of the Ancona picture, showing the Madonna and Child with angels in the
clouds, appears a little later on in the S. Niccolò altar-piece.

[Illustration: _St. Sebastian. Wing of altar-piece in the Church of SS.
Nazzaro e Celso, Brescia. From a Photograph by Alinari_.]

Coming to the important altar-piece completed in 1522 for the Papal
Legate, Averoldo, and originally placed on the high altar in the Church
of SS. Nazzaro e Celso at Brescia, we find a marked change of style and
sentiment. The _St. Sebastian_ presently to be referred to, constituting
the right wing of the altar-piece, was completed before the rest,[43]
and excited so great an interest in Venice that Tebaldi, the agent of
Duke Alfonso, made an attempt to defeat the Legate and secure the
much-talked-of piece for his master. Titian succumbed to an offer of
sixty ducats in ready money, thus revealing neither for the first nor
the last time the least attractive yet not the least significant side of
his character. But at the last moment Alfonso, fearing to make an enemy
of the Legate, drew back and left to Titian the discredit without the
profit of the transaction. The central compartment of the Brescia
altar-piece presents _The Resurrection_, the upper panels on the left
and right show together the _Annunciation_, the lower left panel depicts
the patron saints, Nazarus and Celsus, with the kneeling donor,
Averoldo; the lower right panel has the famous _St. Sebastian_[44] in
the foreground, and in the landscape the Angel ministering to St. Roch.
The _St. Sebastian_ is neither more nor less than the magnificent
academic study of a nude athlete bound to a tree in such fashion as to
bring into violent play at one and the same moment every muscle in his
splendidly developed body. There is neither in the figure nor in the
beautiful face framed in long falling hair any pretence at suggesting
the agony or the ecstasy of martyrdom. A wide gulf indeed separates the