reference to the works of Vecellio and other Venetian painters more or
less of his own time, it should be borne in mind that he paid two
successive visits to Venice, enjoying there the company of the great
painter and the most eminent artists of the day, and that on the
occasion of Titian's memorable visit to Rome he was his close friend,
cicerone, and companion. Allowing for the Aretine biographer's
well-known inaccuracies in matters of detail and for his royal disregard
of chronological order--faults for which it is manifestly absurd to
blame him over-severely--it would be unwise lightly to disregard or
overrule his testimony with regard to matters which he may have learned
from the lips of Titian himself and his immediate _entourage_.

To the year 1542 belongs, as the authentic signature and date on the
picture affirm, that celebrated portrait, _The Daughter of Roberto
Strozzi_, once in the splendid palace of the family at Florence, but
now, with some other priceless treasures having the same origin, in the
Berlin Museum. Technically, the picture is one of the most brilliant,
one of the most subtly exquisite, among the works of the great
Cadorine's maturity. It well serves to show what Titian's ideal of
colour was at this time. The canvas is all silvery gleam, all splendour
and sober strength of colour--yet not of colours. These in all their
plentitude and richness, as in the crimson drapery and the distant
landscape, are duly subordinated to the main effect; they but set off
discreetly the figure of the child, dressed all in white satin with hair
of reddish gold, and contribute without fanfare to the fine and
harmonious balance of the whole. Here, as elsewhere, more particularly
in the work of Titian's maturity, one does not in the first place pause
to pick out this or the other tint, this or the other combination of
colours as particularly exquisite; and that is what one is so easily
led to do in the contemplation of the Bonifazi and of Paolo Veronese.