chiaroscuro, that the painter requires in order to give the most
poignant effect to his last and most thrilling conception of the world's
tragedy. As is often the case with Tintoretto, but more seldom with
Titian, the eloquent passion breathed forth in this _Pietà_ is not to be
accounted for by any element or elements of the composition taken
separately; it depends to so great an extent on the poetic
suggestiveness of the illumination, on the strange and indefinable power
of evocation that the aged master here exceptionally commands.

Wonderfully does the terrible figure of the Magdalen contrast in its
excess of passion with the sculptural repose, the permanence of the main
group. As she starts forward, almost menacing in her grief, her loud and
bitter cry seems to ring through space, accusing all mankind of its
great crime. It is with a conviction far more intense than has ever
possessed him in his prime, with an awe nearly akin to terror, that
Titian, himself trembling on the verge of eternity, and painting, too,
that which shall purchase his own grave, has produced this profoundly
moving work. No more fitting end and crown to the great achievements of
the master's old age could well be imagined.

There is no temptation to dwell unnecessarily upon the short period of
horror and calamity with which this glorious life came to an end. If
Titian had died a year earlier, his biographer might still have wound
up with those beautiful words of Vasari's peroration: "E stato Tiziano
sanissimo et fortunate quant' alcun altro suo pari sia stato ancor mai;
e non ha mai avuto dai cieli se non favori e felicità." Too true it is,
alas, that no man's life may be counted happy until its close! Now comes
upon the great city this all-enveloping horror of the plague, beginning
in 1575, but in 1576 attaining to such vast proportions as to sweep away
more than a quarter of the whole population of 190,000 inhabitants. On