eat crime. It is with a conviction far more intense than has ever
possessed him in his prime, with an awe nearly akin to terror, that
Titian, himself trembling on the verge of eternity, and painting, too,
that which shall purchase his own grave, has produced this profoundly
moving work. No more fitting end and crown to the great achievements of
the master's old age could well be imagined.

There is no temptation to dwell unnecessarily upon the short period of
horror and calamity with which this glorious life came to an end. If
Titian had died a year earlier, his biographer might still have wound
up with those beautiful words of Vasari's peroration: "E stato Tiziano
sanissimo et fortunate quant' alcun altro suo pari sia stato ancor mai;
e non ha mai avuto dai cieli se non favori e felicita." Too true it is,
alas, that no man's life may be counted happy until its close! Now comes
upon the great city this all-enveloping horror of the plague, beginning
in 1575, but in 1576 attaining to such vast proportions as to sweep away
more than a quarter of the whole population of 190,000 inhabitants. On
the 17th of August, 1576, old Titian is attacked and swept
away--surprised, as one would like to believe, while still at work on
his _Pieta_. Even at such a moment, when panic reigns supreme, and the
most honoured, the most dearly beloved are left untended, he is not to
be hurried into an unmarked grave. Notwithstanding the sanitary law
which forbids the burial of one who has succumbed to the plague in any
of the city churches, he receives the supreme and at this awful moment
unique honour of solemn obsequies. The body is taken with all due
observance to the great church of the Frari, and there interred in the
Cappella del Crocifisso, which Titian has already, before the quarrel
with the Franciscans, designated as his final resting-place. He is
spared the grief of knowing that the favourite son, Orazio, for whom all
these years he has laboured and schemed, is to follow him immediately,
dying also of the plague, and not even at Biri Grande, but in the
Lazzaretto Vecchio, near the Lido; that the incorrigible Pomponio is to
succeed and enjoy the inheritance after his own unworthy fashion. He is
spared the knowledge of the great calamity of 1577, the destruction by
fire of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, and with it, of the _Battle of
Cadore_, and most of the noble work done officially for the Doges and
the Signoria. One would like to think t