heart's secrets and showed the pathetic helplessness of humanity.
Tintoretto communicated his own savage grandeur, his own unrest, to
those whom he depicted; Paolo Veronese charmed without _arrière-pensée_
by the intensity of vitality which with perfect simplicity he preserved
in his sitters. Yet to Titian must be conceded absolute supremacy in the
rendering not only of the outward but of the essential dignity, the
refinement of type and bearing, which without doubt come unconsciously
to those who can boast a noble and illustrious ancestry.

Again the writer hesitates to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle when
they place at this period, that is to say about 1533, the superb
_Allegory_ of the Louvre (No. 1589), which is very generally believed to
represent the famous commander Alfonso d'Avalos, Marqués del Vasto,
with his family. The eminent biographers of Titian connect the picture
with the return of d'Avalos from the campaign against the Turks,
undertaken by him in the autumn of 1532, under the leadership of Croy,
at the behest of his imperial master. They hazard the surmise that the
picture, though painted after Alfonso's return, symbolises his departure
for the wars, "consoled by Victory, Love, and Hymen." A more natural
conclusion would surely be that what Titian has sought to suggest is the
return of the commander to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of victory.

[Illustration: _Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence.
From a Photograph by G. Brogi_.]

The Italo-Spanish grandee was born at Naples in 1502, so that at this
date he would have been but thirty-one years of age, whereas the mailed
warrior of the _Allegory_ is at least forty, perhaps older. Moreover,
and this is the essential point, the technical qualities of the picture,
the wonderful easy mastery of the handling, the peculiarities of the