the Duke of Urbino,
describes it, no doubt, as "une Venere giovanetta a giacere, con fieri e
certi panni sottili attorno." It is manifestly borrowed, too--as is now
universally acknowledged--from Giorgione's _Venus_ in the Dresden
Gallery, with the significant alteration, however, that Titian's fair
one voluptuously dreams awake, while Giorgione's goddess more divinely
reposes, and sleeping dreams loftier dreams. The motive is in the
borrowing robbed of much of its dignity and beauty, and individualised
in a fashion which, were any other master than Titian in question, would
have brought it to the verge of triviality. Still as an example of his
unrivalled mastery in rendering the glow and semi-transparency of flesh,
enhanced by the contrast with white linen--itself slightly golden in
tinge; in suggesting the appropriate atmospheric environment; in giving
the full splendour of Venetian colour, duly subordinated nevertheless to
the main motive, which is the glorification of a beautiful human body as
it is; in all these respects the picture is of superlative excellence, a
representative example of the master and of Venetian art, a piece which
it would not be easy to match even among his own works.

More and more, as the supreme artist matures, do we find him disdaining
the showier and more evident forms of virtuosity. His colour is more and
more marked in its luminous beauty by reticence and concentration, by
the search after such a main colour-chord as shall not only be beautiful
and satisfying in itself, but expressive of the motive which is at the
root of the picture. Play of light over the surfaces and round the
contours of the human form; the breaking-up and modulation of masses of
colour by that play of light; strength, and beauty of general
tone--these are now Titian's main preoccupations. To this point his
perfected technical art has legitimately developed itself from the
Giorgionesque ideal of colour and tone-harmony, which was essentially
the same in principle, though necessarily in a less advanced stage, and
more diversified by exceptions. Our master became, as time went on, less
and less interested in the mere dexterous juxtaposition of brilliantly
harmonising and brilliantly contrasting tints, in piquancy, gaiety, and
sparkle of colour, to be achieved for its own sake. Indeed this phase of
Venetian sixteenth-century colour belongs rather to those artists who
issued from Verona--to the Bonifazi, and to Paolo Ve