h of March 1518? To appreciate the greatest of extant Venetian
altar-pieces at its true worth it is necessary to recall what had and
what had not appeared at the time when it shone undimmed upon the world.
Thus Raphael had produced the _Stanze_, the _Cartoons_, the _Madonnas of
Foligno_ and _San Sisto_, but not yet the _Transfiguration;_
Michelangelo had six years before uncovered his _magnum opus_, the
Ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel; Andrea del Sarto had some four years
earlier completed his beautiful series of frescoes at the Annunziata in
Florence. Among painters whom, origin notwithstanding, we must group as
Venetians, Palma had in 1515 painted for the altar of the Bombardieri at
S. Maria Formosa his famous _Santa Barbara_; Lorenzo Lotto in the
following year had produced his characteristic and, in its charm of
fluttering movement, strangely unconventional altar-piece for S.
Bartolommeo at Bergamo, the _Madonna with Ten Saints_. In none of these
masterpieces of the full Renaissance, even if they had all been seen by
Titian, which was far from being the case, was there any help to be
derived in the elaboration of a work which cannot be said to have had
any precursor in the art of Venice. There was in existence one
altar-piece dealing with the same subject from which Titian might
possibly have obtained a hint. This was the _Assumption of the Virgin_
painted by Duerer in 1509 for Jacob Heller, and now only known by Paul
Juvenel's copy in the Municipal Gallery at Frankfort. The group of the
Apostles gazing up at the Virgin, as she is crowned by the Father and
the Son, was at the time of its appearance, in its variety as in its
fine balance of line, a magnificent novelty in art. Without exercising a
too fanciful ingenuity, it would be possible to find points of contact
between this group and the corresponding one in the _Assunta_. But
Titian could not at that time have seen the original of the Heller
altar-piece, which was in the Dominican Church at Frankfort, where it
remained for a century.[39] He no doubt did see the _Assumption_ in the
_Marienleben_ completed in 1510; but then this, though it stands in a
definite relation to the Heller altar-piece, is much stiffer and more
formal--much less likely to have inspired the master of Cadore. The
_Assunta_ was already in Vasari's time much dimmed, and thus difficult
to see in its position on the high altar. Joshua Reynolds, when he
visited the Frari in 1752, says that "he saw