developments of style only, to make, even tentatively, a chronological
arrangement of Titian's early works. This is that in those painted
_poesie_ of the earlier Venetian art of which the germs are to be found
in Giovanni Bellini and Cima, but the flower is identified with
Giorgione, Titian surrendered himself to the overmastering influence of
the latter with less reservation of his own individuality than in his
sacred works. In the earlier imaginative subjects the vivifying glow of
Giorgionesque poetry moulds, colours, and expands the genius of Titian,
but so naturally as neither to obliterate nor to constrain it. Indeed,
even in the late time of our master--checking an unveiled sensuousness
which sometimes approaches dangerously near to a downright
sensuality--the influence of the master and companion who vanished half
a century before victoriously reasserts itself. It is this _renouveau_
of the Giorgionesque in the genius of the aged Titian that gives so
exquisite a charm to the _Venere del Pardo_, so strange a pathos to that
still later _Nymph and Shepherd,_ which was a few years ago brought out
of its obscurity and added to the treasures of the Imperial Gallery at
Vienna.

The sacred works of the early time are Giorgionesque, too, but with a
difference. Here from the very beginning there are to be noted a
majestic placidity, a fulness of life, a splendour of representation,
very different from the tremulous sweetness, the spirit of aloofness and
reserve which informs such creations as the _Madonna of Castelfranco_
and the _Madonna with St. Francis and St. Roch_ of the Prado Museum.
Later on, we have, leaving farther and farther behind the Giorgionesque
ideal, the overpowering force and majesty of the _Assunta_, the true
passion going hand-in-hand with beauty of the Louvre _Entombment_, the
rhetorical passion and scenic magnificence of the _St. Peter Martyr_.