ne it not by speech, but stir their happy languor only with faint
notes of music borne on the still, warm air.

[Illustration: _The Three Ages. Bridgewater Gallery. From the Plate in
Lafenestre's "Vie et Oeuvre du Titien" (May, Paris.)_]

The _Sacred and Profane Love_ of the Borghese Gallery is one of the
world's pictures, and beyond doubt the masterpiece of the early or
Giorgionesque period. To-day surely no one will be found to gainsay
Morelli when he places it at the end of that period, which it so
incomparably sums up--not at the beginning, when its perfection would be
as incomprehensible as the less absolute achievement displayed in other
early pieces which such a classification as this would place after the
Borghese picture. The accompanying reproduction obviates all necessity
for a detailed description. Titian painted afterwards perhaps more
wonderfully still--with a more sweeping vigour of brush, with a higher
authority, and a play of light as brilliant and diversified. He never
attained to a higher finish and perfection of its kind, or more
admirably suited the technical means to the thing to be achieved. He
never so completely gave back, coloured with the splendour of his own
genius, the rays received from Giorgione. The delicious sunset landscape
has all the Giorgionesque elements, with more spaciousness, and lines of
a still more suave harmony. The grand Venetian _donna_ who sits
sumptuously robed, flower-crowned, and even gloved, at the sculptured
classic fount is the noblest in her pride of loveliness, as she is one
of the first, of the long line of voluptuous beauties who will occupy
the greatest brushes of the Cinquecento. The little love-god who,
insidiously intervening, paddles in the water of the fountain and
troubles its surface, is Titian's very own, owing nothing to any
forerunner. The divinely beautiful _Profane Love_--or, as we shall
presently see, _Venus_--is the most flawless presentment of female
loveliness unveiled that modern art has known up to this date, save only
the _Venus_ of Giorgione himself (in the Dresden Gallery), to which it
can be but little posterior. The radiant freshness of the face, with its
glory of half-unbound hair, does not, indeed, equal the sovereign
loveliness of the Dresden _Venus_ or the disquieting charm of the
Giovanelli _Zingarella_ (properly Hypsipyle). Its beauty is all on the
surface, while theirs stimulates the imagination of the beholder. The
body with its s