etence at suggesting
the agony or the ecstasy of martyrdom. A wide gulf indeed separates the
mood and the method of this superb bravura piece from the reposeful
charm of the Giorgionesque saint in the _St. Mark_ of the Salute, or the
healthy realism of the unconcerned _St. Sebastian_ in the S. Niccolo
altar-piece. Here, as later on with the _St. Peter Martyr_, those who
admire in Venetian art in general, and in that of Titian in particular,
its freedom from mere rhetoric and the deep root that it has in Nature,
must protest that in this case moderation and truth are offended by a
conception in its very essence artificial. Yet, brought face to face
with the work itself, they will put aside the role of critic, and
against their better judgment pay homage unreservedly to depth and
richness of colour, to irresistible beauty of modelling and
painting.[45] Analogies have been drawn between the _Medicean Faun_ and
the _St. Sebastian_, chiefly on account of the strained position of
the arms, and the peculiar one of the right leg, both in the statue and
the painting; but surely the most obvious and natural resemblance,
notwithstanding certain marked variations, is to the figure of Laocoon
in the world-famous group of the Vatican. Of this a model had been made
by Sansovino for Cardinal Domenico Grimani, and of that model a cast was
kept in Titian's workshop, from which he is said to have studied.

[Illustration: DESIGN FOR A HOLY FAMILY. CHATSWORTH. _From a photograph
by Braun, Clement & Cie_.]

[Illustration: _La Vierge au Lapin. Louvre. From a Photograph by
Neurdein._]

In the _Madonna di S. Niccolo_, which was painted or rather finished in
the succeeding year, 1523, for the little Church of S. Niccolo de'
Frari, and is now in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican, the keynote is
suavity, unbroken richness and harmony, virtuosity, but not extravagance
of technique. The composition must have had much greater unity before
the barbarous shaving off, when the picture went to Rome, of the
circular top which it had in common with the _Assunta_, the Ancona, and
the Pesaro altar-pieces. Technically superior to the second of these
great works, it is marked by no such unity of dramatic action and
sentiment, by no such passionate identification of the artist with his
subject. It is only in passing from one of its beauties to another that
its artistic worth can be fully appreciated. Then we admire the rapt
expression, not less than the wonderfu