years ago brought out
of its obscurity and added to the treasures of the Imperial Gallery at
Vienna.

The sacred works of the early time are Giorgionesque, too, but with a
difference. Here from the very beginning there are to be noted a
majestic placidity, a fulness of life, a splendour of representation,
very different from the tremulous sweetness, the spirit of aloofness and
reserve which informs such creations as the _Madonna of Castelfranco_
and the _Madonna with St. Francis and St. Roch_ of the Prado Museum.
Later on, we have, leaving farther and farther behind the Giorgionesque
ideal, the overpowering force and majesty of the _Assunta_, the true
passion going hand-in-hand with beauty of the Louvre _Entombment_, the
rhetorical passion and scenic magnificence of the _St. Peter Martyr_.

The _Baptism of Christ_, with Zuanne Ram as donor, now in the Gallery of
the Capitol at Rome, had been by Crowe and Cavalcaselle taken away from
Titian and given to Paris Bordone, but the keen insight of Morelli led
him to restore it authoritatively, and once for all, to Titian. Internal
evidence is indeed conclusive in this case that the picture must be
assigned to a date when Bordone was but a child of tender years.[15]
Here Titian is found treating this great scene in the life of Christ
more in the style of a Giorgionesque pastoral than in the solemn
hieratic fashion adopted by his great predecessors and contemporaries.
The luxuriant landscape is in the main Giorgionesque, save that here and
there a naked branch among the leafage--and on one of them the
woodpecker--strongly recalls Giovanni Bellini. The same robust,
round-limbed young Venetian, with the inexpressive face, does duty here
as St. John the Baptist, who in the _Three Ages_, presently to be
discussed, appears much more appropriately as the amorous shepherd. The
Christ, here shown in the flower of youthful manhood, with luxuriant
hair and softly curling beard, will mature later on into the divine
_Cristo della Moneta_. The question at once arises here, Did Titian in
the type of this figure derive inspiration from Giovanni Bellini's
splendid _Baptism of Christ_, finished in 1510 for the Church of S.
Corona at Vicenza, but which the younger artist might well have seen a
year or two previously, while it was in the course of execution in the
workshop of the venerable master? Apart from its fresh naivete, and its
rare pictorial charm, how trivial and merely anecdotic does t