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the Presence. The celestial army is ranged around. Below, a little lower than the angels, are Charles and Philip with their wives, on their knees, with white cowls and clasped hands,--Charles in his premature age, with worn face and grizzled beard; and Philip in his youth of unwholesome fairness, with red lips and pink eyelids, such as Titian painted him in the Adonis. The foreground is filled with prophets and saints of the first dignity, and a kneeling woman, whose face is not visible, but whose attitude and drapery are drawn with the sinuous and undulating grace of that hand which could not fail. Every figure is turned to the enthroned Deity, touched with ineffable light. The artist has painted heaven, and is not absurd. In that age of substantial faith such achievements were possible.
There are two Venuses by Titian very like that of Dresden, but the heads have not the same dignity; and a Danaé which is a replica of the Vienna one. His Salome bearing the Head of John the Baptist is one of the finest impersonations of the pride of life conceivable. So unapproachable are the soft lights and tones on the perfect arms and shoulders of the full-bodied maiden, that Tintoret
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one day exclaimed in despair before it, "That fellow paints with ground flesh."
This gallery possesses one of the last works of Titian,--the Battle of Lepanto, which was fought when the artist was ninety-four years of age. It is a courtly allegory,--King Philip holds his little son in his arms, a courier angel brings the news of victory, and to the infant a palm-branch and the scroll Majora tibi. Outside you see the smoke and flash of a naval battle, and a malignant and tur-baned Turk lies bound on the floor. It would seem incredible that this enormous canvas should have been executed at such an age, did we not know that when the pest cut the mighty master off in his hundredth year he was busily at work upon a Descent from the Cross, which Palma the Elder finished on his knees and dedicated to God: Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit Palma reverenter absolvit Deoque dicavit opus.
The vast representation of Titian rather injures Veronese and Tintoret. Opposite the Gloria of Yuste hangs the sketch of that stupendous Paradise of Tintoret, which we see in the Palace of the Doges,--the biggest picture ever painted by mortal, thirty feet high and seventy-four long.
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