ed magician of the brush has interested himself more in
the execution than in the imagining of his picture. It is a fine and
typical specimen of the painting _di macchia_, which Vasari has praised
in a passage already quoted. A work such as this bears in technique much
the same relation to the productions of Titian's first period that the
great _Family Picture_ of Rembrandt at Brunswick does to his work done
some thirty-five or forty years before. In both instances it is a
life-time of legitimate practice that has permitted the old man to
indulge without danger in an abridgment of labour, a synthetic
presentment of fact, which means no abatement, but in some ways an
enhancement of life, breadth, and pictorial effect. To much about the
same time, judging from the handling and the types, belongs the curious
allegory, _Religion succoured by Spain_--otherwise _La Fe_--now No. 476
in the gallery of the Prado. This canvas, notwithstanding a marked
superficiality of invention as well as of execution, is in essentials
the master's own; moreover it can boast its own special decorative
qualities, void though it is of any deep significance. The showy figure
of Spain holding aloft in one hand a standard, and with the other
supporting a shield emblazoned with the arms of the realm, recalls the
similar creations of Paolo Veronese. Titian has rarely been less happily
inspired than in the figure of Religion, represented as a naked female
slave newly released from bondage.

[Illustration: _The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese,
Rome. From a Photograph by E. Alinari_.]

When Vasari in 1566 paid the visit to Venice, of which a word has
already been said, he noted, among a good many other things then in
progress, the _Martyrdom of St. Lawrence_, based upon that now at the
Gesuiti in Venice. This was despatched nearly two years later to the
Escorial, where it still occupies its place on the high altar of the
mighty church dedicated to St. Lawrence. The Brescian ceiling canvases
appeared, too, in his list as unfinished. They were sent to their
destination early in 1568, to be utterly destroyed, as has been told, by
fire in 1575.

The best proof we have that Titian's artistic power was in many respects
at its highest in 1566, is afforded by the magnificent portrait of the
Mantuan painter and antiquary Jacopo da Strada, now in the Imperial
Gallery at Vienna. It bears, besides the usual late signature of the
master, the descr