d along by the executioner, with two spectators in the
background," resembles most among Giorgione's authentic creations the
_Christ bearing the Cross_ in the Casa Loschi at Vicenza. The
resemblance is not, however, one of colour and technique, since this
last--one of the earliest of Giorgiones--still recalls Giovanni Bellini,
and perhaps even more strongly Cima; it is one of type and conception.
In both renderings of the divine countenance there is--or it may be the
writer fancies that there is--underlying that expression of serenity and
humiliation accepted which is proper to the subject, a sinister,
disquieting look, almost a threat. Crowe and Cavalcaselle have called
attention to a certain disproportion in the size of the head, as
compared with that of the surrounding actors in the scene. A similar
disproportion is to be observed in another early Titian, the _Christ
between St. Andrew and St. Catherine_ in the Church of SS. Ermagora and
Fortunato (commonly called S. Marcuola) at Venice. Here the head of the
infant Christ, who stands on a pedestal holding the Orb, between the two
saints above mentioned, is strangely out of proportion to the rest.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle had refused to accept this picture as a genuine
Titian (vol. ii. p. 432), but Morelli restored it to its rightful place
among the early works.

Next to these paintings, and certainly several years before the _Three
Ages_ and the _Sacred and Profane Love_, the writer is inclined to place
the _Bishop of Paphos (Baffo) recommended by Alexander VI. to St.
Peter_, once in the collection of Charles I.[11] and now in the Antwerp
Gallery. The main elements of Titian's art may be seen here, in
imperfect fusion, as in very few even of his early productions. The not
very dignified St. Peter, enthroned on a kind of pedestal adorned with a
high relief of classic design, of the type which we shall find again in
the _Sacred and Profane Love_, recalls Giovanni Bellini, or rather his
immediate followers; the magnificently robed Alexander VI. (Rodrigo
Borgia), wearing the triple tiara, gives back the style in portraiture
of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio; while the kneeling Jacopo Pesaro--an
ecclesiastic in tonsure and vesture, but none the less a commander of
fleets, as the background suggests--is one of the most characteristic
portraits of the Giorgionesque school. Its pathos, its intensity,
contrast curiously with the less passionate absorption of the same
_Baffo_ in