s it will be
best to deal with in its proper chronological order.

We come now to one of the most popular of all Titian's great canvases
based on a sacred subject, the _Presentation in the Temple_ in the
Accademia delle Belle Arti at Venice. This, as Vasari expressly states,
was painted for the Scuola di S. Maria della Carita, that is, for the
confraternity which owned the very building where now the Accademia
displays its treasures. It is the magnificent scenic rendering of a
subject lending itself easily to exterior pomp and display, not so
easily to a more mystic and less obvious mode of conception. At the root
of Titian's design lies in all probability the very similar picture on a
comparatively small scale by Cima da Conegliano, now No. 63 in the
Dresden Gallery, and this last may well have been inspired by
Carpaccio's _Presentation of the Virgin_, now in the Brera at Milan.[27]
The imposing canvases belonging to this particular period of Titian's
activity, and this one in particular, with its splendid architectural
framing, its wealth of life and movement, its richness and variety in
type and costume, its fair prospect of Venetian landscape in the
distance, must have largely contributed to form the transcendent
decorative talent of Paolo Veronese. Only in the exquisitely fresh and
beautiful figure of the childlike Virgin, who ascends the mighty flight
of stone steps, clad all in shimmering blue, her head crowned with a
halo of yellow light, does the artist prove that he has penetrated to
the innermost significance of his subject. Here, at any rate, he
touches the heart as well as feasts the eye. The thoughts of all who are
familiar with Venetian art will involuntarily turn to Tintoretto's
rendering of the same moving, yet in its symbolical character not
naturally ultra-dramatic, scene. The younger master lends to it a
significance so vast that he may be said to go as far beyond and above
the requirements of the theme as Titian, with all his legitimate
splendour and serene dignity, remains below it. With Tintoretto as
interpreter we are made to see the beautiful episode as an event of the
most tremendous import--one that must shake the earth to its centre. The
reason of the onlooker may rebel against this portentous version, yet he
is dominated all the same, is overwhelmed with something of the
indefinable awe that has seized upon the bystanders who are witnesses of
the scene.

[Illustration: _The Presentation of