among which is the curious awkwardness of design which makes of the
composition, cut in two by a central tree, two pictures instead of one.
Undeniably, too, there is a certain meanness and triviality in the
little nymph or mortal of the foreground, which may, however, be due to
the intervention of an assistant. But then, with an elasticity truly
astounding in a man of his great age, the master has momentarily
regained the poetry of his youthful prime, and with it a measure of that
Giorgionesque fragrance which was evaporating already at the close of
the early time, when the _Bacchanals_ were brought forth. The Antiope
herself far transcends in the sovereign charm of her beauty--divine in
the truer sense of the word--all Titian's Venuses, save the one in the
_Sacred and Profane Love_. The figure comes in some ways nearer even in
design, and infinitely nearer in feeling, to Giorgione's _Venus_ at
Dresden than does the _Venus of Urbino_ in the Tribuna, which was
closely modelled upon it. And the aged Titian had gone back even a step
farther than Giorgione; the group of Antiope with Jupiter in the guise
of a Satyr is clearly a reminiscence of a _Nymph surprised by a
Satyr_--one of the engravings in the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ first
published in 1499, but republished with the same illustrations in
1545.[55]

[Illustration: _The Rape of Europa. From the Engraving by J.Z.
Delignon_.]

According to the correspondence published by Crowe and Cavalcaselle
there were completed for the Spanish King in April 1562 the _Poesy of
Europa carried by the Bull_, and the _Christ praying in the Garden_,
while a _Virgin and Child_ was announced as in progress.

These paintings, widely divergent as they are in subject, answer very