The second period, following upon the completion of the _St. Peter
Martyr_, is one less of great altar-pieces and _poesie_ such as the
miscalled _Sacred and Profane Love_ (_Medea and Venus_), the
_Bacchanals_, and the _Bacchus and Ariadne_, than it is of splendid
nudities and great portraits. In the former, however mythological be the
subject, it is generally chosen but to afford a decent pretext for the
generous display of beauty unveiled. The portraits are at this stage
less often intimate and soul-searching in their summing up of a human
personality than they are official presentments of great personages and
noble dames; showing them, no doubt, without false adulation or cheap
idealisation, yet much as they desire to appear to their allies, their
friends, and their subjects, sovereign in natural dignity and
aristocratic grace, yet essentially in a moment of representation.
Farther on the great altar-pieces reappear more sombre, more agitated in
passion, as befits the period of the sixteenth century in which
Titian's latest years are passed, and the patrons for whom he paints. Of
the _poesie_ there is then a new upspringing, a new efflorescence, and
we get by the side of the _Venus and Adonis_, the _Diana and Actæon_,
the _Diana and Calisto_, the _Rape of Europa_, such pieces of a more
exquisite and penetrating poetry as the _Venere del Pardo_ of Paris, and
the _Nymph and Shepherd_ of Vienna.

This appears to be the right place to say a word about the magnificent
engraving by Van Dalen of a portrait, no longer known to exist, but
which has, upon the evidence apparently of the print, been put down as
that of Titian by himself. It represents a bearded man of some
thirty-five years, dressed in a rich but sombre habit, and holding a
book. The portrait is evidently not that of a painter by himself, nor
does it represent Titian at any age; but it finely suggests, even in
black and white, a noble original by the master. Now, a comparison with