itself. The ceiling pictures, depicting three of the most dramatic
moments in sacred history, have received the most enthusiastic praise
from the master's successive biographers. They were indeed at the time
of their inception a new thing in Venetian art. Nothing so daring as
these foreshortenings, as these scenes of dramatic violence, of physical
force triumphant, had been seen in Venice. The turbulent spirit was an
exaggeration of that revealed by Titian in the _St. Peter Martyr_; the
problem of the foreshortening for the purposes of ceiling decoration was
superadded. It must be remembered, too, that even in Rome, the
headquarters of the grand style, nothing precisely of the same kind
could be said to exist. Raphael and his pupils either disdained, or it
may be feared to approach, the problem. Neither in the ceiling
decorations of the Farnesina nor in the Stanze is there any attempt on a
large scale to _faire plafonner_ the figures, that is, to paint them so
that they might appear as they would actually be seen from below.
Michelangelo himself, in the stupendous decoration of the ceiling to the
Sixtine Chapel, had elected to treat the subjects of the flat surface
which constitutes the centre and climax of the whole, as a series of
pictures designed under ordinary conditions. It can hardly be doubted
that Titian, in attempting these _tours de force_, though not
necessarily or even probably in any other way, was inspired by
Correggio. It would not be easy, indeed, to exaggerate the Venetian
master's achievement from this point of view, even though in two at
least of the groups--the _Cain and Abel_ and the _David and
Goliath_--the modern professor might be justified in criticising with
considerable severity his draughtsmanship and many salient points in his
design. The effect produced is tremendous of its kind. The power
suggested is, however, brutal, unreasoning, not nobly dominating force;
and this not alone in the _Cain and Abel_, where such an impression is
rightly conveyed, but also in the other pieces. It is as if Titian, in