but which represent "Samson slaying the Philistines,"
"The Drunkenness of Noah," "Cain and Abel," "Lot and his Daughters,"
and "Judith with the Head of Holofernes." Between the two last there
formerly appeared a drawing of a dead child, with the motto, "Mors omnia
aequat," which was removed to the Museum in 1883, in comparatively good
preservation.

Jacopo da Ponte lived a busy life at Bassano, where, with the help of
his four sons, who were all painters, he poured out an inexhaustible
stream of works, which, it is said, were put up to auction at the
neighbouring fairs, if no other market was forthcoming. From time to
time he and his sons went down to Venice, and with the help of the
eldest, Francesco, Bassano (as he is generally known) painted the "Siege
of Padua" and five other works in the Ducal Palace. His mature style was
founded mainly upon that of Titian, and it is to this second manner that
he owes his fame. He makes use of fewer colours, and enhances his lights
by deepening and consolidating his shadows, so that they come into
strong contrast, and his technique gains a richer impasto. He has a
marvellous faculty for keeping his colour pure, and his greens shine
like a beetle's wing. A nature-lover in the highest degree, his painting
of animals and plants evinces a mind which is steeped in the magic of
outdoor life. A subject of which he was particularly fond, and which he
seems to have undertaken for half the collectors of Europe, was the
"Four Seasons." Here was found united everything that Bassano most loved
to paint: beasts of the farmyard and countryside, agriculturists with
their implements, scenes of harvest-time and vintage, rough peasants
leading the plough, cutting the grass, harvesting the grain, young girls
making hay, driving home the cattle, taking dinner to the reapers. When
he was obliged to paint for churches he chose such subjects as the
Adoration of the Shepherds, the Sacrifice of Noah, the Expulsion from
the Temple, into which he could introduce animals, painting them with
such vigour and such forcible colour that Titian himself is said to
have had a copy hanging in his studio. He loved to paint his daughters
engaged in household tasks, and perhaps placed his figures with rather
too obvious a reference to light and shade, and to the sun striking
full on sunburnt cheeks and buxom shoulders. A friend, not a rival, of
Veronese and Tintoretto, Gianbattista Volpado, records that when he was
one d