For this work Titian asked a moderate compensation, and the first vacant brokership for life, all of which the government granted. He moved into a studio in the old palace of the Duke of Milan, at San Samuele on the Grand Canal, where he remained for sixteen years.
It seemed now as though comfort were guaranteed to the hard-working artist. But unfortunately rivalries arose. The Bellinis had worked in this Hall of Council in the Ducal Palace, till they felt the position to be theirs by right. After long discussions, Titian was successful, receiving from the Fondaco an annuity of one hundred ducats as a broker, and the privilege of exemption from certain taxes, while, on the other hand, he had to paint the Doge's portrait.
Titian was now painting the following works for Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, who had married the handsome and celebrated Lucretia Borgia: —
The "Venus Worship," now in the Museum of Madrid, represents the goddess standing on a marble pedestal, with two nymphs at her feet, while winged cupids pluck the apples sacred to Venus, from the branches of great trees, "climbing boughs like boys, dropping down from them like thrushes, loading baskets, throwing and catching, tumbling, fighting, and dancing."
This picture was a favorite study for artists, and it is said that Domenichino wept when he heard that it had been carried to Spain.
"The Three Ages," now in the collection of Lord Ellesmere, has been frequently copied. A cupid steps on two sleeping children: a beautiful girl sits near her lover, "the holy feeling of youthful innocence and affection charmingly expressed in both: " an old man contemplates two skulls on the ground. "To the children, as to the lovers, the forms appropriate to their age are given; and the whole subject is treated with such harmony of means as to create in its way the impression of absolute perfection."
The "Virgin's Rest, near Bethlehem," now in the National Gallery, shows the mother with the infant Christ on her lap, taking a bunch of flowers from St. John. The "Noli Me Tangere," also in the National Gallery, represents Christ with Mary Magdalene on her knees before him. "One cannot look without transport on the mysterious calm of this beautiful scene, which Titian has painted with such loving care, yet with such clever freedom. The picture is like a leaf out of Titian's journal, which tells us how he left his house on the canals, and wandered into the country beyond the lagoons, and lingered in the fresh sweet landscape at eventide, and took nature captive on a calm day at summer's end."
While painting these pictures, besides various portraits of the poet Ariosto, Alfonso, and others, Titian was producing what is generally regarded as his masterpiece, "The Assumption of the Virgin," a colossal picture, now in the Academy of Arts at Venice. It was painted for Santa Maria di Frari, and was shown to the public, March 20, 1518, on St. Bernardino's Day, when all the public offices were closed by order of the Senate, and a great crowd thronged the church.
"The gorgeous blue and red of Mary's tunic and mantle stand out brilliant on the silvery ether, vaulted into a dome, supported by countless cherubs. The ministry of the angels about her is varied and eager. One raises the corner of the mantle, some play the tabor, others hold the pipes, or sing in choir, whilst others again are sunk in wonderment, or point at the Virgin's majesty; and the rest fade into the sky behind, as the sound of bells fades sweetly upon the ear of the passing traveller… All but the head and arms of the Eternal is lost in the halo of brightness towards which the Virgin is ascending. He looks down with serene welcome in his face, an angel on one side ready with a crown of leaves; an archangel swathed in drapery, on the other, eagerly asking leave to deposit on the Virgin's brow the golden cincture in his hands."
Titian was at once declared to be the foremost painter in Venice, and was, indeed, the idol of the people.
He now painted the "Annunciation" for the Cathedral of Treviso, and executed several frescos. Meantime, the Venetian Government threatened that unless he went forward with the work in the Ducal Palace it should be finished by others at his expense. Pressed on every hand for pictures, he still neglected the Palace, and painted the brilliant "Bacchanal," now at Madrid, for Duke Alfonso.
Ariadne reposes on the ground, insensible from wine, while a company of Menads sport about her as Theseus sails away in the distance. The most beautiful Menad, with white muslin tunic and ruby-red bodice and skirt, has the exquisite face and form of Violante, with a violet or pansy on her breast. The painter was now over forty, and still seemed to bear Violante on his heart.
Ariadne, daughter of Minos, King of Crete, according to the legend, fell in love with Theseus, when he came to Crete to kill the Minotaur, and gave him a thread by means of which he found his way out of the labyrinth. In gratitude he offered her his hand. She fled with him, and he deserted her on the Island of Naxos, where Bacchus found her and married her. On the "Bacchanal" a couplet shows its motive, —
"Who drinks not over and over again,
Knows not what drinking is."
