master. Far back stretches a prospect singularly unlike those rich-toned
studies of sub-Alpine regions in which Titian as a rule revels. It has
an august but more colourless beauty recalling the middle Apennines; one
might almost say that it prefigures those prospects of inhospitable
Sierra which, with their light, delicate tonality, so admirably relieve
and support the portraits of Velazquez. All this is unusual, and still
more so is the want of that aristocratic gravity, of that subordination
of mere outward splendour to inborn dignity, which mark Titian's
greatest portraits throughout his career. The splendid materials for the
picture are not as absolutely digested, as absolutely welded into one
consistent and harmonious whole, as with such authorship one would
expect. But then, on the other hand, take the magnificent execution in
the most important passages: the distinguished silvery tone obtained
notwithstanding the complete red-and-gold costume and the portentous
crimson helmet; the masterly brush-work in these last particulars, in
the handsome virile head of the model and the delicate flesh of the
_amorino_. The dog might without exaggeration be pronounced the best,
the truest in movement, to be found in Venetian art--indeed, in art
generally, until Velazquez appears. Herr Carl Justi's happy conjecture
helps us, if we accept it, to get over some of these difficulties and
seeming contradictions. The Duke of Atri belonged to a great Neapolitan
family, exiled and living at the French court under royal countenance
and protection. The portrait was painted to be sent back to France, to
which, indeed, its whole subsequent history belongs. Under such
circumstances the young nobleman would naturally desire to affirm his
rank and pretensions as emphatically as might be; to outdo in splendour
and _prestance_ all previous sitters to Titian; to record himself apt in
war, in the chase, in love, and more choice in the fashion of his
appointments than any of his compeers in France or Italy.