a Hungarian captain that the handsome young Medici was now painted by
Titian at Bologna, the result being a portrait unique of its kind even
in his life-work. The sombre glow of the supple, youthful flesh, the
red-brown of the rich velvet habit which defines the perfect shape of
Ippolito, the red of the fantastic plumed head-dress worn by him with
such sovereign ease, make up a deep harmony, warm, yet not in the
technical sense hot, and of indescribable effect. And this effect is
centralised in the uncanny glance, the mysterious aspect of the man
whom, as we see him here, a woman might love for his beauty, but a man
would do well to distrust. The smaller portrait painted by Titian about
the same time of the young Cardinal fully armed--the one which, with the
Pitti picture, Vasari saw in the closet (_guardaroba_) of Cosimo, Duke
of Tuscany--is not now known to exist.[12]

[Illustration: _Francis the First. Louvre. From a Photograph by
Neurdein_.]

[Illustration: _Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a
Photograph by E. Alinari_.]

It may be convenient to mention here one of the most magnificent among
the male portraits of Titian, the _Young Nobleman_ in the Sala di Marte
of the Pitti Gallery, although its exact place in the middle time of the
artist it is, failing all data on the point, not easy to determine. At
Florence there has somehow been attached to it the curious name _Howard
duca di Norfolk_,[13] but upon what grounds, if any, the writer is
unable to state. The master of Cadore never painted a head more finely
or with a more exquisite finesse, never more happily characterised a
face, than that of this resolute, self-contained young patrician with
the curly chestnut hair and the short, fine beard and moustache--a