such supposition. Those who have judged them from those copies and the
hideous grotesques of Sadeler have wondered at the popularity of the
originals, somewhat hastily deeming Titian to have been here inferior to
himself. Strange to say, a better idea of what he intended, and what he
may have realised in the originals, is to be obtained from a series of
small copies now in the Provincial Museum of Hanover, than from anything
else that has survived.[24] The little pictures in question, being on
copper, cannot well be anterior to the first part of the seventeenth
century, and they are not in themselves wonders. All the same they have
a unique interest as proving that, while adopting the pompous attitudes
and the purely decorative standpoint which the position of the pictures
in the Castello may have rendered obligatory, Titian managed to make of
his Emperors creatures of flesh and blood; the splendid Venetian warrior
and patrician appearing in all the glory of manhood behind the
conventional dignity, the self-consciousness of the Roman type and
attitude.

[Illustration: _Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi
Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari_.]

These last years had been to Titian as fruitful in material gain as in
honour. He had, as has been seen, established permanent and intimate
relations not only with the art-loving rulers of the North Italian
principalities, but now with Charles V. himself, mightiest of European
sovereigns, and, as a natural consequence, with the all-powerful
captains and grandees of the Hispano-Austrian court. Meanwhile a serious
danger to his supremacy had arisen. At home in Venice his unique
position was threatened by Pordenone, that masterly and wonderfully
facile _frescante_ and painter of monumental decorations, who had on
more than one occasion in the past been found in competition with him.