Alfonso d'Este was delighted with this gay picture. Although Lucretia Borgia, whom he never loved, had been dead but a few months, he had married a girl in humble station, Laura Dianti, whom he loved tenderly, and who kept his fickle heart true till his death. She must have been a person of gentle and lovely nature, for the duke became kinder to everybody, and more devoted to art, literature, and the refining influences of life.
It is believed that the famous picture in the Louvre called "Titian and his Mistress" represents Laura and Alfonso. "The girl stands behind a table or slab of stone, dressing her hair, whilst a man in the gloom behind her holds, with his left hand, a round mirror, the reflection of which he catches with a square mirror in his right. Into the second of these the girl gently bends her head to look, eagerly watched by her lover, as she twists a long skein of wavy golden hair. Over the white and finely plaited linen that loosely covers her bosom, a short green bodice is carelessly thrown, and a skirt of the same stuff is gathered to the waist by a sash of similar color. The left side of the girl's head is already dressed; she is finishing the right side, and a delightful archness and simplicity beam in the eyes as they turn to catch the semblance in the mirror. The coal-black eye and brow contrast with the ruddy hair; the chiselled nose projects in delicate line from a face of rounded, yet pure contour; and the lips, of a cherry redness, which Titian alone makes natural, are cut with surprising fineness. The light is concentrated with unusual force upon the face and bust of the girl, whilst the form and features of the man are lost in darkness. We pass with surprising rapidity from the most delicate silvery gradations of sunlit flesh and drapery, to the mysterious depths of an almost unfathomable gloom, and we stand before a modelled balance of light and shade that recalls Da Vinci, entranced by a chord of tonic harmony, as sweet and as thrilling as was ever struck by any artist of the Venetian school."
Tired with his constant labor, Titian journeyed to Conegliano, at the foot of the Venetian Alps, and painted, at his leisure, a series of frescos on the front of the Scuola di Santa Maria Nuova, in return for which he received the gift of a house, where he rested ever after, when on his way to Cadore.
In 1522 the great altar-piece of the "Resurrection" was finished for Brescia, and placed on the high altar of St. Nazaro e Celso, where it long remained an object of study by artists. Titian thought the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, in this picture, the best thing he had ever done.
Seven years had now passed since he had received the commission to paint the Hall of the Great Council. His property was to be taken from him, and, alarmed at the prospect, he worked vigorously for several weeks on the "Battle of Cadore" or the other great painting, "The Humiliation of the Emperor Barbarossa by Pope Alexander III."
Duke Alfonso was urging the overworked master for a new picture, the "Bacchus and Ariadne," now in the National Gallery of England: a picture five feet nine inches by six feet three inches. The scene is taken from the classic poem of Catullus, when Ariadne, near the shore of Naxos, flees from the presence of Bacchus, whose chariot is drawn by leopards. He was the son of Jupiter by Semele, whose death being caused by Juno, the god of the vintage was reared by nymphs in Thrace. He taught men the cultivation of the vine and the art of wine-making.
Concerning this picture, Crowe and Cavalcaselle say, "Centuries have robbed the canvas of its freshness, and restorers have done their best to remove its brightest surfaces; yet no one who looks at it even now can fail to acknowledge the magic of its enchantment. Rich harmony of drapery tints and soft modelling, depth of shade and warm flesh, all combine to produce a highly colored glow; yet in the midst of this glow the form of Ariadne seems incomparably fair. Nature was never reproduced more kindly or with greater exuberance than it is in every part of this picture. What subtlety there is in the concentration of light on Ariadne, which alone gives a focus to the composition. What splendor in the contrasts of color, what wealth and diversity of scale in air and vegetation; how infinite is the space, how varied yet mellow the gradations of light and shade.
"There is not a single composition by Titian up to this time in which the scene and the dramatis personæ are more completely in unison; and, looking at these groves and cliffs and seas, or prying into the rich vegetation of the foreground, we are startled beyond measure to think that they were worked out piecemeal, that the figures were put in first and the landscape last. Nor is it without curiosity that we inquire where Titian got that landscape, where he studied that foreground; and we are forced to conclude that he forsook the workshop on the Grand Canal, where there certainly was no vegetation, even in the sixteenth century, and went to Ferrara, and there reproduced with 'botanical fidelity' the iris, the wild rose and columbine, which so exquisitely adorn the very edge of the ground on which the Satyrs tread." This picture has been copied by Rubens, Poussin, and other noted artists.
