy over art which is such a feature of his position.

With Leonardo and with Titian, painters had sprung to a recognised
status in the great world of the Renaissance. They were no longer the
patronised craftsmen. They had become the courted guests, the social
equals. Titian, passing from the courts of Ferrara to those of Mantua
and Urbino, attended by a band of assistants, was a magnificent
personage, whose presence was looked upon as a favour