than the aged Titian's deep conviction.[57]

To the year 1562 belongs the nearly profile portrait of the artist,
painted by himself with a subtler refinement and a truer revelation of
self than is to be found in those earlier canvases of Berlin and the
Uffizi in which his late prime still shows as a green and vigorous
manhood. This is now in the _Sala de la Reina Isabel_ of the Prado. The
pale noble head, refined by old age to a solemn beauty, is that of one
brought face to face with the world beyond; it is the face of the man
who could conceive and paint the sacred pieces of the end, the _Ecce
Homo_ of Munich and the last _Pieta_, with an awe such as we here read
in his eyes. Much less easy is it to connect this likeness with the
artist who went on concurrently producing his Venuses, mythological
pieces, and pastorals, and joying as much as ever in their production.

Vasari, who, as will be seen, visited Venice in 1566, when he was
preparing that new and enlarged edition of the _Lives_ which was to
appear in 1568, had then an opportunity of renewing his friendly
acquaintance with the splendid old man whom he had last seen, already
well stricken in years, twenty-one years before in Rome. It must have
been at this stage that he formed the judgment as to the latest manner
of Titian which is so admirably expressed in his biography of the
master. Speaking especially of the _Diana and Actaeon_, the _Rape of
Europa_, and the _Deliverance of Andromeda_,[58] he delivers himself as
follows:--"It is indeed true that his technical manner in these last is
very different from that of his youth. The first works are, be it
remembered, carried out with incredible delicacy and pains, so that they
can be looked at both at close quarters and from afar. These last ones
are done with broad coarse strokes and blots of colour, in such wise
that they cannot be appreciated near at hand, but from afar look
perfect. This style has been the cause that many, thinking therein to
play the imitators and to make a display of practical skill, have
produced clumsy, bad pictures. This is so, because, notwithstanding that
to many it may seem that Titian's works are done without labour, this is
not so in truth, and they who think so deceive themselves. It is, on the
contrary, to be perceived that they are painted at many sittings, that
they have been worked upon with the colours so many times as to make the
labour evident; and this method of execution is ju