About this time the "Flora" of the Uffizi was painted, a beautiful woman with the Violante face. "She is not yet dressed, but her hair is looped up with a silken cord so as to shape the most charming puffs above the ears, falling in short and plaited waves to the bosom, leaving bare the whole of the face, the neck, and throat. No one here holds the mirrors, yet the head is bent and the eyes are turned as if some one stood by to catch the glance, and stretch a hand for the flowers; for whilst with her left Flora strives by an intricate and momentary play of the fingers, to keep fast the muslin that falls from her shoulder and the damask that slips from her form, with the other she presents a handful of roses, jessamines, and violets to an unseen lover. The white dress, though muslin-fine and gathered into minute folds, is beyond measure graceful in fall, and contrasts in texture as well as harmonizes in color with the stiffer and more cornered stuff of the rose-tinged cloth which shows such fine damask reflexes on the left arm."
At this time, also, Titian painted one of his most exquisite creations, the "Sleeping Venus," now at Darmstadt, a graceful nude figure asleep on a red couch strewn with roses, her arm under her head. The face is delicate, innocent, pensive, and refined – still the face of Violante, – one of the most beautiful, it seems to me, which an artist has ever put upon canvas. There are several replicas in England and elsewhere. The figure is not more perfect, perhaps, than the Venus of the Uffizi, painted later for the Duke of Urbino, or the Venus of Madrid; but the face is one which I have always felt an especial pleasure in possessing.
Taine says of Titian, "He was endowed with that unique gift of producing Venuses who are real women, and colossi who are real men, a talent for imitating objects closely enough to win us with the illusion and of so profoundly transforming objects as to enkindle reverie. He has at once shown in the same nude beauty a courtesan, a patrician's mistress, a listless and voluptuous fisherman's daughter, and a powerful ideal figure, the masculine force of a sea-goddess, and the undulating forms of a queen of the empyrean…
"The infinite diversities of nature, with all her inequalities, are open to him; the strongest contrasts are within his range; each of his works is as rich as it is novel. The spectator finds in him, as in Rubens, a complete image of the world around him, a history, a psychology, in an epitomized form."
The Venus Anadyomene, now in Lord Ellesmere's collection, rising new-born but full-grown from the sea, wringing her long hair, has the features of a new model, not Violante, but the same which Titian used in his famous Magdalen. This represents a woman of about twenty-five, "with finely rounded limbs and well-modelled figure, handsome face, and streaming golden hair, and the white splendor of the entire form thrown into bold relief by a dark and lonely background. The Magdalen is distinguishable from Venus only by her upturned face and tearful eyes."
Who was this new model? Could it possibly have been Cecilia, the lady whom Titian married about this time? In 1525, a son, Pomponio, was born to him, who became a lifelong sorrow, and before 1530 two other children, Orazio and Lavinia. The happiness of this married life was of short duration, for on the fifth of August, 1530, after the birth of Lavinia, with a mournful heart, he buried Cecilia. One of his friends wrote to the warder of Mantua, "Our master, Titian, is quite disconsolate at the loss of his wife, who was buried yesterday. He told me that in the troubled time of her sickness he was unable to work at the portrait of the Lady Cornelia, or at the picture of the 'Nude,' which he is doing for our most illustrious lord."
Left with three helpless children, Titian sent to Cadore for his sister Orsa, who came and cared for his household as long as she lived. He had grown tired of his home on the Grand Canal, and, longing for the open country, hired a house in the northern suburbs. A little later he took a piece of land adjoining, which extended to the shore, and which became famous in after years for its beauty as a garden and for the distinguished people who gathered there.
Mrs. Jameson says, "He looked over the wide canal which is the thoroughfare between the city of Venice and the Island of Murano; in front, the two smaller islands of San Cristoforo and San Michele; and beyond them Murano, rising on the right, with all its domes and campanili like another Venice. Far off extended the level line of the mainland, and in the distance the towering chain of the Friuli Alps, sublime, half defined, with jagged snow-peaks soaring against the sky; and more to the left, the Euganean hills, Petrarch's home, melting like visions, into golden light. There, in the evening, gondolas filled with ladies and cavaliers, and resounding with music, were seen skimming over the crimson waves of the Lagoon, till the purple darkness came on rapidly – not, as in the north, like a gradual veil, but like a gemmed and embroidered curtain, suddenly let down over all. This was the view from the garden of Titian; so unlike any other in the world that it never would occur to me to compare it with any other. More glorious combinations of sea, mountain, shore, there may be – I cannot tell; like, it is nothing that I have ever beheld or imagined."
