the head with its softly
flowing beard and the magnificent yet not too ornate robe and vest of
plum-coloured velvet and satin.

CHAPTER III

_The Visit to Rome--Titian and Michelangelo--The "Danae" of Naples--"St.
John the Baptist in the Desert"--Journey to Augsburg--"Venus and Cupid"
of the Tribuna--"Venus with the Organ Player" of Madrid--The Altar-piece
of Serravalle--"Charles V. at the Battle of Muehlberg"--"Prometheus
Bound" and companion pictures--Second Journey to Augsburg--Portraits of
Philip of Spain--The so-called "Marques del Vasto" at Cassel--The "St.
Margaret"--"Danae" of Madrid--The "Trinity"--"Venus and Adonis"--"La
Fede."_

At last, in the autumn of 1545, the master of Cadore, at the age of
sixty-eight years, was to see Rome, its ruins, its statues, its
antiquities, and what to the painter of the Renaissance must have meant
infinitely more, the Sixtine Chapel and the Stanze of the Vatican. Upon
nothing in the history of Venetian art have its lovers, and the many
who, with profound interest, trace Titian's noble and perfectly
consistent career from its commencement to its close, more reason to
congratulate themselves than on this circumstance, that in youth and
earlier manhood fortune and his own success kept him from visiting Rome.
Though his was not the eclectic tendency, the easily impressionable
artistic temperament of a Sebastiano Luciani--the only eclectic,
perhaps, who managed all the same to prove and to maintain himself an
artist of the very first rank--if Titian had in earlier life been lured
to the Eternal City, and had there settled, the glamour of the grand
style might have permanently and fatally disturbed his balance. Now it
was too late for the splendid and gracious master, who even at
sixty-eight had still before him nearly thirty fruitful years, to
receive any impressions sufficiently deep to penetrate to the root of
his art. There is some evidence to show that Titian, deeply impressed
with the highest manifestations of the Florentine and Umbro-Florentine
art transplanted to Rome, considered that his work had improved after
the visit of 1545-1546. If there was such improvement--and certainly in
the ultimate phases of his practice there will be evident in some ways
a wider view, a higher grasp of essentials, a more responsive
sensitiveness in the conceiving anew of the great sacred subjects--it
must have come, not from any effort to assimilate the manner or to
assume the stan