it may be taken as a very characteristic example of Titian's late but
not latest manner in sacred art. In the most striking fashion does it
exhibit that peculiar gloom and agitation of the artist face to face
with religious subjects which at an earlier period would have left his
serenity undisturbed. The saint, uncertain of her triumph, armed though
she is with the Cross, flees in affright from the monster whose huge
bulk looms, terrible even in overthrow, in the darkness of the
foreground. To the impression of terror communicated by the whole
conception the distance of the lurid landscape--a city in
flames--contributes much.

[Illustration: _Venus with the Mirror._ _Gallery of the Hermitage, St.
Petersburg. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie._]

In the spring and summer of 1554 were finished for Philip of Spain the
_Danaë_ of Madrid; for Mary, Queen of Hungary, a _Madonna Addolorata_;
for Charles V. the _Trinity_, to which he had with Titian devoted so
much anxious thought. The _Danaë_ of the Prado, less grandiose, less
careful in finish than the Naples picture, is painted with greater
spontaneity and _élan_ than its predecessor, and vibrates with an
undisguisedly fleshly passion. Is it to the taste of Philip or to a
momentary touch of cynicism in Titian himself that we owe the deliberate
dragging down of the conception until it becomes symbolical of the
lowest and most venal form of love? In the Naples version Amor, a
fairly-fashioned divinity of more or less classic aspect, presides; in
the Madrid and subsequent interpretations of the legend, a grasping hag,
the attendant of Danaë, holds out a cloth, eager to catch her share of
the golden rain. In the St. Petersburg version, which cannot be
accounted more than an atelier piece, there is, with some slight yet
appreciable variations, a substantial agreement with the Madrid picture.