Escorial, where
there is still to be found a bad copy of it. A mere fragment of the
original, showing a head and bust of Christ holding a hoe in his left
hand, has been preserved, and is now No. 489 in the gallery of the
Prado. Even this does not convince the student that Titian's own brush
had a predominant share in the performance. The letter to Charles V.,
dated from Venice the 10th of September 1554, records the sending of a
_Madonna Addolorata_ and the great _Trinity_. These, together with
another _Virgen de los Dolores_ ostensibly by Titian, and the _Ecce
Homo_ already mentioned, formed afterwards part of the small collection
of devotional paintings taken by Charles to his monastic retreat at
Yuste, and appropriated after his death by Philip. If the picture styled
_La Dolorosa_, and now No. 468 in the gallery of the Prado, is indeed
the one painted for the great monarch who was so sick in body and
spirit, so fast declining to his end, the suspicion is aroused that the
courtly Venetian must have acted with something less than fairness
towards his great patron, since the _Addolorata_ cannot be acknowledged
as his own work. Still less can we accept as his own that other _Virgen
de los Dolores_, now No. 475 in the same gallery.

[Illustration: Landscape drawing in pen and bistre by Titian.]

It is very different with the _Trinity_, called in Spain _La Gloria_,
and now No. 462 in the same gallery. Though the master must have been
hampered by the express command that the Emperor should be portrayed as
newly arisen from the grave and adoring the _Trinity_ in an agony of
prayer, and with him the deceased Empress Isabel, Queen Mary of Hungary,
and Prince Philip, also as suppliants, he succeeded in bringing forth
not indeed a complete masterpiece, but a picture all aspiration and
fervent prayer--just the work to satisfy the yearnings of the man who,
once the mightiest, was then the loneliest and saddest of mortals on
earth. The crown and climax of the whole is the group of the Trinity
itself, awful in majesty, dazzling in the golden radiance of its
environment, and, beautifully linking it with mortality, the blue-robed
figure of the Virgin, who stands on a lower eminence of cloud as she
intercedes for the human race, towards whom her pitying gaze is
directed. It would be absurd to pretend that we have here a work
entitled, in virtue of the perfect achievement of all that has been
sought for, to rank with such earlier mast