n the _Prometheus_ and _Sisyphus_ of the
Prado Gallery as copies by Sanchez Coello. It is difficult to form a
definite judgment on canvases so badly hung, so darkened and injured.
They certainly look much more like Venetian originals than Spanish
copies. These mythological subjects may very properly be classed with
the all too energetic ceiling-pictures now in the Sacristy of the
Salute. Here again the master, in the effort to be grandiose in a style
not properly his, overreaches himself and becomes artificial. He must
have left Augsburg this time in the autumn of 1548, since in the month
of October of that year we find him at Innsbruck making a family picture
of the children of King Ferdinand, the Emperor's brother. That monarch
himself, his two sons and five daughters, he had already portrayed.

Much feasting, much rejoicing, in the brilliant and jovial circle
presided over by Aretino and the brother Triumvirs, followed upon our
master's return to Venice. Aretino, who after all was not so much the
scourge as the screw of princes, would be sure to think the more highly
of the friend whom he really cherished in all sincerity, when he
returned from close and confidential intercourse with the mightiest
ruler of the age, the source not only of honour but of advantages which
the Aretine, like Falstaff, held more covetable because more
substantial. To the year 1549 belongs the gigantic woodcut _The
Destruction of Pharaoh's Host_, designed, according to the inscription
on the print, by "the great and immortal Titian," and engraved by
Domenico delle Greche, who, notwithstanding his name, calls himself
"depentore Venetiano." He is not, as need hardly be pointed out, to be
confounded with the famous Veneto-Spanish painter, Domenico
Theotocopuli, Il Greco, whose date of birth is just about this time
(1548).

Titian, specially summoned by the Emperor, travelled back to Augsburg in
November 1550. Charles had returned thither with Prince Philip, the
heir-presumptive of the Spanish throne, and it can hardly be open to
question that one of the main objects for which the court painter was
made to undertake once more the arduous journey across the Alps was to
depict the son upon whom all the monarch's hopes and plans were centred.
Charles, whose health had still further declined, was now, under an
accumulation of political misfortune, gloomier than ever before, more
completely detached from the things of the world. Barely over fifty at