, to several
other eminent authorities, it is no other than the so-called _Ariosto_,
which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1904. The chief
difficulties in deciding the question are, first, whether it is possible
that a youth of eighteen could have painted such a masterpiece, second,
that the signature _Titianus_ is supposed not to have been used by the
artist before about 1520, and lastly, that the head, at any rate, is
decidedly more in the manner of Giorgione than that of Titian. This
last, of course, did not trouble Vasari, and his testimony is therefore
all the more valuable; but all difficulties vanish if we accept Mr.
Cook's theory that the portrait was begun by Giorgione in 1508, was left
incomplete at his sudden death in 1510, and finished by Titian in 1520.
That is to say, the head and general design is that of Giorgione, the
marvellous finish of the sleeve and other parts that of Titian.

Of works left unfinished at a master's death and completed by a pupil
there are numerous instances; the famous _Bacchanal_ at Alnwick is one
which takes us a step further in Titian's career. This was begun by
Giovanni Bellini, and Titian was invited by the Duke of Ferrara, in
1516, to finish it. The landscape is entirely his. To complete the
decoration of the apartment in which the picture was hung, he was
called upon to paint two others of the same size, one the _Triumph of
Bacchus_, or as it is usually called _Bacchus and Ariadne_ (now in the
National Gallery) and the other a similar subject, the _Bacchanal_, now
in the Prado (No. 418, formerly 450).

Ridolfi, in his life of Titian characterises our picture as one to whose
unparalleled merits he is inadequate to do justice; "There is," he says,
"such a graceful expression in the figure of Ariadne, such beauty in the
children--so strongly marked both in the looks and attitudes is the
joyous character of the licentious votaries of Bacchus--the roundness
and correct drawing of the man entwined with snakes, the magnificence of
the sky and landscape, the sporting play of the leaves and branches of
the most vivid tints, and the detailed herbage on the ground tending to
enliven the scene, and the rich tone of colour throughout, form
altogether such a whole that hardly any other work of Titian can stand
in competition with it."

In the composition of the second picture, _The Bacchanal_ at Madrid, a
number of the votaries of Bacchus are assembled on the bank of a
rivule