St. Lawrence"--Death of Charles V.--Attempted assassination of Orazio
Vecellio--"Diana and Actaeon" and "Diana and Calisto"--The "Comoro
Family"--The "Magdalen" of the Hermitage--The "Jupiter and Antiope" and
"Rape of Europa"--Vasari defines Titian's latest manner--"St. Jerome" of
the Brera--"Education of Cupid"--"Jacopo da Strada"--Impressionistic
manner of the end--"Ecce Homo" of Munich--"Nymph and Shepherd" of
Vienna--The unfinished "Pietà"--Death of Titian_.


It was in the month of March 1555 that Titian married his only daughter
Lavinia to Cornelio Sarcinelli of Serravalle, thus leaving the pleasant
home at Biri Grande without a mistress; for his sister Orsa had been
dead since 1549.[47] It may be convenient to treat here of the various
portraits and more or less idealised portrait-pieces in which Titian has
immortalised the thoroughly Venetian beauty of his daughter. First we
have in the great _Ecce Homo_ of Vienna the graceful white-robed figure
of a young girl of some fourteen years, placed, with the boy whom she
guards, on the steps of Pilate's palace. Then there is the famous piece
_Lavinia with a Dish of Fruit_, dating according to Morelli from about
1549, and painted for the master's friend Argentina Pallavicino of
Reggio. This last-named work passed in 1821 from the Solly Collection
into the Berlin Gallery. Though its general aspect is splendidly
decorative, though it is accounted one of the most popular of all
Titian's works, the Berlin picture cannot be allowed to take the highest
rank among his performances of the same class. Its fascinations are of
the obvious and rather superficial kind, its execution is not equal in
vigour, freedom, and accent to the best that the master did about the
same time. It is pretty obvious here that only the head is adapted from
that of Lavinia, the full-blown voluptuous form not being that of the
youthful maiden, who could not moreover have worn this sumptuous and