any of his pictures.
These landscapes were not only free, but full. 'The great masters of
Italy, almost without exception, and Titian, perhaps, more than any
other (for he had the highest knowledge of landscape), are in the
constant habit of rendering every detail of their foregrounds with the
most laborious botanical fidelity; witness the Bacchus and Ariadne, in
which the foreground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia,
and the wild rose; _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the
blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have
been studied with the most exquisite accuracy.'--_Ruskin_.

In portraits, Titian conveyed to the sitters and transferred to his
canvas, not only a life-likeness, but a positively noble dignity in that
likeness. What in Van Dyck and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the bestowing of
high breeding and dainty refinement, became under Titian's brush
dignity, pure and simple, very quiet, and wonderfully real. There is
this peculiarity in connection with the number of portraits which Titian
executed, that many of them have descended to us without further titles
than those of 'A Venetian Senator,' 'A Lady,' etc., etc., yet of the
individual life of the originals no one can doubt. With regard to
Titian's portraits of women, I have already referred to those of his
beautiful daughter, Lavinia. In one portrait, in the Berlin Museum, she
is holding a plate of fruit; in another, in England, the plate of fruit
is changed into a casket of jewels; in a third, at Madrid, Lavinia is
Herodias, and bears a charger with the head of John the Baptist. A
'Violante'--as some say, the daughter of Titian's scholar, Palma, though
dates disprove this--sat frequently to Titian, and is said to have been
loved by him.

I have written, in connection with Lionardo's 'Jaconde' and Raphael's
'Fornarina,' of Titian's 'Bella Donna.' He has various 'Bellas,' but, as
far as I know, this is _the_ 'Bella Donna,'--'a splendid, serious
beauty, in a red and blue silk dress,' in the Sciarra Gallery, Rome.

I have read that critics were at one time puzzled by the singular
yellow, almost straw colour, appearing profusely in the hair of the
women of the Venetian painters of this time, and that it was only by
consulting contemporary records that it was learnt that the Venetian
women indulged in the weak and false vanity of dyeing their black hair a
pale yellow--a process, in the course of which the women dre