Veronese, Schiavone, and the other painters who, striving in friendly
rivalry, had been engaged a short time before on the ceiling of the
great hall in the same building. This noble design contains a pronounced
reminiscence of Raphael's incomparable allegorical figures in the Camera
della Segnatura, but excels them as much in decorative splendour and
facile breadth of execution as it falls behind them in sublimity of
inspiration.

Crowe and Cavalcaselle are probably right in assigning the great
_Cornaro Family_ in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland to the
year 1560 or thereabouts. Little seen of late years, and like most
Venetian pictures of the sixteenth century shorn of some of its glory by
time and the restorer, this family picture appears to the writer to rank
among Titian's masterpieces in the domain of portraiture, and to be
indeed the finest portrait-group of this special type that Venice has
produced. In the simplicity and fervour of the conception Titian rises
to heights which he did not reach in the _Madonna di Casa Pesaro_, where
he is hampered by the necessity for combining a votive picture with a
series of avowed portraits. It is pretty clear that this _Cornaro_
picture, like the Pesaro altar-piece, must have been commissioned to
commemorate a victory or important political event in the annals of the
illustrious family. Search among their archives and papers, if they
still exist, might throw light upon this point, and fix more accurately
the date of the magnificent work. In the open air--it may be outside
some great Venetian church--an altar has been erected, and upon it is
placed a crucifix, on either side of which are church candles, blown
this way and the other by the wind. Three generations of patricians
kneel in prayer and thanksgiving, taking precedence according to age,
six handsome boys, arranged in groups of three on either side of the
canvas, furnishing an element of great pictorial attractiveness but no