unparalleled offer of £7000, yet even thus failed. At the time of the
great _débâcle_, in 1648, the guardians and advisers of his youthful son
and successor were glad enough to get the splendid gallery over to the
Low Countries, and to sell with the rest the _Ecce Homo_, which brought
under these circumstances but a tenth part of what Lord Arundel would
have given for it. Passing into the collection of the Archduke Leopold
William, it was later on finally incorporated with that of the Imperial
House of Austria. From the point of view of scenic and decorative
magnificence combined with dramatic propriety, though not with any depth
or intensity of dramatic passion, the work is undoubtedly imposing. Yet
it suffers somewhat, even in this respect, from the fact that the
figures are not more than small life-size. With passages of Titianesque
splendour there are to be noted others, approaching to the acrid and
inharmonious, which one would rather attribute to the master's
assistants than to himself. So it is, too, with certain exaggerations of
design characteristic rather of the period than the man--notably with
the two figures to the left of the foreground. The Christ in His
meekness is too little divine, too heavy and inert;[37] the Pontius
Pilate not inappropriately reproduces the features of the worldling and
_viveur_ Aretino. The mounted warrior to the extreme right, who has been
supposed to represent Alfonso d'Este, shows the genial physiognomy made
familiar by the Madrid picture so long deemed to be his portrait, but
which, as has already been pointed out, represents much more probably
his successor Ercole II. d'Este, whom we find again in that superb piece
by the master, the so-called _Giorgio Cornaro_ of Castle Howard. The
_Ecce Homo_ of Vienna is another of the works of which both the
general _ordonnance_ and the truly Venetian splendour must have
profoundly influenced Paolo Veronese.

[Illustration: _Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph