l as colour; but his
deficiency lay--a deficiency at least when he is compared with
Raphael--in not possessing the power, like him, of correcting the form
of his model by any general idea of beauty in his own mind. Of this his
_St. Sebastian with other Saints_ (in the Vatican) is a particular
instance. This figure appears to be a most exact representation both of
the form and colour of the model which he then happened to have before
him, and has all the force of nature, and the colouring of flesh itself;
but unluckily the model was of a bad form, especially the legs. Titian
has with much care preserved these defects, as he has imitated the
beauty and brilliancy of the colouring...."

Of the Sebastian, Vasari says very much the same as Reynolds. "He is
nude," he writes, "and has been exactly copied from the life without the
slightest admixture of art, no efforts for the sake of beauty have been
sought in any part--trunk or limbs; all is as nature left it, so that it
might seem to be a sort of cast from the life. It is nevertheless
considered very fine, and the figure of our Lady with the infant in her
arms, whom all the other figures are looking at, is also accounted most
beautiful."

Two more of the pictures of Titian's earliest period are in the National
Gallery--the _Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen_ (No. 270), and the
_Holy Family_ (No. 4). The former is ascribed to about the year 1514,
partly on the ground that the group of buildings in the landscape is
identical, line for line, with that in the Dresden _Venus_ painted by
Giorgione but completed by Titian after his death. The same landscape
also occurs in the beautiful little _Cupid_ in the Vienna

[Illustration: PLATE XV.--TITIAN

THE HOLY FAMILY

_National Gallery, London_]

Academy, and, as Mr Herbert Cook suggests, possibly represents some
cherished spot in Titian's memory connected with his mountain home at
Pieve di Cadore.

The _Holy Family_, above mentioned, is a most charming example of the
_sacra conversazione_ as developed by Titian from the somewhat formal
and austere conception of Bellini and his contemporaries into something
eminently characteristic of the secular side of his genius. The very
titles of two of his most beautiful and most famous pictures of this
sort proclaim the hold they have taken on the popular mind. The one is
the _Madonna of the Cherries_, in the Vienna Gallery. The other is the
_Madonna with the Rabbit_, in the Louvre. In