Who does not recall such beautiful scenes in silent Venice! And yet one longs, while there, for the sound of the feet of horses, and the zest of a nineteenth-century city; one feels as though life were going by in a dream, and is anxious to awake and be a part of the world's eager, stirring thought. Gondolas and moonlight evenings delight one for a time, but not for long!
Titian was now fifty-four. He had painted the "Entombment of Christ," which was a favorite with Van Dyck, and helped to form his style – a picture four feet and four inches by seven feet, now in the Louvre; the Madonna of San Niccolò di Frari, now in the Vatican, which Pordenone is reported to have said was "not painting, but flesh itself;" the "Madonna di Casa Pesaro," which latter especially won the heartiest praise. St. Peter, St. Francis, and St. Anthony of Padua implore the intercession of the Virgin in favor of the members of the Pesaro family.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle thus speak of it: "High up on a spray of clouds that inwreathe the pillars of the temple, two angels playfully sport with the cross; and, with that wonderful insight which a painter gets who has studied cloud form flitting over Alpine crags, Titian has not only thrown a many-toned gradation of shade on the vapor, but shown its projected shadow on the pillar. The light falls on the clouds, illumines the sky between the pillars, and sheds a clear glow on the angels, casting its brightest ray on the Madonna and the body of the infant Christ… Decompose the light or the shadow, and you find incredible varieties of subtlety, which make the master's art unfathomable. Both are balanced into equal values with a breadth quite admirable, the utmost darks being very heavy and strong without losing their transparency; the highest lights dazzling in brightness, yet broken and full of sparkle. Round the form of the infant Christ the play of white drapery is magic in effect…
"To the various harmonizing elements of hue, of light, and of shade, that of color superadded brings the picture to perfection; its gorgeous tinting so subtly wrought, and so wonderfully interweaving with sun and darkness and varied textures as to resolve itself with the rest into a vast and incomprehensible whole, which comes to the eye an ideal of grand and elevated beauty, a sublime unity, that shows the master who created it to have reached a point in art unsurpassed till now, and unattainable to those who come after him."
"The Martyrdom of St. Peter Martyr," completed in 1529, where Titian "reproduced the human form in its grandest development," has been studied by generations of artists, from Benvenuto Cellini and Rubens to Sir Joshua Reynolds. So valued was it by Venice that the Signoria threatened with death any one who should dare to remove it. Unfortunately it was destroyed by fire in 1867, together with the chapel which contained it.
The "Madonna del Coniglio," at the Louvre, is also much valued. "We ask ourselves, indeed, when looking at this picture, whether an artist with only fleeting ties could have created such a masterpiece; and the answer seems to be that nature here gushes from the innermost recesses of a man's heart who has begun to know the charms of paternity, who has watched a young mother and her yearling child, and seized at a glance those charming but minute passages which seldom or never meet any but a father's eye."
In 1533 a most fortunate thing happened to Titian. Charles V. had come to Bologna, to receive the homage of Italy. The great emperor was an enthusiastic lover of art, had seen Titian's work, and desired a portrait from his hand. The artist hastened thither and painted Charles in armor, bare-headed. He used to say of himself that he was by nature ugly, but being painted so often uglier than he really was, he disappointed favorably many persons, who expected something most unattractive.
Another portrait of him which Titian painted, now at Madrid, shows him in splendid gala dress, with red beard, pale skin, blue eyes, and protruding lower lip.
The sculptor Lombardi was so anxious to look upon the emperor that he carried Titian's paintbox at the sittings, and slyly made a relief portrait of Charles on a tablet in wax, which he slipped into his sleeve. The emperor detected him, asked to see the work, praised it, and had Lombardi put it in marble for him.
Charles was so pleased with the portraits by Titian that he would never sit to any other artist. He called him the Apelles of his time, and paid him one thousand scudi in gold for each portrait. He created Titian a Count of the Lateran Palace, of the Aulic Council, and of the Consistory; with the title of Count Palatine, and all the advantages attached to those dignities. His children were thereby raised to the rank of Nobles of the Empire, with all the honors appertaining to families with four generations of ancestors. He was also made a Knight of the Golden Spur, with the right of entrance to Court.
