background, in the breadth of the draperies, it is already
Giorgionesque. Nay, even here Titian, above all, asserts _himself_, and
lays the foundation of his own manner. The type of the divine Bambino
differs widely from that adopted by Giorgione in the altar-pieces of
Castelfranco and the Prado Museum at Madrid. The virgin is a woman
beautified only by youth and intensity of maternal love. Both Giorgione
and Titian in their loveliest types of womanhood are sensuous as
compared with the Tuscans and Umbrians, or with such painters as
Cavazzola of Verona and the suave Milanese, Bernardino Luini. But
Giorgione's sensuousness is that which may fitly characterise the
goddess, while Titian's is that of the woman, much nearer to the
everyday world in which both artists lived.

In the Imperial Gallery of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg is a
beautiful _Madonna and Child_ in a niche of coloured marble mosaic,
which is catalogued as an early Titian under the influence of Giovanni
Bellini. Judging only from the reproduction on a large scale done by
Messrs. Braun and Co., the writer has ventured to suggest
elsewhere[9]--prefacing his suggestions with the avowal that he is not
acquainted with the picture itself--that we may have here, not an early
Titian, but that rarer thing an early Giorgione. From the list of the
former master's works it must at any rate be struck out, as even the
most superficial comparison with, for instance, _La Zingarella_
suffices to prove. In the notable display of Venetian art made at the
New Gallery in the winter of 1895 were included two pictures (Nos. 1 and
7 in the catalogue) ascribed to the early time of Titian and evidently
from the same hand. These were a _Virgin and Child_ from the collection,
so rich in Venetian works, of Mr. R.H. Benson (formerly among the
Burghley House pictures), and a less well-preserved _Virgin and Child
with Saints_ from the collection of Captain Holford at Dorchester House.