assigned by Ridolfi to the great master himself, but by Boschini to
Santo Zago (Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. p. 432). Here the adapter
has ruined Titian's great conception by substituting his own trivial
archangel for the superb figure of the original (see also a modern copy
of this last piece in the Schack Gallery at Munich). A reproduction of
the Titian has for purposes of comparison been placed at the end of the
present monograph (p. 99).

[18] Vasari places the _Three Ages_ after the first visit to Ferrara,
that is almost as much too late as he places the _Tobias_ of S.
Marciliano too early. He describes its subject as "un pastore ignudo ed
una forese chi li porge certi flauti per che suoni."

[19] From an often-cited passage in the _Anonimo_, describing
Giorgione's great _Venus_ now in the Dresden Gallery, in the year 1525,
when it was in the house of Jeronimo Marcello at Venice, we learn that
it was finished by Titian. The text says: "La tela della Venere nuda,
che dorme ni uno paese con Cupidine, fu de mano de Zorzo da
Castelfranco; ma lo paese e Cupidine furono finiti da Tiziano." The
Cupid, irretrievably damaged, has been altogether removed, but the
landscape remains, and it certainly shows a strong family resemblance to
those which enframe the figures in the _Three Ages, Sacred and Profane
Love_, and the "_Noli me tangere_" of the National Gallery. The same
_Anonimo_ in 1530 saw in the house of Gabriel Vendramin at Venice a
_Dead Christ supported by an Angel_, from the hand of Giorgone, which,
according to him, had been retouched by Titian. It need hardly be
pointed out, at this stage, that the work thus indicated has nothing in
common with the coarse and thoroughly second-rate _Dead Christ supported
by Child-Angels,_ still to be seen at the Monte di Pietà of Treviso. The
engraving of a _Dead Christ supported by an Angel_, reproduced in M.