The Cadorine youth had reached the temple of fame, unaided save by his skilful hand and inventive brain. He sat daily from morning till night at his easel, often ill from overwork, yet urged on by that undying aspiration which we call genius.
He painted the beautiful portrait of the young Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, now in the Pitti Palace, whom Michael Angelo so tenderly loved, and whose untimely death by poison at the hand of his cup-bearer, at Itri, caused general sorrow. Ippolito sat to Titian at Bologna "in the red cap and variegated plumes of a Hungarian chief. His curved sabre hung from an Oriental sash wound round a red-brown coat with golden buttons, and he wielded with his right the mace of command. It appeared as if the burning sun of the Danube valley had bronzed the features of the chieftain, whose skin seemed to glow with a tropical heat, whilst its surface was smooth and burnished as that of the Bella Gioconda." Ippolito urged Titian to come to Rome; Francis I. wished him to visit France; but Titian loved his Venice gardens and his mountain resort at Cadore, and could not be induced to leave them. His father, Gregorio Vecelli, had died in 1527, three years before the death of Cecilia, and Francesco, the dearly loved artist brother, had gone to care for the Cadore home, where he often welcomed with enthusiastic admiration his famous brother, Titian.
The next paintings from the great artist were the "Rape of Proserpina;" portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, the beautiful Eleonora Gonzaga, the twelve Cæsars for Duke Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua; the "Annunciation," for which he received two thousand scudi from the Emperor; "La Bella di Titiano," now in the Pitti, and the "Venus" of the Uffizi. "The face of the 'Bella' was so winning that it lurked in Titian's memory, and passed as a type into numerous canvases, in which the painter tried to realize an ideal of loveliness. The head being seen about two-thirds to the left, whilst the eyes are turned to the right, the spectator is fascinated by the glance in whatever direction he looks at the canvas. The eye is grave, serene, and kindly, the nose delicate and beautifully shaped, the mouth divine. Abundant hair of a warm auburn waves along the temples, leaving a stray curl to drop on the forehead. The rest is plaited and twisted into coils round a head of the most symmetrical shape. A gold chain falls over a throat of exquisite model, and the low dress, with its braided ornaments and slashed sleeves alternately tinted in blue and white and purple, is magnificent. One hand, the left, is at rest; the other holds a tassel hanging from a girdle. Nothing can exceed the delicacy and subtlety with which the flesh and dress are painted, the tones being harmonized and thrown into keeping by a most varied use and application of glazings and scumblings."
Of the Uffizi "Venus," Crowe and Cavalcaselle say, "What the painter achieves, and no other master of the age achieves with equal success, is the representation of a beauteous living being, whose fair and polished skin is depicted with enamelled gloss, and yet with every shade of modulation which a delicate flesh comports: flesh not marbled or cold, but sweetly toned, and mantling with life's blood, flesh that seems to heave and rise and fall with every breath. Perfect distribution of space, a full and ringing harmony of tints, atmosphere both warm and mellow, are all combined in such wise as to bring us in contact with something that is real; and we feel, as we look into the canvas, that we might walk into that apartment and find room to wander in the gray twilight into which it is thrown by the summer sky that shows through the coupled windows."
At the feet of Venus a little dog lies curled up on the couch. In the Venus of Madrid, she pats the back of a dog, while her lover plays an organ at the foot of the couch.
It is interesting to learn how Titian produced such effects by his brush. Says Palma Giovine, "Titian prepared his pictures with a solid stratum of pigment, which served as a bed or fundament, upon which to return frequently. Some of these preparations were made with resolute strokes of a brush heavily laden with color, the half-tints struck in with pure red earth, the lights with white, modelled into relief by touches of the same brush dipped into red, black, and yellow. In this way he would give the promise of a figure in four strokes. After laying this foundation, he would turn the picture to the wall, and leave it there perhaps for months, turning it round again after a time, to look at it carefully, and scan the parts as he would the face of his greatest enemy.
