the picture are such as are very generally associated with the
colour-schemes of Palma. An old repetition, with a slight variation in
the Bambino, is in the royal collection at Hampton Court, where it long
bore--indeed it does so still on the frame--the name of Palma Vecchio.

It will be remembered that Vasari assigns to the _Tobias and the Angel_
in the Church of S. Marciliano at Venice the exact date 1507, describing
it, moreover, with greater accuracy than he does any other work by
Titian. He mentions even "the thicket, in which is a St. John the
Baptist kneeling as he prays to heaven, whence comes a splendour of
light." The Aretine biographer is followed in this particular by
Morelli, usually so eagle-eyed, so little bound by tradition in tracing
the beginnings of a great painter. The gifted modern critic places the
picture among the quite early works of our master. Notwithstanding this
weight of authority, the writer feels bound to dissent from the view
just now indicated, and in this instance to follow Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, who assign to the _Tobias and the Angel_ a place much
later on in Titian's long career. The picture, though it hangs high in
the little church for which it was painted, will speak for itself to
those who interrogate it without _parti pris_. Neither in the
figures--the magnificently classic yet living archangel Raphael and the
more naïve and realistic Tobias--nor in the rich landscape with St. John
the Baptist praying is there anything left of the early Giorgionesque
manner. In the sweeping breadth of the execution, the summarising power
of the brush, the glow from within of the colour, we have so many
evidences of a style in its fullest maturity. It will be safe,
therefore, to place the picture well on in Titian's middle period.[17]

The _Three Ages_ in the Bridgewater Gallery and the so-called _Sacred
and Profane Love_ in the Borghese Gallery represent the apogee of