magnificent show pieces aiming above all
at decorative pomp and an imposing general effect.

We come to earth and every-day weariness again with the full-length of
Charles V., which is now in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. Here the
monarch, dressed in black and seated in a well-worn crimson velvet
chair, shows without disguise how profoundly he is ravaged by ill-health
and _ennui_. Fine as the portrait still appears notwithstanding its bad
condition, one feels somehow that Titian is not in this instance, as he
is in most others, perfect master of his material, of the main elements
of his picture. The problem of relieving the legs cased in black against
a relatively light background, and yet allowing to them their full
plastic form, is not perfectly solved. Neither is it, by the way, as a
rule in the canvases of those admirable painters of men, the
quasi-Venetians, Moretto of Brescia and Moroni of Bergamo. The
Northerners--among them Holbein and Lucidel--came nearer to perfect
success in this particular matter. The splendidly brushed-in prospect of
cloudy sky and far-stretching country recalls, as Morelli has observed,
the landscapes of Rubens, and suggests that he underwent the influence
of the Cadorine in this respect as in many others, especially after his
journey as ambassador to Madrid.

Another portrait, dating from the first visit to Augsburg, is the
half-length of the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, now in the Imperial
Gallery at Vienna. He sits obese and stolid, yet not without the dignity
that belongs to absolute simplicity, showing on his left cheek the wound
received at the battle of Muehlberg. The picture has, as a portrait by
Titian, no very commanding merit, no seduction of technique, and it is
easy to imagine that Cesare Vecellio may have had a share in it.
Singular is the absence of all pose, of all attempt to harmonise the
main lines of the design or give pictorial elegance to the naive
directness of the presentment. This mode of conception may well have
been dictated to the courtly Venetian by sturdy John Frederick himself.

The master painted for Mary, Queen Dowager of Hungary, four canvases
specially mentioned by Vasari, _Prometheus Bound to the Rock, Ixion,
Tantalus_, and _Sisyphus_, which were taken to Spain at the moment of
the definitive migration of the court in 1556. Crowe and Cavalcaselle
state that the whole four perished in the all-devouring conflagration of
the Pardo Palace, and put dow