The colour is appropriately sober, yet a general tone is produced of
great strength and astonishing effectiveness. The illumination is that
of the open air, tempered and modified by an overhanging canopy of
green; the great effect is obtained by the brilliant grayish white of
the saint's alb, dominating and keeping in due balance the red of the
rochet and the under-robes, the cloud-veiled sky, the marble throne or
podium, the dark green hanging. This picture must have had in the years
to follow a strong and lasting influence on Paolo Veronese, the keynote
to whose audaciously brilliant yet never over-dazzling colour is this
use of white and gray in large dominating masses. The noble figure of S.
Giovanni gave him a prototype for many of his imposing figures of
bearded old men. There is a strong reminiscence, too, of the saint's
attitude in one of the most wonderful of extant Veroneses--that
sumptuous altar-piece _SS. Anthony, Cornelius, and Cyprian with a Page_,
in the Brera, for which he invented a harmony as delicious as it is
daring, composed wholly of violet-purple, green, and gold.




CHAPTER II

_Francesco Maria della Rovere--Titian and Eleonora Gonzaga--The "Venus
with the Shell"--Titian's later ideals--The "Venus of Urbino"--The
"Bella di Tiziano"--The "Twelve Cæsars"--Titian and Pordenone--The
"Battle of Cadore"--Portraits of the Master by himself--The
"Presentation in the Temple"--The "Allocation" of Madrid--The Ceiling
Pictures of Santo Spirito--First Meeting with Pope Paul III.--The "Ecce
Homo" of Vienna--"Christ with the Pilgrims at Emmaus_."