actual. The _Nobleman putting to
death his Wife_ is dramatic, almost terrible in its fierce, awkward
realism, yet it does not rise much higher in interpretation than what
our neighbours would to-day call the _drame passionel._ The interest is
much the same that is aroused in a student of Elizabethan literature by
that study of murder, _Arden of Feversham_, not that higher attraction
that he feels--horrors notwithstanding--for _The Maid's Tragedy_ of
Beaumont and Fletcher, or _The Duchess of Malfi_ of Webster.[24]

[Illustration: _"Noli me tangere." National Gallery. From a Photograph
published by the Autotype Company._]

A convenient date for the magnificent _St. Mark enthroned, with SS.
Sebastian, Roch, Cosmas, and Damianus_, is 1512, when Titian, having
completed his share of the work at the Scuola del Santo, returned to
Venice. True, it is still thoroughly Giorgionesque, except in the
truculent _St. Mark_; but, then, as essentially so were the frescoes
just terminated. The noble altar-piece[25] symbolises, or rather
commemorates, the steadfastness of the State face to face with the
terrors of the League of Cambrai:--on the one side St. Sebastian,
standing, perhaps, for martyrdom by superior force of arms, St. Roch for
plague (the plague of Venice in 1510); on the other, SS. Cosmas and
Damianus, suggesting the healing of these evils. The colour is
Giorgionesque in that truer sense in which Barbarelli's own is so to be
described. Especially does it show points of contact with that of the
so-called _Three Philosophers_, which, on the authority of Marcantonio
Michiel (the _Anonimo_), is rightly or wrongly held to be one of the
last works of the Castelfranco master. That is to say, it is both
sumptuous and boldly contrasted in the local hues, the sovereign unity
of general tone not being attained by any sacrifice or attenuation, by
any undue fusion of these, as in some of the second-rate Giorgionesques.
Common to both is the use of a brilliant scarlet, which Giorgione
successfully employs in the robe of the Trojan Aeneas, and Titian on a
more extensive scale in that of one of the healing saints. These last
are among the most admirable portrait-figures in the life-work of
Titian. In them a simplicity, a concentration akin to that of Giovanni
Bellini and Bartolommeo Montagna is combined with the suavity and
flexibility of Barbarelli. The St. Sebastian is the most beautiful among
the youthful male figures, as the _Venus_ of