sometimes called. The Venus herself has the attitude of Giorgione's
dreaming goddess, with her arm flung up above her head. It is, perhaps,
the only time that Titian succeeds in giving anything ideal to one of
his Venuses. The famous nudes of the Uffizi and the Louvre are splendid
courtesans, far removed from Giorgione's idyllic vision; but Antiope,
slumbering on her couch of skins, and her woodland lover, gazing with
adoring eyes on her beautiful face, have a whole world of sweet and
joyful fancy. The whole scene is full of a _joie de vivre_, which
carries us back to the Bacchanals painted so many years before, and in
these Titian gives King Philip his most perfect work, every touch of
which is his own. This picture, now in the Louvre, was given to Charles
I. by the King of Spain, and bought for Cardinal Mazarin in 1650.
"Danae," "Venus and Adonis," "Europa and the Bull," and a "Last Supper"
followed in quick succession, but Titian was now employing many
assistants, and great parts of the canvases issuing from his workshop
show weak, imitative hands, while replicas were made of other works.

His later feeling for the religious in art is expressed in the now
bedimmed paintings in San Salvatore in Venice. Vasari describes
these in 1566. Painted when Titian was nearly ninety years old, the
"Transfiguration" is remarkable for forcible, majestic movement, while
in the "Annunciation" he invents quite a new treatment. Mary turns round
and raises her veil, while she grasps the book as if she depended on it
for stay and support. The four angels are full of life and gaiety, and
the whole has much grace and colour, though it is dashed in, in the
painter's later style, in broad and sweeping planes without patience
of detail. The old man has signed it "Titianus, fecit, fecit," a
contemptuous reply to some critics who complained of its want of finish.
He knew well what it was in composition and execution, and that all that
he had ever known or done lay within the careless strength of his last
manner.

A letter written to the King of Spain's secretary in 1574 gives
a list "in part" of fourteen pictures sent to Madrid during the last
twenty-five years, "with many others which I do not remember." On every
hand we hear of lost pictures from the master's brush, and the number
produced even during the last ten years of his life must have been
enormous, for till the end he was full of great undertakings and
achievements. Very late in life