as none who even approached
the old Venetian painter in the art which he practised freely to the
last. Painting in Italy was everywhere losing its pre-eminence. It had
become, even when it was not so nominally, thoroughly secularized;--and
with reason, for the painters by their art-creed and by their lives were
fitter to represent gods and goddesses, in whom no man believed, than to
give earnest expression to a living faith. Even Titian, great as he was,
proved a better painter of heathen mythology than of sacred subjects.

But within certain limits and in certain directions, Titian stands
unequalled. He has a high place for composition and for drawing, and his
colouring was, beyond comparison, grand and true. He was great as a
landscape painter, and he was the best portrait painter whom the world
ever saw. In his painting is seen, not, indeed, the life of the spirit,
but the life of the senses 'in its fullest power,' and in Titian there
was such large mastery of this life, that in his freedom there was no
violence, but the calmness of supreme strength, the serenity of perfect
satisfaction. His painting was a reflection of the old Greek idea of the
life of humanity as a joyous existence, so long as the sun of youth,
maturity, health, and good fortune shone, without even that strain of
foreboding pain, and desperate closing with fate, which troubled the
bliss of ancient poet or sculptor. A large proportion of Titian's
principal pictures are at Venice and Madrid.

Among Titian's finest sacred pictures, are his 'Assumption of the
Virgin,' now in the Academy, Venice, where 'the Madonna, a powerful
figure, is borne rapidly upwards, as if divinely impelled; ..,
fascinating groups of infant angels surround her, beneath stand the
apostles, looking up with solemn gestures;' and his 'Entombment of
Christ,' a picture which is also in Venice. Titian's Madonnas were not
so numerous as his Venuses, many of which are judged excellent examples
of the master. His 'Bacchus and Ariadne,' in the National Gallery, is
described by Mrs Jameson, 'as presenting, on a small scale, an epitome
of all the beauties which characterize Titian, in the rich, picturesque,
animated composition, in the ardour of Bacchus, who flings himself from
his car to pursue Ariadne; the dancing bacchanals, the frantic grace of
the bacchante, and the little joyous satyr in front, trailing the head of
the sacrifice.'

Titian's landscapes are the noble backgrounds to m