r the absence of true vitality;[6]
that the Empress Isabella, Charles V.'s consort, when at the behest of
the monarch he produced her sumptuous but lifeless and empty portrait,
now in the great gallery of the Prado, was long since dead. He
consented, basing his picture upon a likeness of much earlier date, to
paint Isabella d'Este Gonzaga as a young woman when she was already an
old one, thereby flattering an amiable and natural weakness in this
great princess and unrivalled dilettante, but impairing his own
position as an artist of supreme rank.[7] It is not necessary to include
in this category the popular _Caterina Cornaro_ of the Uffizi, since it
is confessedly nothing but a fancy portrait, making no reference to the
true aspect at any period of the long-since deceased queen of Cyprus,
and, what is more, no original Titian, but at the utmost an atelier
piece from his _entourage_. Take, however, as an instance the _Francis
the First_, which was painted some few years later than the time at
which we have now arrived, and at about the same period as the _Isabella
d'Este_. Though as a _portrait d'apparat_ it makes its effect, and
reveals the sovereign accomplishment of the master, does it not shrink
into the merest insignificance when compared with such renderings from
life as the successive portraits of _Charles the Fifth_, the _Ippolito
de' Medici_, the _Francesco Maria della Rovere_? This is as it must and
should be, and Titian is not the less great, but the greater, because he
cannot convincingly evolve at second hand the true human individuality,
physical and mental, of man or woman.

It was in the earlier part of 1531 that Titian painted for Federigo
Gonzaga a _St. Jerome_ and a _St. Mary Magdalene_, destined for the
famous Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, who had expressed to
the ruler of Mantua the desire to possess such a picture. Gonzaga writes
to the Marchioness on March 11, 1831[8]:--"Ho subito mandate a Venezia e
scritto a Titiano, quale e forse il piu eccellente in quell' arte che a
nostri tempi si ritrovi, ed e tutto mio, ricercandolo con grande
instantia a volerne fare una bella lagrimosa piu che si so puo, e
farmela haver presto." The passage is worth quoting as showing the
estimation in which Titian was held at a court which had known and still
knew the greatest Italian masters of the art.

It is not possible at present to identify with any extant painting the
_St. Jerome_, of which we know t