more brilliant as regards the working out of the costume and
accessories.

To the period of Titian's return from the second visit to Augsburg
belongs a very remarkable portrait which of late years there has been
some disinclination to admit as his own work. This is the imposing
full-length portrait which stands forth as the crowning decoration of
the beautiful and well-ordered gallery at Cassel. In the days when it
was sought to obtain _quand même_ a striking designation for a great
picture, it was christened _Alfonso d'Avalos, Marqués del Vasto_.
More recently, with some greater show of probability, it has
been called _Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino_. In the _Jahrbuch der
königlich-preussischen Kunstsammlungen_,[43] Herr Carl Justi, ever bold
and ingenious in hypothesis, strives, with the support of a mass of
corroborative evidence that cannot be here quoted, to prove that the
splendid personage presented is a Neapolitan nobleman of the highest
rank, Giovan Francesco Acquaviva, Duke of Atri. There is the more reason
to accept his conjecture since it helps us to cope with certain
difficulties presented by the picture itself. It may be conceded at the
outset that there are disturbing elements in it, well calculated to give
pause to the student of Titian. The handsome patrician, a little too
proud of his rank, his magnificent garments and accoutrements, his
virile beauty, stands fronting the spectator in a dress of crimson and
gold, wearing a plumed and jewelled hat, which in its elaboration
closely borders on the grotesque, and holding a hunting-spear. Still
more astonishing in its exaggeration of a Venetian mode in
portraiture[44] is the great crimson, dragon-crowned helmet which, on
the left of the canvas, Cupid himself supports. To the right, a rival
even of Love in the affections of our enigmatical personage, a noble
hound rubs himself affectionately against the stalwart legs of his