The _Baptism of Christ_, with Zuanne Ram as donor, now in the Gallery of
the Capitol at Rome, had been by Crowe and Cavalcaselle taken away from
Titian and given to Paris Bordone, but the keen insight of Morelli led
him to restore it authoritatively, and once for all, to Titian. Internal
evidence is indeed conclusive in this case that the picture must be
assigned to a date when Bordone was but a child of tender years.[15]
Here Titian is found treating this great scene in the life of Christ
more in the style of a Giorgionesque pastoral than in the solemn
hieratic fashion adopted by his great predecessors and contemporaries.
The luxuriant landscape is in the main Giorgionesque, save that here and
there a naked branch among the leafage--and on one of them the
woodpecker--strongly recalls Giovanni Bellini. The same robust,
round-limbed young Venetian, with the inexpressive face, does duty here
as St. John the Baptist, who in the _Three Ages_, presently to be
discussed, appears much more appropriately as the amorous shepherd. The
Christ, here shown in the flower of youthful manhood, with luxuriant
hair and softly curling beard, will mature later on into the divine
_Cristo della Moneta_. The question at once arises here, Did Titian in
the type of this figure derive inspiration from Giovanni Bellini's
splendid _Baptism of Christ_, finished in 1510 for the Church of S.
Corona at Vicenza, but which the younger artist might well have seen a
year or two previously, while it was in the course of execution in the
workshop of the venerable master? Apart from its fresh naïveté, and its
rare pictorial charm, how trivial and merely anecdotic does the
conception of Titian appear by the side of that of Bellini, so lofty, so
consoling in its serene beauty, in the solemnity of its sunset
colour![16] Alone in the profile portrait of the donor, Zuanne Ram,
placed in the picture with an awkwardness attractive in its naïvete,
but superbly painted, is Titian already a full-grown master standing
alone.