ng, nor
the most profoundly moved among the great exponents of sacred art, even
of his time and country. Yet is it possible, remembering the
_Entombment_ of the Louvre, the _Assunta_, the _Madonna di Casa Pesaro_,
the _St. Peter Martyr_, to say that he has, take him all in all, been
surpassed in this the highest branch of his art? Certainly nowhere else
have the pomp and splendour of the painter's achievement at its apogee
been so consistently allied to a dignity and simplicity hardly ever
overstepping the bounds of nature. The sacred art of no other painter of
the full sixteenth century--not even that of Raphael himself--has to an
equal degree influenced other painters, and moulded the style of the
world, in those great ceremonial altar-pieces in which sacred passion
must perforce express itself with an exaggeration that is not
necessarily a distortion of truth.

And then as a portraitist--we are dealing, be it remembered, with
Italian art only--there must be conceded to him the first place, as a
limner both of men and women, though each of us may reserve a corner in
his secret heart for some other master. One will remember the
disquieting power, the fascination in the true sense of the word, of
Leonardo; the majesty, the penetration, the uncompromising realism on
occasion, of Raphael; the happy mixture of the Giorgionesque, the
Raphaelesque, and later on the Michelangelesque, in Sebastiano del
Piombo. Another will yearn for the poetic glamour, gilding realistic
truth, of Giorgione; for the intensely pathetic interpretation of
Lorenzo Lotto, with its unique combination of the strongest subjective
and objective elements, the one serving to poetise and accentuate the
other. Yet another will cite the lofty melancholy, the aristocratic
charm of the Brescian Moretto, or the marvellous power of the
Bergamasque Moroni to present in their natural union, with no
indiscretion of over-emphasis, the spiritual and physical elements which
go to make up that mystery of mysteries, the human individuality. There
is, however, no advocate of any of these great masters who, having
vaunted the peculiar perfections in portraiture of his own favourite,
will not end--with a sigh perhaps--by according the palm to Titian.

In landscape his pre-eminence is even more absolute and unquestioned. He
had great precursors here, but no equal; and until Claude Lorrain long
afterwards arose, there appeared no successor capable, like himself, of
express