[Illustration: Martyrdom of St. Peter the Dominican. From the engraving
by Henri Laurent.]

By common consent through the centuries which have succeeded the placing
of Titian's world-renowned _Martyrdom of St. Peter the Dominican_ on the
altar of the Brotherhood of St. Peter Martyr, in the vast Church of SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, it has been put down as his masterpiece, and as one of
the most triumphant achievements of the Renaissance at its maturity. On
the 16th of August 1867--one of the blackest of days in the calendar for
the lover of Venetian art--the _St. Peter Martyr_ was burnt in the
Cappella del Rosario of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, together with one of
Giovanni Bellini's finest altar-pieces, the _Virgin and Child with
Saints and Angels_, painted in 1472. Some malign influence had caused
the temporary removal to the chapel of these two priceless works during
the repair of the first and second altars to the right of the nave. Now
the many who never knew the original are compelled to form their
estimate of the _St. Peter Martyr_ from the numerous existing copies and
prints of all kinds that remain to give some sort of hint of what the
picture was. Any appreciation of the work based on a personal impression
may, under the circumstances, appear over-bold. Nothing could well be
more hazardous, indeed, than to judge the world's greatest colourist by
a translation into black-and-white, or blackened paint, of what he has
conceived in the myriad hues of nature. The writer, not having had the
good fortune to see the original, has not fallen under the spell of the
marvellously suggestive colour-scheme. This Crowe and Cavalcaselle
minutely describe, with its prevailing blacks and whites furnished by
the robes of the Dominicans, with its sombre, awe-inspiring landscape,
in which lurid storm-light is held in check by the divine radiance
falling almost perpendicularly from the angels above--with its single