he painted a "Shepherd and Nymph"
(Vienna), which in its idyllic feeling, its slumberous delight, its
mingling of clothed and nude figures, recalls the early days with
Giorgione, yet the blurred and smouldering richness, the absolute
negation of all sharp lines and lights is in his very latest style, and
he has gone past Giorgione on his own ground. Then in strange contrast
is the "Christ Crowned with Thorns," at Vienna, a tragic figure
stupefied with suffering. His last great work was the "Pieta" in
the Academy, which, though unfinished, is nobly designed and very
impressive. He places the Virgin supporting the Body in a great
dome-shaped niche, which gives elevation. It is flanked by two calm,
antique, stone figures, whose impassive air contrasts with the wild pain
and grief below. The Magdalen steps out towards the spectator with the
wailing cry of a Greek tragedy. It perhaps hardly moves us like the
concentrated feeling of Bellini's Madonna, or the hurried, trembling
grief of Tintoretto's Magdalen, but it is monumental in the sweeping
grace of its line, and full of nobility of feeling. It is sadly rubbed
and darkened and has lost much of Titian's colour, but is still
beautiful in its deep greys mingled with a sombre golden glow, as
of half-extinguished fires. These late paintings are of the true
impressionist order; looked at closely they present a mass of scumbled
touches, of incoherent dashes, but if we step farther away, to the
right focus, light and dark arrange themselves, order shines through the
whole, and we see what the great master meant us to see. "Titian's later
creations," says Vasari, "are struck off rapidly, so that when close you
cannot see them, but afar they look perfect, and this is the style which
so many tried to imitate, to show that they were practised hands, but
only produced absurdities." Titian was preparing the picture for the
Frari, in payment for the grant of a tomb for himself, when in August
1576 the plague broke out in Venice, and on the 27th the great painter
died of it in his own house. The stringent regulations concerning
infection were relaxed to do honour to one of the greatest sons of
Venice, and he was laid to rest in the Frari, borne there in solemn
procession, through a city stricken by terror and panic, and buried
in the Chapel of the Crucified Saviour, for which his last work was
ordered. The "Assumption" of his prime looked down upon him, and close
at hand was the "Madonna