stars--the _Ex Ariadneis aurea temporibus Fixa corona_ of the
poem--shines in Titian's sky with a sublime radiance which corresponds
perfectly to the description, so august in its very conciseness, of
Catullus. The splendour of the colour in this piece--hardly equalled in
its happy audacity, save by the _Madonna del Coniglio_ or _Vierge au
Lapin_ of the Louvre,[41] would be a theme delightful to dwell upon, did
the prescribed limits of space admit of such an indulgence. Even here,
however, where in sympathy with his subject, all aglow with the delights
of sense, he has allowed no conventional limitation to restrain his
imagination from expressing itself in appropriately daring chromatic
harmonies, he cannot be said to have evoked difficulties merely for the
sake of conquering them. This is not the sparkling brilliancy of those
Veronese transformed into Venetians--Bonifazio Primo and Paolo Caliari;
or the gay, stimulating colour-harmony of the Brescian Romanino; or the
more violent and self-assertive splendour of Gaudenzio Ferrari; or the
mysterious glamour of the poet-painter Dosso Dossi. With Titian the
highest degree of poetic fancy, the highest technical accomplishment,
are not allowed to obscure the true Venetian dignity and moderation in
the use of colour, of which our master may in the full Renaissance be
considered the supreme exponent.

The ever-popular picture in the Salon Carré of the Louvre now known as
_Alfonso I. of Ferrara and Laura Dianti_, but in the collection of
Charles I. called, with no nearer approach to the truth, _Titian's
Mistress after the Life_, comes in very well at this stage. The
exuberant beauty, with the skin of dazzling fairness and the unbound
hair of rippling gold, is the last in order of the earthly divinities
inspired by Giorgione--the loveliest of all in some respects, the most
consummately rendered, but the least significant, the one nearest still
to the realities of life. The chief harmony is here one of dark blue,