hair and beard, in Titian's
picture at Madrid cannot possibly be, as has hitherto been almost
universally assumed, Alfonso I. of Ferrara, but may very probably be his
son, Ercole II. This alone invalidates the favourite designation of the
Louvre picture, and renders it highly unlikely that we have here the
"stupendous" portrait of the Signora Laura mentioned by Vasari. A
comparison of the Madrid portrait with the so-called _Giorgio Cornaro_
of Castle Howard--a famous portrait by Titian of a gentleman holding a
hawk, and having a sporting dog as his companion, which was seen at the
recent Venetian exhibition of the New Gallery--results in something like
certainty that in both is the same personage portrayed. It is not only
that the quality and cast of the close curling hair and beard are the
same in both portraits, and that the handsome features agree exceedingly
well; the sympathetic personage gives in either case the same impression
of splendid manhood fully and worthily enjoyed, yet not abused. This
means that if the Madrid portrait be taken to present the gracious
Ercole II. of Ferrara, then must it be held that also in the Castle
Howard picture is Alfonso's son and successor portrayed. In the latter
canvas, which bears, according to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the later
signature "Titianus F.," the personage is, it may be, a year or two
older. Let it be borne in mind that only on the _back_ of the canvas is,
or rather was, to be found the inscription: "Georgius Cornelius, frater
Catterinae Cipri et Hierusalem Reginae (_sic_)," upon the authority of
which it bears its present designation.

The altar-piece, _The Virgin and Child with Angels, adored by St.
Francis, St. Blaise, and a Donor_, now in San Domenico, but formerly in
San Francesco at Ancona, bears the date 1520 and the signature "Titianus
Cadorinus pinsit," this being about the first instance in which the
later spelling "Titianus" appears. If as a pictorial achievement it
cannot rank with the San Niccolo and the Pesaro altar-pieces, it
presents some special points of interest which make it easily
distinguishable from these. The conception is marked by a peculiar
intensity but rarely to be met with in our master at this stage, and
hardly in any other altar-piece of this particular type. It reveals a
passionate unrest, an element of the uncurbed, the excessive, which one
expects to find rather in Lorenzo Lotto than in Titian, whose dramatic
force is generally, eve