Ercole II. of Ferrara, then must it be held that also in the Castle
Howard picture is Alfonso's son and successor portrayed. In the latter
canvas, which bears, according to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the later
signature "Titianus F.," the personage is, it may be, a year or two
older. Let it be borne in mind that only on the _back_ of the canvas is,
or rather was, to be found the inscription: "Georgius Cornelius, frater
Catterinae Cipri et Hierusalem Reginae (_sic_)," upon the authority of
which it bears its present designation.

The altar-piece, _The Virgin and Child with Angels, adored by St.
Francis, St. Blaise, and a Donor_, now in San Domenico, but formerly in
San Francesco at Ancona, bears the date 1520 and the signature "Titianus
Cadorinus pinsit," this being about the first instance in which the
later spelling "Titianus" appears. If as a pictorial achievement it
cannot rank with the San Niccolò and the Pesaro altar-pieces, it
presents some special points of interest which make it easily
distinguishable from these. The conception is marked by a peculiar
intensity but rarely to be met with in our master at this stage, and
hardly in any other altar-piece of this particular type. It reveals a
passionate unrest, an element of the uncurbed, the excessive, which one
expects to find rather in Lorenzo Lotto than in Titian, whose dramatic
force is generally, even in its most vigorous manifestations, well under
control. The design suggests that in some shape or other the painter was
acquainted with Raphael's _Madonna di Foligno_; but it is dramatic and
real where the Urbinate's masterpiece was lofty and symbolical. Still
Titian's St. Francis, rapt in contemplation, is sublime in steadfastness
and intensity of faith; the kneeling donor is as pathetic in the
humility of his adoration as any similar figure in a Quattrocento
altar-piece, yet his expressive head is touched with the hand of a
master of the full Renaissance. An improved version of the upper portion