"If at this time any portion of it should appear to him to have been defective, he would set to work to correct it, applying remedies as a surgeon might apply them, cutting off excrescences here, super-abundant flesh there, redressing an arm, adjusting or setting a limb, regardless of the pain which it might cause. In this way he would reduce the whole to a certain symmetry, put it aside, and return again a third or more times, till the first quintessence had been covered over with its padding of flesh. It was contrary to his habit to finish at one painting, and he used to say that a poet who improvises cannot hope to form pure verses. But of 'condiments,' in the shape of last retouches, he was particularly fond. Now and then he would model the light into half-tint with a rub of his finger, or with a touch of his thumb he would dab a spot of dark pigment into some corner to strengthen it; or throw in a reddish stroke – a tear of blood, so to speak – to break the parts superficially. In fact, when finishing, he painted much more with his fingers than with his brush." Titian used to say, "White, red, and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs, but one must know how to use them." Titian painted rapidly. One of his best friends said that "he could execute a portrait as quickly as another could scratch an ornament on a chest."
In 1537 the Council of Ten, angered at Titian's delays in frescoing the ducal palace, gave a portion of the work to the noted artist Pordenone, took away his brokership, and decreed that he should refund his revenues from that source for the past twenty years. In dismay, Titian left his orders from emperors and princes, and went to work in the great halls. Two years later his broker's patent was restored, and, Pordenone having died in 1538, the patronage of the Republic came again into his hands.
Titian now painted the "Angel and Tobit," of San Marciliano at Venice, and the "Presentation in the Temple," now at the Venice Academy, the latter "the finest and most complete creation of Venetian art since the 'Peter Martyr,' and the 'Madonna di Casa Pesaro.'"
This picture is one of the largest of the master's works, being twenty-five feet long. "Mary, in a dress of celestial blue, ascends the steps of the temple in a halo of radiance. She pauses on the first landing-place, and gathers her skirts to ascend to the second. The flight is in profile before us. At the top of it the high-priest, in Jewish garments, yellow tunic, blue undercoat and sleeves, and white robe, looks down at the girl with serene and kindly gravity, a priest in cardinal's robes at his side, a menial in black behind him, and a young acolyte in red and yellow holding the book of prayer. At the bottom there are people looking up, some of them leaning on the edge of the step, others about to ascend."
Titian painted several portraits of himself, one now at Berlin, another at Madrid, still another in Florence, and others. They show a bold, high forehead, finely cut nose, penetrating eyes, and much dignity of bearing.
Duke Alfonso of Ferrara and Duke Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua, his noble patrons, had both died; but Pope Paul III. now became an ardent admirer of Titian's work, invited him to Rome, where he spent several months lodged in the Belvedere Palace, and sat to him for a portrait. It is said, after the picture of Paul was finished and set to dry on the terrace of the palace, that the passing crowd doffed their hats, thinking that it was the living pope.
While in Rome, Titian painted many portraits in the pontiff's family, and a "Danaë receiving the Golden Rain," now in the museum of Naples, for Ottavio Farnese, grandson of Paul III., who was married to Margaret, daughter of Emperor Charles V. Danaë was the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos. An oracle had predicted that her son would one day kill Acrisius; therefore, to prevent the fulfilment of the prophecy, Danaë was shut up in a brazen tower. But Jupiter transformed himself into a shower of gold, and descended through the roof of her tower. She became the mother of Perseus, and she and her son were put into a chest and cast into the sea. Jupiter rescued them, and Perseus finally killed his grandfather.
Titian was now sixty-eight years of age, – growing old, but never slacking in energy or industry. He had painted for the Church of San Spirito "Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac," "The Murder of Abel," "David's Victory over Goliath," "The Descent of the Holy Spirit," "The Four Christian Fathers," and "The Four Evangelists." "His figures are not cast in the supernatural mould of those of Michael Angelo at the Sistine, they are not shaped in his sculptural way, or foreshortened in his preternatural manner. They have not the elegance of Raphael, nor the conventional grace of Correggio; but they are built up, as it were, of flesh and blood, and illumined with a magic effect of light and shade and color which differs from all else that was realized elsewhere by selection, outline, and chiaroscuro. They form pictures peculiar to Titian, and pregnant with his, and only his, grand and natural originality." The "Ecce Homo," twelve feet by eight, in the gallery of Vienna, was painted for Giovanni d' Anna, a wealthy merchant. When Henry III. passed through Venice in 1574, he saw this picture, and offered eight hundred ducats for it. When Sir Henry Wotton was English envoy at Venice in 1620, he bought the painting for the Duke of Buckingham, who refused thirty-five thousand dollars offered for it by the Earl of Arundel.