myrtle green, and white, setting off flesh delicately rosy, the whole
enframed in the luminous half-gloom of a background shot through here
and there with gleams of light. Vasari described how Titian painted,
_ottimamente con un braccio sopra un gran pezzo d' artiglieria_, the
Duke Alfonso, and how he portrayed, too, the Signora Laura, who
afterwards became the wife of the duke, _che è opera stupenda_. It is
upon this foundation, and a certain real or fancied resemblance between
the cavalier who in the background holds the mirror to his splendid
_donna_ and the _Alfonso of Ferrara_ of the Museo del Prado, that the
popular designation of this lovely picture is founded, which probably,
like so many of its class, represents a fair Venetian courtesan with a
lover proud of her fresh, yet full-blown beauty. Now, however, the
accomplished biographer of Velazquez, Herr Carl Justi,[42] comes forward
with convincing arguments to show that the handsome _insouciant_
personage, with the crisply curling dark hair and beard, in Titian's
picture at Madrid cannot possibly be, as has hitherto been almost
universally assumed, Alfonso I. of Ferrara, but may very probably be his
son, Ercole II. This alone invalidates the favourite designation of the
Louvre picture, and renders it highly unlikely that we have here the
"stupendous" portrait of the Signora Laura mentioned by Vasari. A
comparison of the Madrid portrait with the so-called _Giorgio Cornaro_
of Castle Howard--a famous portrait by Titian of a gentleman holding a
hawk, and having a sporting dog as his companion, which was seen at the
recent Venetian exhibition of the New Gallery--results in something like
certainty that in both is the same personage portrayed. It is not only
that the quality and cast of the close curling hair and beard are the
same in both portraits, and that the handsome features agree exceedingly
well; the sympathetic personage gives in either case the same impression
of splendid manhood fully and worthily enjoyed, yet not abused. This
means that if the Madrid portrait be taken to present the gracious