last work of Sanzio its painfully artificial character. Titian himself
in the _St. Sebastian_ of Brescia, and above all in the much-vaunted
masterpiece, _The Martyrdom of St. Peter the Dominican_, sins in the
same direction, but exceptionally only, and, as it were, against his
better self.

Little wonder that the Franciscan Fathers were at first uncertain, and
only half inclined to be enthusiastic, when they entered into possession
of a work hitherto without parallel in Italian or any other art.[40]
What is great, and at the same time new, must inevitably suffer
opposition at the outset. In this case the public, admitted on the high
festival of St. Bernardino's Day in the year 1518 to see the vast panel,
showed themselves less timorous, more enthusiastically favourable than
the friars had been. Fra Germano, the guardian of Santa Maria de' Frari,
and the chief mover in the matter, appears to have offered an apology to
the ruffled painter, and the Fathers retained the treasure as against
the Imperial Envoy, Adorno, who had seen and admired Titian's wonderful
achievement on the day of its ceremonial introduction to the Venetians.

To the year 1519 belongs the _Annunciation_ in the Cathedral of Treviso,
the merit of which, in the opinion of the writer, has been greatly
overstated. True, the Virgin, kneeling in the foreground as she awaits
the divine message, is of unsurpassable suavity and beauty; but the
foolish little archangel tumbling into the picture and the grotesquely
ill-placed donor go far to mar it. Putting aside for the moment the
beautiful and profoundly moving representations of the subject due to
the Florentines and the Sienese--both sculptors and painters--south of
the Alps, and to the Netherlanders north of them, during the whole of
the fifteenth century, the essential triviality of the conception in the
Treviso picture makes such a work as Lorenzo Lotto's pathetic