brush with greater _maestria_ and ease than here, or united a richer or
more transparent glow with greater dignity of colour. About the
compositions themselves, if we are to take them as the _poesie_ that
Titian loved to call them, there is a certain want of significance,
neither the divine nor the human note being struck with any depth or
intensity of vibration. The glamour, the mystery, the intimate charm of
the early pieces is lost, and there is felt, enwrapping the whole, that
sultry atmosphere of untempered sensuousness which has already, upon
more than one occasion, been commented upon. That this should be so is
only natural when creative power is not extinguished by old age, but is
on the contrary coloured with its passion, so different in quality from
that of youth.

The _Entombment_, which went to Madrid with the mythological pieces just
now discussed, serves to show how vivid was Titian's imagination at this
point, when he touched upon a sacred theme, and how little dependent he
was in this field on the conceptions of his earlier prime. A more living
passion informs the scene, a more intimate sympathy colours it, than we
find in the noble _Entombment_ of the Louvre, much as the picture which
preceded it by so many years excels the Madrid example in fineness of
balance, in dignity, in splendour and charm of colour. Here the
personages are set free by the master from all academic trammels, and
express themselves with a greater spontaneity in grief. The colour, too,
of which the general scheme is far less attractive to the eye than in
the Louvre picture, blazes forth in one note of lurid splendour in the
red robe of the saint who supports the feet of the dead Christ.

In this same year Titian painted on the ceiling of the ante-chamber to
Sansovino's great Library in the Piazzetta the allegorical figure
_Wisdom_, thus entering into direct competition with young Paolo