he
conception of Titian appear by the side of that of Bellini, so lofty, so
consoling in its serene beauty, in the solemnity of its sunset
colour![16] Alone in the profile portrait of the donor, Zuanne Ram,
placed in the picture with an awkwardness attractive in its naivete,
but superbly painted, is Titian already a full-grown master standing
alone.

The beautiful _Virgin and Child with SS. Ulfo and Brigida,_ placed in
the Sala de la Reina Isabel of the Prado, is now at last officially
restored to Titian, after having been for years innumerable ascribed to
Giorgione, whose style it not more than generally recalls. Here at any
rate all the rival wise men are agreed, and it only remains for the
student of the old masters, working to-day on the solid substructure
provided for him by his predecessors, to wonder how any other
attribution could have been accepted. But then the critic of the present
day is a little too prone to be wise and scornful _a ban marche_,
forgetting that he has been spared three parts of the road, and that he
starts for conquest at the high point, to reach which the pioneers of
scientific criticism in art have devoted a lifetime of noble toil. It is
in this piece especially that we meet with that element in the early art
of the Cadorine which Crowe and Cavalcaselle have defined as
"Palmesque." The _St. Bridget_ and the _St. Ulphus_ are both types
frequently to be met with in the works of the Bergamasque painter, and
it has been more than once remarked that the same beautiful model with
hair of wavy gold must have sat to Giorgione, Titian, and Palma. This
can only be true, however, in a modified sense, seeing that Giorgione
did not, so much as his contemporaries and followers, affect the type of
the beautiful Venetian blond, "large, languishing, and lazy." The hair
of his women--both the sacred personages and the divinities nominally
classic or wholly Venetian--is, as a rule, of a rich chestnut, or at the
most dusky fair, and in them the Giorgionesque oval of the face tempers
with its spirituality the strength of physical passion that the general
physique denotes. The polished surface of this panel at Madrid, the
execution, sound and finished without being finicking, the high
yellowish lights on the crimson draperies, are all very characteristic
of this, the first manner of Vecelli. The green hangings at the back of
the picture are such as are very generally associated with the
colour-schemes of Palma