things. To interpret this masterpiece as the writer has ventured to do,
it is not necessary to assume that Titian reasoned out the poetic
vision, which was at the same time an absolutely veracious presentment,
argumentatively with himself, as the painter of such a portrait in words
might have done. Pictorial genius of the creative order does not proceed
by such methods, but sees its subject as a whole, leaving to others the
task of probing and unravelling. It should be borne in mind, too, that
this is the first in order, as it is infinitely the greatest and the
most significant among the vast equestrian portraits of monarchs by
court painters. Velazquez on the one hand, and Van Dyck on the other,
have worked wonders in the same field. Yet their finest productions,
even the _Philip IV._, the _Conde Duque Olivarez_, the _Don Balthasar
Carlos_ of the Spaniard, even the two equestrian portraits of Charles
I., the _Francisco de Moncada_, the _Prince Thomas of Savoy_ of the
Fleming, are in comparison but magnificent show pieces aiming above all
at decorative pomp and an imposing general effect.

We come to earth and every-day weariness again with the full-length of
Charles V., which is now in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. Here the
monarch, dressed in black and seated in a well-worn crimson velvet
chair, shows without disguise how profoundly he is ravaged by ill-health
and _ennui_. Fine as the portrait still appears notwithstanding its bad
condition, one feels somehow that Titian is not in this instance, as he
is in most others, perfect master of his material, of the main elements
of his picture. The problem of relieving the legs cased in black against
a relatively light background, and yet allowing to them their full
plastic form, is not perfectly solved. Neither is it, by the way, as a
rule in the canvases of those admirable painters of men, the
quasi-Venetians, Moretto of Brescia and Moroni of Bergamo. The
Northerners--among them Holbein and Lucidel--came nearer to perfect