rugged realism of the conception not without its pathos; yet the subject
is not lifted high above the commonplace by that penetrating spirit of
personal interpretation which can transfigure truth without unduly
transforming it. In grandeur of design and decorative character, it is
greatly exceeded by the magnificent drawing in black chalk, heightened
with white, of the same subject, by Pordenone, in the British Museum.
Even the colossal, half-effaced _St. Christopher with the Infant
Christ_, painted by the same master on the wall of a house near the Town
Hall at Udine, has a finer swing, a more resistless energy.

[Illustration: _St. Christopher with the Infant Christ. Fresco in the
Doge's Palace, Venice. From a Photograph by Alinari_.]

Where exactly in the life-work of Titian are we to place the
_Entombment_ of the Louvre, to which among his sacred works, other than
altar-pieces of vast dimensions, the same supreme rank may be accorded
which belongs to the _Bacchus and Ariadne_ among purely secular
subjects? It was in 1523 that Titian acquired a new and illustrious
patron in the person of Federigo Gonzaga II., Marquess of Mantua, son of
that most indefatigable of collectors, the Marchioness Isabella d'Este
Gonzaga, and nephew of Alfonso of Ferrara. The _Entombment_ being a
"Mantua piece,"[47] Crowe and Cavalcaselle have not unnaturally assumed
that it was done expressly for the Mantuan ruler, in which case, as some
correspondence published by them goes to show, it must have been painted
at, or subsequently to, the latter end of 1523. Judging entirely by the
style and technical execution of the canvas itself, the writer feels
strongly inclined to place it earlier by some two years or
thereabouts--that is to say, to put it back to a period pretty closely
following upon that in which the _Worship of Venus_ and the _Bacchanal_
were painted. Mature as Titian's art here is, it reveals, not for the