Eleonora. The model is nude under a mantle of black satin lined with
fur, which leaves uncovered the right breast and both arms. The picture
is undoubtedly Titian's own, and fine in quality, but it reveals less
than his usual graciousness and charm. It is probably identical with the
canvas described in the often-quoted catalogue of Charles I.'s pictures
as "A naked woman putting on her smock, which the king changed with the
Duchess of Buckingham for one of His Majesty's Mantua pieces." It may
well have suggested to Rubens, who must have seen it among the King's
possessions on the occasion of his visit to London, his superb, yet
singularly unrefined, _Hélène Fourment in a Fur Mantle_, now also in the
Vienna Gallery.

The great portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in the Uffizi
belong, as has already been noted, to 1537. Francesco Maria, here
represented in the penultimate year of his stormy life, assumes
deliberately the truculent warrior, and has beyond reasonable doubt made
his own pose in a portrait destined to show the leader of armies, and
not the amorous spouse or the patron of art and artists. Praise
enthusiastic, but not excessive, has ever been and ever will be lavished
on the breadth and splendid decision of the painting; on the magnificent
rendering of the suit of plain but finely fashioned steel armour, with
its wonderful reflections; on the energy of the virile countenance, and
the appropriate concentration and simplicity of the whole. The superb
head has, it must be confessed, more grandeur and energy than true
individuality or life. The companion picture represents Eleonora Gonzaga
seated near an open window, wearing a sombre but magnificent costume,
and, completing it, one of those turbans with which the patrician ladies
of North Italy, other than those of Venice, habitually crowned their
locks. It has suffered in loss of freshness and touch more than its
companion. Fine and accurate as the portrait is, much as it surpasses